The president shouldn't have to call up a guy in Florida and ask him politely not to burn the Qur'an. I mean, President Obama is busy doing things like making sure that that guy still has the right to burn stuff, and simultaneously trying to ensure that his right to burn stuff doesn't get a whole lot of other people killed.
What they should have done, because media attention probably felt a lot like the attention of God to Terry Jones, is sent down Robert Duvall. Jones reminded me, more than anything, of Duvall's character in The Apostle, flawed and yet compelling, and Duvall recently completed another film that deals with religious themes, Get Low. His ability to listen and natural gravitas would have pulled Jones back into line with mainstream America's (for once) well-reasoned stance against burning holy books.
And that would have been good for Jones, too, who didn't seem to consider in all this hulabaloo (and it wasn't pointed out to him by the media) that God doesn't really tell Christians to burn other holy texts, and that when God was offerred "strange fire" in the Old Testament, it didn't really go well for the fire-starters.
I'm pretty sure Duvall would have brought that up.
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