{"id":517,"date":"2005-09-18T23:18:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-18T23:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=517"},"modified":"2005-09-18T23:18:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-18T23:18:00","slug":"517","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=517","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Starhawk is our Jesse Jackson<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t mean that as a compliment. Jackson has used up his credibility from his earlier civil-rights work by parachuting himself into whatever crisis or disaster comes along, trying to grab some television time for his own agenda.<\/p>\n

Now Pagan activist-writer Starhawk is up to the same game (again) with her own response to Hurricane Katrina<\/a>. Short version: It’s President Bush’s fault, and Mississippians deserved to die because they do not worship Oya.<\/p>\n

And a day later, the levees failed, and the floods came. They failed not from an Act of Goddess, but from a lack of resources. The Bush Administration had systematically cut funding for flood control and for repairing and increasing the strength of the levees. The money went to Iraq.<\/em><\/p>\n

And Clinton and Bush Senior and so on back to FDR, I am sure. Not to mention that money spent in Louisiana has sometimes been spend in odd ways, ways that benefitted local politicians perhaps more than anyone.<\/p>\n

You can see that her real agenda is Bush-bashing, because she brings in Cindy Sheehan, who is totally irrelevant here unless<\/em> you want to go after Bush. (And let me add by way of disclaimer that as a lifelong Democrat I did not vote for either Bush, father or son.)<\/p>\n

What about the Mississippians? Starhawk writes that certain “progressive” Christians were praying and “Orisha priestesses were ‘working’ Oya, and the hurricane did shift its course, slightly, and lessened its force, down to a Category Four.”<\/p>\n

That’s right, it shifted its course onto Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and such places, which evidently were more deserving. They are Mississippians, so they must be bigots, right? Not colorful Voodooists as in New Orleans.<\/p>\n

Now, weeks later, New Orleans remains under martial law.<\/em><\/p>\n

That statement is simply false and shows ignorance of what “martial law” is and how it is declared. If the city were truly under martial law, Mayor Nagin would be gagged on the sidelines, not issuing proclamations about who could move back in.<\/p>\n

What we learn from Starhawk’s rant is that we Pagans do not believe in a punishing Father God, but we do believe in a Mother Goddess who punishes those who voted for George Bush.<\/p>\n

Finally, Starhawk is one of those who worships at the shrine of “diversity,” but the Pagan movement in fact is much more politically and culturally diverse than she is. Perhaps some day she will acknowledge that fact. Do not regard her views as representative of contemporary Paganism as a whole.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: <\/strong>Cindy Sheehan is now calling for Pres. Bush to remove the troops<\/a> from “occupied New Orleans.” Contrary to what one earlier commenter suggested, I do not see Starhawk’s mention of her as merely coincidental.<\/p>\n

Tags: Starhawk<\/a> Hurricane Katrina<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Starhawk is our Jesse Jackson I don’t mean that as a compliment. Jackson has used up his credibility from his earlier civil-rights work by parachuting himself into whatever crisis or disaster comes along, trying to grab some television time for his own agenda. Now Pagan activist-writer Starhawk is up to the same game (again) with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-517","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":549,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=549","url_meta":{"origin":517,"position":0},"title":"Dubya versus the dark forcesMy\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Dubya versus the dark forcesMy visitor numbers shot way up three days ago: it turns out that my Hurricane Katrina-related discussion of Starhawk's public statement was linked to by a conservative Catholic webzine. The context: whether the president is battling spiritual darkness, or whether both popes John Paul II and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":228,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=228","url_meta":{"origin":517,"position":1},"title":"Is Starhawk (still) Jewish? Terry\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Is Starhawk (still) Jewish? Terry Mattingly of the religion-and-journalism blog GetReligion has posted recently on the difficulties of determining Jewish identity, both for Jews and for journalists. His post is based on the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001; the link is to a longer article that he wrote. What\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":699,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=699","url_meta":{"origin":517,"position":2},"title":""There is no baby with the bathwater"","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Anne Hill (of Serpentine Music) blogs on issues about the Reclaiming tradition. 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She also wrote Return of the Dark\/Light Mother and other works.In an email circulated this\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":413,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=413","url_meta":{"origin":517,"position":4},"title":"Benedict the inquisitorAs I paid\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 20, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Benedict the inquisitorAs I paid for my turkey wrap and orange juice at \"La Cantina,\" i.e., the student coffee shop, today, the cashier told me that a new pope had been elected. Back in my office, I went on the Web and learned that Cardinal Ratzinger was now Pope Benedict\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12125,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12125","url_meta":{"origin":517,"position":5},"title":"A New Graphic Timeline of American Wicca","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 24, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The Covenant of the Goddess (CoG) \"TImeline\" is now available for free download online. Anyone interested in the history of contemporary Paganism in America ought to give it a look. The CoG Timeline was compiled and designed by Andrea Joy Kendall with contributions from Anne Agard, Angie Buchanan, Jo Carson,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/grey-cat-300x131.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}