{"id":9179,"date":"2011-01-31T02:04:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T07:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=9179"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:15:34","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:15:34","slug":"mrff-pr-machine-works-overtime-against-mcclary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/31\/mrff-pr-machine-works-overtime-against-mcclary\/","title":{"rendered":"MRFF PR Machine Works Overtime Against McClary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last Saturday the US Air Force Academy&#8217;s local <em>Colorado Springs Gazette<\/em> published responses to their previous editorial that described Michael Weinstein as <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/24\/mrff-accuses-usafa-speaker-of-illegal-conduct\/\">worse than a hypocrite<\/a> for trying to <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/24\/mrff-accuses-usafa-speaker-of-illegal-conduct\/\">silence a retired military officer<\/a> because of <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/26\/mrff-usafa-speaker-mcclary-not-a-true-christian\/\">his religious views<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The letters were interesting not for their content, but for who <em>wrote<\/em> them.\u00a0 The <em>Gazette<\/em> prefaced with:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Gazette editorial &#8220;Censors want to silence war hero,&#8221; Jan. 24, advocated resulted [<em>sic<\/em>] in an overwhelming number of repsonses. Below is a small, representative sample.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The authors defending Weinstein&#8217;s criticism of\u00a0USAFA&#8217;s invitation to Lt Clebe McClary, as\u00a0included in the <em>Gazette<\/em>&#8216;s sampling,\u00a0were\u00a0 <!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Paulette Hawkins<\/li>\n<li>Walter Plywaski<\/li>\n<li>Jason Torpy<\/li>\n<li>Lesley Shure<\/li>\n<li>Elizabeth Sholes<\/li>\n<li>Darryl Wimberley<\/li>\n<li>Marji Mendelsohn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazette.com\/opinion\/christian-112005-issue-community.html\">letters to the <em>Gazette<\/em><\/a>, Sholes is the only one of the above writers who says &#8220;our&#8221; with reference to the MRFF.\u00a0 Still,\u00a0each of the names above, save the first, has previously allied themselves with Weinstein in other public arenas.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Walter Plywaski<\/strong> has previously said support\u00a0to the\u00a0MRFF would <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/24\/military-christians-equated-with-nazis\/\">help prevent future\u00a0concentration camps<\/a>, which he survived in the 1940s.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jason Torpy<\/strong>, head of the MAAF, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eloquentatheist.com\/?p=103\">said in 2007<\/a> that he and\u00a0the MRFF &#8220;worked closely on a number of issues and will continue to do so.\u00a0 MAAF builds community, but MRFF has the legal and financial power&#8230;&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lesley Shure<\/strong>, a Texas doctor with no apparent connection to either Colorado Springs or Michael Weinstein, last defended Weinstein in the &#8220;Letters to the Editor&#8221; section in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazette.com\/articles\/strong-100831-economy-home.html\">awkward family feud<\/a> that played out in the Colorado Springs\u00a0newspaper last year.\u00a0 She also defended him as &#8220;not anti-Christian&#8221; on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moaablogs.org\/battleofthebilge\/2009\/05\/pentagon_bibles\/#comment-205\">another site<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sholes<\/strong>, as already noted, is part of an organization allied with Weinstein&#8217;s MRFF and has long defended his cause.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Darryl Wimberley<\/strong> has <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/17\/usafa-faculty-underwriting-attacks-on-usafa\/\">previously publicized<\/a> support for Weinstein on other sites.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Marji Mendelsohn<\/strong> previously wrote a\u00a0fluff\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.opednews.com\/articles\/Long-Before-Rummy-s-Bible-by-OhioBlues-090520-175.html\">OpEd News article<\/a> on the internet, but more interestingly, she has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org\/newsletters\/2009-06\/inbox.html\">personally responded to &#8220;hate mail&#8221;<\/a> sent to the MRFF, which seems to indicate she is active <em>within<\/em> the organization, not simply an outside supporter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>By contrast, the two letters defending USAFA in the <em>Gazette<\/em> were written by people not otherwise publicly associated with Weinstein or his\u00a0prior controversies.\u00a0 Incidentally,\u00a0each of Weinstein&#8217;s historied supporters\u00a0was also outside of the local <em>Gazette<\/em> area, while\u00a0both USAFA defenders were local citizens of Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, Weinstein&#8217;s MRFF continues its portrayal as a <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/21\/mrff-seeks-cause-to-litigate-agitate-and-ice-cream\/\">self-licking ice cream cone<\/a>.\u00a0 Through letter writing campaigns and an apparent\u00a0lack of full disclosure by its defenders, it apparently tries to create the <em>appearance<\/em> of a general ground swell of support &#8212; but the truth is that it is a small, poorly-credentialed, self-sustaining clique\u00a0with a shared agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Combat deployments, resource restrictions, and a high operations tempo often conspire to challenge a military member&#8217;s ability to exercise his religious freedom.\u00a0 But even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, the US military strives to protect that freedom &#8212; even if it means, for example,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/31\/mrff-opposes-troops-religious-freedom-at-easter\/\">shipping a Jewish Sukkah<\/a> from the States into the heart of a combat zone in the Arab world.<\/p>\n<p>To date, USAFA has not bowed to Weinstein&#8217;s campaign of agitation; the military should be commended for\u00a0standing behind its\u00a0support of\u00a0the Constitutional freedoms of its military members.<\/p>\n<p>In his fade into irrelevancy, Weinstein has simply joined the list of difficulties an Airman, Marine, Soldier or Sailor has to <em>overcome<\/em> to exercise his religious freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Saturday the US Air Force Academy&#8217;s local Colorado Springs Gazette published responses to their previous editorial that described Michael Weinstein as worse than a hypocrite for trying to silence a retired military officer because of his religious views. The letters were interesting not for their content, but for who wrote them.\u00a0 The Gazette prefaced with: The Gazette editorial &#8220;Censors [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5284,1379,1171,1393,1395,253,1392,107,1394,85,2,5218,7,1390,65,1391],"class_list":["post-9179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-chaplain","tag-clebe-mcclary","tag-darryl-wimberley","tag-elizabeth-sholes","tag-gazette","tag-jason-torpy","tag-lesley-shure","tag-maaf","tag-marji-mendelsohn","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-paulette-hawkins","tag-usafa","tag-walter-plywaski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}