Rehabilitation

In a jury trial, when a witness is torn down by the attorney for the other side, often the attorney who put the witness on the stand will rise to ask a couple of other questions of the witness that help the witness recover. It’s called ‘rehabilitating the witness.’

Rick Warren was ‘rehabilitated’ tonight on Larry King Live. Of course, Larry works for CNN, the company that broadcast the ‘forum.’ Larry brought up the controversy of day, the Warren comment that McCain had been placed in a ‘cone of silence’ when it is now known that McCain had not be ‘placed’ anywhere at that point in time because he wasn’t yet at the church. Larry began his rehabilitation by saying something to the effect, “I know that Rick Warren would never intentionally say something less than the truth....”

Now, I understand exactly what happened the other night. Rick Warren was ‘at home’ in his own pulpit and he had a little quip line that he knew would draw a laugh. He formulated it at a time when he assumed that McCain would in fact be at the church prior to debate beginning. McCain wasn’t there but there was a plan for keeping him sequestered when he did arrive. So, Warren went with his quip.

Warren is a well-traveled, well-connected guy obviously. But he had a lapse in not thinking that every word, every detail would be scrutinized. It was also too bad, in retrospect, that he used a novel phrase, “cone of silence.” That phrase is so novel that it will be continually bandied by the critics.

Meanwhile, Warren did quite well on Larry King. He was complemented many times by King but he also did well in answering questions from King and a couple of emailed questions. But he acknowledged that he was being attacked and had been answering the ‘cone of silence’ question ‘all day.’ He wen ton to say, “I get attacked from both sides -- if I was just religious right I’d get it only from the left. If was religious left, I’d get it only from the right. But I am somewhere in the middle and I get it from both sides.”