Reflecting on the main stream media flap over Jimmy Carter’s non-attendance at Pope John Paul II’s funeral, I noted that ex-President Carter was gracious in telling us that he had declined an invitation from the White House.
This explanation is gracious since, if MSM rumor-mongers are correct, he was not exactly invited.
He could afford to be gracious in his comments on this topic, because the MSM attempt to fan flames of outrage was, well, unsubtle.
Why George Bush even should invite a man who spent over a year dissing Bush in order to set himself up for the Nobel Prize (the Nobel presenter even acknowledged this in his presentation speech); a man responsible for extending the nuclear proliferation window for North Korea’s Il family during Clinton’s administration; and a man who was arguably the worst President of the 20th century — is beyond me.
The fact that Carter has retained his supercilious sanctimony is only icing on the irony. All indications are that he thinks he would have made a better Pope.
But, let us ignore Bush’s solid reasons not to want to associate with Jimmy Carter, because in being civil, Carter was being wise.
In my musing on this, I glanced at a site that gives the timeline for the papacy since St. Peter. Jimmy Carter’s non-attendance at John Paul II’s funeral simply completes the trifecta.
During his Presidency, Carter had the opportunity to attend the 1978 funerals of both Paul VI and John Paul I.
President Carter attended neither.
Nonetheless, given Bill Clinton’s graceless and self-centered performance, Carter may have been the better choice.
At the time much of the world is burying a man (regardless of one’s support or not of his positions) who made a concerted effort to visit his would-be assassin and state his forgiveness, the politicos and mediadytes are proudly pontificating (so to speak) about the ostensible junior high school slight of President Carter. It is difficult to imagine how initially accepting an invitation and then changing one’s mind meets even a political standard for being “snubbed”. And a rejoinder that the invitation, from politicians, may not have been sincere or genuine begs the question of how one would ever be able to know!Whether John Paul set a legacious example for social positions will be decided by history; his example of how to live life consistently became apparent within moments of his death. Would that politicians could have touched his tunic. . . JPM