As we all know, the religious right more or less lives on generating faux outrage. But there are some claims religious right leaders make that are so easily debunked that it’s almost pathetic. We got a lulu of an example late last week from the religious right’s favorite pseudo-historian, David Barton. He claimed that the Obama administration won’t investigate cases of child exploitation and child pornography–just 24 hours after federal prosecutors unraveled one of the most egregious cases of child porn in recent memory.
On Thursday’s edition of “Wallbuilders Live,” Barton harrumphed that he and a number of his fellow religious right colleagues used to joke that liberals wanted “religion to be like pornography.” But, Barton said, that isn’t valid anymore, because under Obama, porn is “no longer confined to the privacy of your home.” Instead, it’s out in the open, and this White House simply refuses to do anything about it.
Barton claimed that Obama’s Justice Department “refuses to enforce any of our decency laws”–including laws banning child porn. He claimed that “there has not been a single prosecution of child pornography” since Obama took office in 2009. If you believe Barton, that evil Kenyan socialist Muslim has a standing order not to investigate cases of children being exploited.
That’s probably news to Jared Fogle. Just 24 hours before Barton went to air, federal prosecutors in Indianapolis announced that the former Subway pitchman had admitted to being a serial child pornographer and child exploiter. Fogle not only distributed lewd images that he received from the former director of his foundation, but frequently traveled to have paid sex with minors.
Rather than face at least 50 years in federal prison, Fogle agreed to a minimum sentence of five years and (assuming a judge accepts) a maximum of 12.5 years. Would Barton have us believe this happened because the federal government didn’t investigate Fogle? That seems to be the most benign interpretation.
When Warren Throckmorton, a professor at evangelical Grove City College, heard Barton say this, he immediately started digging. Throckmorton is one of Barton’s longtime gadflies; he and several other evangelical scholars forced Thomas Nelson to yank Barton’s book, “The Jefferson Lies,” from the shelves after exposing it as a steaming pile of distortions and fabrications. On Friday, Throckmorton wrote that based on figures from the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs, 12,859 people were prosecuted for child exploitation from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2014–an average of roughly 2,100 per year. Given the draconian penalties for these crimes, it’s safe to say a large percentage of those people pleaded guilty before trial, as Fogle did.
Lest you dismiss this as the rantings of another right-wing extremist, consider two things. One is that the great majority of Barton’s audience has been brainwashed into living in a bubble. They rely on Christian radio stations and “The 700 Club” for news, either send their kids to Christian school or homeschool them with Christianist-inspired curricula, and have filtered Internet service. It’s hard to believe that Barton doesn’t know most of his audience won’t even bother checking his ridiculous and–in this case–blatantly false statements.
Second, and more importantly, we’re talking about a guy who could have potentially been Texas’ junior U. S. Senator. As I told you earlier this year, several Texas conservatives tried to draft Barton to challenge John Cornyn in the 2014 Republican primary. Ultimately, Barton turned it down. But given the hard-right tilt of the Texas GOP base, Barton stood a pretty good chance of bouncing Cornyn. And given the staggering incompetence displayed by the Texas Democratic Party in nominating a Senate candidate (notably, the favored candidate had to spend valuable time fending off a LaRouchie), Texas could have very well been saddled with a Senator who makes Ted Cruz sound like a model of sanity.
The bulk of Barton’s audience comes from American Family Radio. I know that AFR has a “free speech policy” that more or less gives its hosts free rein. But after this, I have to wonder if that policy includes carte blanche to air out-and-out lies.
