| | Columnist: 'Remarkable' inattention to Palin links to witch-hunting pastor
 Columnist Clarence Page told Keith Olbermann on Wednesday's Countdown that it is "remarkable" that Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's conenction with a witch-hunting Kenyan pastor hasn't gotten more attention, especially compared with the flap last spring over Barack Obama's own pastor problem.
"Only after Senator Obama ran for national office," noted Page, "do we see, what, thirty seconds of video from Reverend Wright all over the news, giving us the impression of a firebrand and the image of Obama as some kind of a black nationalist or something. We don't see any of that with Sarah Palin. It's really quite remarkable to me."
"This is stuff that makes you say, 'That Jeremiah Wright, he seems pretty mainstream by comparison,'" agreed Olbermann.
Palin has linked Kenyan pastor Thomas Muthee's prayer over her at the Assembly of God Church in Wasilla in 2005, calling for the success of her campaign, with her victory the following year in the Alaska gubernatorial race.
In a speech in Wasilla this past June, Palin recalled, "And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are. And he’s praying not 'oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,' no, he just prayed for it. He said 'Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly what happened.'"
Video of that prayer by Murthee has now surfaced on YouTube, and Olberman ran it on Wednesday's Countdown. The video shows Murthee intoning, "We are asking you as the body of Christ in this valley, make a way of Sarah, even in the political arena, make a way my God, bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of Jesus ... Every form of witchcraft is what we rebuke in the name of Jesus."
"It certainly gives us a different view of Sarah Palin than the hockey mom that we've known in the past," Page suggestted to Olbermann. "This may be a campaign advantage," he added ironically. "She could bring the witch-hunter to Washington with her and maybe chase out some demons from Capitol Hill."
"I think the nation's in strange denial in regard to Governor Palin," Page commented after he and Olbermann had commented on the "remarkable" lack of attention being paid to Murthee. "This is the kind of thing that I think worries some folks in Republican circles, wondering what more are we going to see."
Murthee began his ministry in 1989, when he accused a local woman who ran a "divination center" of being a witch, blamed her for causing a series of fatal car accidents, and eventually caused her to be run out of town. According to the Times of London, "After Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon."
Page said that he has traveled in Kenya and that "witch-hunting ... this kind of thing has a terrible reputation. A lot of innocent women have been killed and mutilated. ... The more you look into this, the more unseemly it looks."
This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast September 24, 2008.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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