27 October 2004
“If Bush is incurious, it’s not God’s fault.” Beliefnet editor Steve Waldman, writing in Slate, considers the new popularity of the phrase “reality-based,” in liberal critiques of President Bush, and agrees with conservatives that the mockery has an antireligion basis that promotes a caricatured image of believers as irrational yokels. However, Waldman writes, Bush’s proud anti-intellectualism has also helped reinforce the stereotype by “actively cultivat[ing] the image of the simple man of God.” How, Waldman wonders, “does that reflect on the rest of America’s born-again Christians?”