I flip though the TV channels and go, “Wait a minute, that looks like Frank,” but in backtracking, he’s vanished or I was wrong.
So a few days later I Google, and yes, on YouTube I find him. The most entertaining and Frankesk is his appearance on CNN.
I’m very proud, of long time friend and Newburyport community member Frank Schaeffer, whose political views I’ve watched morph over the years from someone who was “right” of Attila the Hun, to now a “moderate” voice– howbeit a loud, unrelenting “moderate” voice. And this is a “moderate” voice, one who has as much distain for the far “Left” in our country as he does for the far “Right,” although I’m sure that the Left would love to claim him.
Frank wrote a number of novels about what the Religious Right is like from the inside. I’ve always been amazed that the novels weren’t picked up as an insight into how this vocal and powerful segment of our society thinks. But they were never viewed that way. I guess it was too subtle an approach.
In “Crazy for God,” Frank takes the reader by the hand, and step by step guides them through the good, the bad and the ugly of this part of American culture. And I always thought that this was the book that would make the inevitable huge breakthrough for Frank. And yes, it appears that that may finally be true.
And finally the media may have found someone, right here in our own Newburyport community, that can explain in no uncertain terms what the Religious Right is like and what it has done to our society.
And the CNN interview with D. L. Hughley is quintessential Frank Schaeffer. No apologies to Rush Limbaugh by this fellow.
I’m not a betting woman, but I wouldn’t be surprised after his visit to CNN, that within a year Frank Schaeffer could have his own cable TV show. He’s a natural. You can see the segment on CNN here.