Jimmy, Son of Dob

I trust you all know that the main god-guy to keep our collective eye on is Mr. Jimmy Dobson, of "Focus on the Family" fame (or, as I prefer to call him, Jimmy, Son of Dob)? This is the guy who’s more or less single-handedly running the country down the road to christo-fascism. He used to teach in the Dept. of Medicine at the University of Southern Cal., so, unforturnately for us, he’s no dummie, dang it.

The Boston Globe did a recent article on Mr. Jimmy, Son of Dob (actually, he’s the son of a Nazarene minister who wore his knee caps out praying on the floor; Son of Dob has erected a statue to his daddy at Focus-on-the-Family headquarters; from what I hear it's so big nothing else will fit in the room):

Dobson has targeted several ''red-state" Democratic senators for defeat in 2006, including Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, and Bill Nelson of Florida. Dobson played a big role in the 2004 defeat of Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former minority leader, who helped block a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as only the union of a man and a woman. Last year, Dobson attended several rallies against gay marriage in South Dakota and addressed about 70,000 people, or 10 percent of the state's population.

Dobson made Daschle's defeat a keystone of his effort to elect senators who would approve conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Dobson fell short in his bid to topple Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican who was expected to head the Judiciary Committee and said in his victory speech that judges determined to overturn Roe v. Wade would be difficult to confirm.

Dobson's fury at that statement resulted in a flood of angry telephone calls from his supporters to the Senate. Specter backed off, announced he would support the president's choices, and was elected committee chairman.

In these and other ways, Dobson had served notice that he would not hesitate to wield his political clout like a hammer.

According to The Globe, other big, bad god-guys to watch out for are:

... Richard Land, the politically connected Washington lobbyist of the Southern Baptist Convention, [and] Rick Warren, an evangelical pastor who has built an enormous following both at his Southern California mega-church and through his best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life.

The word "goblin" keeps popping to mind (Goblin, Dobson, Goblin, Dobson...). Remember that scary, scary line from the old poem "Little Orphant Annie"? "...And the Goblins'll GITcha if ya don't ... watch ... out!!!"