Religous triangulation

Many have commented on Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s "brilliance" as a pure politician. His morning interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough highlighted his lightening wit and ability to triangulate the secular and sacred as well.

The interview started with a shot from above the White House looking down. The bumper music was Jimmy Hendrix' "All along the watchtower."

Joe Scarborough, MSNBC Host:

“Governor, let me start by asking you, now that you are ahead, are you going to lose your sense of humor? Can you still talk to us about Hendrix and cougar hunting and Willie Geist?”

Mike Huckabee, (R) Presidential Candidate:

“Well, I certainly would hope so, Joe. In fact, when I heard the bumper music coming in, "All Along the Watchtower," it occurred to me there is a shot of White House, Hendrix music playing, that's the Huckabee White House. Hendrix music blasting throughout the White House as the president stands all along the watchtower.”

My mouth dropped. In one sentence Huckabee captured the secular and the sacred – all on the fly.

Populist indeed.

Saying that Jimmy Hendrix would be played in a Huckabee White House shattered any myth of a religious fundamentalist preaching against the secular evils of rock-and-roll.

“Hey Doris, 'ja hear that? This Huckabee is just like us. Rock on!”

Yet with the same sentence he captured religious imagery that connected not just with Christians but Jews, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses as well.

Brilliant.

(I wonder if our biblically ignorant press realized they had been triangulated and the victims of a secret religious code language known only to white, suburban evnagelicals?)

Here are some examples.

Morman
From “The Doctrine and Covenants of the Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Section 101”
Revelation given to Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Kirtland, Ohio, December 16, 1833.

54 "And behold, the watchman upon the tower would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off; and then ye could have made ready and kept the enemy from breaking down the hedge thereof, and saved my vineyard from the hands of the destroyer."

For the Jew and Christian:
Ezekiel 33:7-15

"O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me... if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but His blood will I require at thine hand…if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul..."

And who calls themselves the Watchtower Society? Jehovah’s Witnesses.