Dumb Dirty Ape

Commenting on a speech Sen. Barack Obama made two years ago, Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson accused the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential candidate of misinterpreting Holy Scripture and said he had "gone viral."

Speaking on his Tuesday broadcast, Dobson, along with aide Tom Minnery, played recordings of the speech and said he was astonished to learn that Obama had attacked him in a speech to a group called Covenant for a New America on June 28, 2006.

"Excuse me!" said an astonished Minery. "Seventy-six percent of the people identify themselves as Christians. There are only six-tenths of 1 percent who are Muslims, seven-tenths of 1 percent who are Buddhists, four-tenths of 1 percent who are Hindus. So he's diminishing the idea that people of Christian faith have anything to say, and then he begins to diminish [Dr. Dobson]."

"I think he is dragging Biblical understanding through the gutter," Minnery said. "I don't know if he's doing it willfully or accidentally."

Barack Obama said Tuesday that evangelical leader James Dobson was "making stuff up" when he accused the presumed Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible.

Obama added, "I think you'll see that he was just making stuff up, maybe for his own purposes."

Speaking to reporters on his campaign plane before landing in Los Angeles, Obama said the speech made the argument that people of faith, like himself, "try to translate some of our concerns in a universal language so that we can have an open and vigorous debate rather than having religion divide us."

"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said in the speech.