Topic: WorldNetDaily
A March 21 WorldNetDaily article by Art Moore is aimed at attacking Frank Schaeffer, son of late "evangelical thinker" Francis Schaeffer, and Moore is not afraid to throw a personal smear or two in the mix.
Moore was responding to an article by Frank Schaeffer "in the Baltimore Community Times" -- in fact, it first appeared at the Huffington Post -- stating that the controversial statements made by Barack Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are no different from those made by "thousands of right-wing white preachers," who say, "as my dad often did, that we are, 'under the judgment of God.' They call America evil and warn of imminent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted 'controversial' comments were mild."
Moore makes no apparent attempt to contact Frank Schaeffer to explain himself or respond to criticism -- a practice familiar those who have observed his whitewashing of professional Clinton-bashers Peter Paul and Kathleen Willey. Indeed, Schaeffer's basic point is never rebutted. Rather, he cites a personal attack "evangelical writer and social critic Os Guinness," who panned Frank Schaeffer's book on his break with the evangelical movement in a Christianity Today article:
Guinness says the "real truth is that Franky, as he then called himself, was spoiled. He was more like a poster child for Benjamin Spock than the son of 'fundamentalist missionaries.'"
"Having been born well after his sisters, and having survived polio as a child, he was rarely challenged, disciplined, or denied," he writes. "As a result, he grew up a 'little Napoleon,' as some of the L'Abri students called him. He would boast that he could twist his parents around his little finger, and time and again he proved it."
That's right -- personal attacks, not intellectual arguments, are an acceptable form of rebuttal in a WND "news" article.
