Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on remarks made by Lawrence O’Donnell on his MSNBC show last night:
When a person makes a mean-spirited bigoted comment, he is not exculpated if he is a member of the group he disparages. What matters is not the biography of the bigot: what matters is the bigoted comment.
Lawrence O’Donnell proved once again that he, as an Irish Catholic, is not immune from charges of anti-Catholicism. Here is what this embittered man said on October 19:
“In John Kelly’s neighborhood, in the Catholic parish that he grew up in, in the Catholic parish that I grew up in, women were getting beaten by their husbands, their drunken husbands as a normal weekly occurrence.”
Perhaps O’Donnell’s drunken father beat his mother. I don’t know. If so, it would explain why he projected his own abusive experience onto others. But even if that were true, it is no excuse. If his father was not a violent drunk, and did not savage his mother, then O’Donnell’s remark is even more indefensible.
O’Donnell owes all Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, an apology.
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