The XX Factor: What women really think.

Bias Cuts Both Ways

Obama hasn't banished anyone, Dahlia, and that's what's giving us such agita. (Well, not all of us; Sara has casually lumped pro-lifers like me in with the "anti-gay bigots'' that those who are on the side of tolerance and inclusion must guard against and try to get disinvited.) When Obama ran on bringing together all Americans, did you who are horrified that he's chosen Rick Warren to offer the inaugural benediction think he meant only the right-thinking, left-leaning people you would be perfectly comfortable around—and no figgy pudding for dissidents?

Obama nation is not going to work that way, and his inauguration won't be that kind of party. Warren is not my brand of (Godly) vodka, either, but so what? Noreen, Jim Wallis is my favorite evangelical, too. But when you wish that someone who cared more about poor people than Warren does had been picked instead, whom are you thinking of who "reverse tithes" as he does, keeping 10 percent of what he makes and giving 90 percent to those in need? Did you assume that because he's a conservative evangelical minister, he doesn't care about poor people?

Among those who see Warren as a hater is, of course, Christopher Hitchens, whose umpteenth diatribe hating on believers is thought perfectly fair and funny, just Hitchens being Hitchens hahaha. But directed at any other group of people, Slate wouldn't dream of running even one such screed. And if Obama makes all of us confront our biases, then that's just one more reason I thank God he got elected.