Keith Olbermann misses the point…
…or maybe I’m not getting these ‘Worst Person’ segments he does.
And the bronze goes to… Donor for NY atheist bus campaign. (0:33)
Maybe its his upper class status, his tolerant Unitarian upbringing, the colour of his skin, his heterosexuality or perhaps the combination of all of them, but I’m not sure that Keith is fully equipped to understand the finer nuances of being an outsider.
Atheist campaigns to get atheists out of the closet are about encouraging them, not outing them. Quite often the organisations running these campaigns will give support to atheists for some time before they, of their own choosing, decide to come out as atheist.
It’s not hypocritical, nor even remotely ironic, for someone to remain anonymous while being involved in the campaign. It’s perfectly normal. Encouraging people to come out isn’t the same as expecting them to.
People may want to come out, but may lose their job. Be shunned by relatives and so on. Is it so bad that someone who may or may not be a closet atheist for very practical reasons, would want to provide substantial material support to others that perhaps aren’t at quite the same risk?
Heck, they may not be able to aford their home if they came out and lost their job, much less bus ads!
But it gets sillier.
Of all of my religious friends who have bothered to consider if atheists are inherently immoral, or if they can be good, I believe precisely none have opined that atheists can’t be or aren’t good people. To the best of my knowledge, all have found the notion that atheists are necessarily amoral/immoral people who believe in nothing, to be mere bigoted dehumanizing.
The New York bus sign campaign says “You don’t have to believe in God to be a moral or ethical person”, not “There probably isn’t a God…” It’s not proselytising atheism per se, but proselytising the notion that atheists are human beings too.
It’s a statement that most, if not all of my religious friends, could get behind.
So putting the encouraging-isn’t-outing consideration to one side, how does Keith Olbermann know that the donor isn’t religious? To expect a theist to come out as an atheist is absurd, but it’s a notion that Olbermann flirts with if he knows it or not.
This is just another one of those ‘Worst Person’ awards of Olbermann’s that doesn’t appear to make much sense.
~ Bruce
Keith does not get it. As a gay man involved with many LGBT efforts over the year, I have seen countless queer folk donate to our causes but keeping it anonymous.
Thanks for saving me the trouble of having to write this post. I watched that segment this morning, and it added to my increasing disdain for Olbermann, whom I otherwise enjoy. Olbermann has recently been criticizing right wing Christians for their apparent misbehavior, indicating that they obviously hadn’t been reading their bibles or following the biblical principles that Christ supposedly set forth. But it’s perhaps Olbermann who hasn’t read his bible, else he might discover that it’s full of examples of horrible men doing horrible things to one another in the name of God.
Olbermann implies, with his punditry, that following the bible is a good thing. He’s created his own religious bias while attempting to criticize followers of that religion for not adhering to what he thinks is the doctrine of that religion. I bet Olbermann would answer “yes” to the question of whether the bible is a foundation of morality. I’m quickly getting to the point of not wanting to watch Countdown. Then who the hell is on the side of rationality in prominent national media? Maddow? Watch her, she’s not as progressive (or not in appearance, anyway) as she might seem at first.
I have seen countless queer folk donate to our causes but keeping it anonymous.
I have to admit that I’m still learing the whole coming out thing other people go through.
The closest I came to being closeted with my atheism was rather more calculated on my part, being so that certain parents wouldn’t keep me away from their daughters.
That and so as not to blow my cover while investigating what these people got up to in church. I almost got caught out when a couple of mates who came along got a bit caught up in a private joke during the hymms, which only became more funny when someone accused us of mocking God only to be told that we weren’t and that she should stop judging us.
Doesn’t really qualify as in-the-closet when you only assume the guise in the lion’s den, but are open about your atheism in your every-day life.
He’s created his own religious bias while attempting to criticize followers of that religion for not adhering to what he thinks is the doctrine of that religion.
Next he’ll be kicking them out of Christendom ala No True Scotsman.