Rev. Wright, Rev. Hagee, and the company we keep

Anyone who lives any kind of an interesting life is going to hang around with people who cause them trouble. This presidential race is no different. Just as the Clintons faced in the 90s, both senators Barack Obama and John McCain will have people from the fringes saying and doing things that makes it appear that the candidates are more radical than they are. My advice to myself on this is fairly simple: get over it.

The people of Utah keep re-electing Sen. Orrin Hatch, even though Hatch is good friends with Ted Kennedy. No one's going to confuse the two. The same with Alan Simpson and Robert Reich in their PBS discussion show, "The Long and Short of It." Harry Truman was elected to the Senate because he had the backing of Jim Pendergast's political and racketeering machine. Shunned for a time, Truman became one of the most independent and respected presidents.

Yeah, I know about dogs and fleas and all that. I also know that taking the measure of a person is a lot more complicated than just looking at the person's friends.

My mother was often curious about a person's ethnicity and occupation. She knew that these traits didn't fully define a person, but did tell something important. Someone might be a scientist who also practices meditation or a conservative Republican business owner who runs a food pantry. We only get to know the whole person by knowing the whole person and we only get to love a person by loving the whole person.