A poll from Talk Business and Politics shows that President Barack Obama's negative rating in Arkansas has reached the laughably lofty level of 70 percent.
We can only imagine how high that negative rating might be if Obama wasn't doing a good job.
You almost think Arkansas voters must suspect Obama of kidnapping star prepster K.J. Hill from North Little Rock and delivering him to Ohio State.
Actually, though, the poll was conducted Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, before national signing day for college football recruits.
And it was conducted four days before Obama stood at the National Prayer Breakfast and criticized Jesus, according to conservatives who either don't understand Christianity or what the president was saying.
Owing to the high fundamentalist quotient in Arkansas, I suspect Obama's disapproval rating is not 70 anymore, but, in light of those prayer breakfast remarks, higher.
In the context of explaining that we should not blame the Muslim religion generally nor all who practice it for the murderous evil of extremists who outrageously claim it, Obama said the following: "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that, during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."
The only thing wrong with that was that Obama should have said slavery and Jim Crow "were," not "was."
Many Republicans saw much more wrong with it. Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore said Obama had "offended every believing Christian in the United States."
Really? All believing Christians in the United States support slavery? Or deny the plain history that slave-owners claimed to be Christian?
Let us cite the historical record of remarks by Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, as the Civil War neared. He said:
"The Negro is not equal to the white man ... slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. ... With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the Negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition ... . It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them."
From that perversion of religion, people were held in bondage and 750,000 people died in war.
Obama simply spoke an overpoweringly obvious and historically established truth: Religion is much easier to assert than to practice. Utter evil can easily claim what genuine righteousness struggles to attain.
Some trivialize religion. Some abuse it. Some betray it. Some defile it. True religion is not lessened by these cynical and criminal misapplications.
But genuine aspirants of true religion must oppose those who defile it. And they must reject those who would define all of religion by those who assert it fraudulently.
Some conservatives counter that the president, even if generally right in what he said, was making the wrong point at the wrong time. They say the ongoing ISIS atrocity is no remote context for berating our own history of religious misapplication.
Instead, they say, it is a time for a strong moral statement of good against evil, and for a declaration of war against evil.
But this was a prayer breakfast. It was an opportunity to celebrate and advance true religion toward a greater humanity.
Obama was offering perspective to American Christians while sending a message to the world that the American president knew the difference between a Muslim and a murderer.
You can declare lofty ideals at a prayer breakfast while, at that very moment, your military forces are joining Jordanian ones in attacks against humanity's evil enemies.
That is to say ISIS was no less bombed last week because the American president extolled true and undefiled religion, acknowledged the sad history of falsely claimed religion and stood up for devout and peaceful Muslims.
Obama stands widely accused of not believing in "American exceptionalism," a conservative mantra about America being better than everyone else.
But he does seem to believe it.
He seems to think our real exceptionalism is a willing and public introspection. He seems to think our exceptionalism is not our might, but the conscience with which we regulate our might.
One of my favorite poets says his work is about exploring the gap between the American ideal and the American reality.
The gap gets smaller the more we assess it objectively.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 02/10/2015