Poor Perry

Rick Perry’s not interesting, and I’d hoped and assumed he was pretty much done after the “oops” flub, where his own policies on shutting down government departments didn’t hold his attention enough for him to recall them during a debate. It wouldn’t be fair to annihilate his prospects based on something as human as momentary aphasia, but I wouldn’t have particularly mourned the injustice in this case.

But he seems to still be around, and there’s at least one weapon in his political arsenal which he hadn’t fully deployed until this week. Namely: being unbelievably whiny.

Here’s what he says in a recent, reassuringly low-budget campaign video:

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

As President, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion. And I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.

Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.

I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.

The internet’s been having some fun with this one. I particularly like Lord Perrymort.

The Christian persecution complex that comes through when people say things like this deserves all the mockery it gets, given that Christians have consistently comprised upwards of 70% of the US population, including every president the country’s had for centuries.

Obama’s “war on religion” is something they cry about when he mentions being “blessed” in his Thanksgiving speech, but doesn’t give the Christian god a personal shout-out. Never mind the amount of time Obama and his family tend to spend hanging around Christmas trees at this time of year, or with various other denominationally festive business. He’s still not doing enough to make the privileged majority feel special.

Perry can’t even cite a single non-imaginary example of this supposed war being waged. He complains about the things his kids aren’t allowed to openly do, but it’s complete nonsense.

And there’s some homophobic bigotry thrown into the mix too. Gays serving openly in the military is something to be, at best, grudgingly put up with, but it’s still evidence of what’s wrong with this country that we can’t have some more good old religious repression to keep them in their place.

He followed this performance up in a later interview, where he said nothing of any real originality or value, and Wolf Blitzer pointed out a number of pertinent objections without ever making it obvious that he thinks Perry’s an idiot.

Why are our children not allowed to pray in school? Why can they not celebrate Christmas?

They are, and they can, and it’s pathetic how far out of their way everyone else has to go in appeasing and making room for you before you’ll stop whining about unfair treatment.