William Katz: Urgent Agenda
EVENING UPDATE, MARCH 24, 2008
HANSON ON OBAMA
It's now being called Pastorgate in some circles, and it just won't go away. According to news reports, the Republicans believe the relationship between Barack Obama and his inflammatory pastor will be a campaign issue until election day.
Victor Davis Hanson now weighs in, with a particularly tough column on Obama's speech, saying what needs to be said:
For some bizarre reason, Obama aimed his speech at winning praise from National Public Radio, the New York Times, and Harvard, and solidifying an already 90-percent solid African-American base — while apparently insulting the intelligence of everyone else.
Indeed, the more op-eds and pundits praised the courage of Barack Obama, the more the polls showed that there was a growing distrust that the eloquent and inspirational candidate has used his great gifts, in the end, to excuse the inexcusable.
And...
The intelligentsia is well aware of how postmodern cultural equivalence, black liberation theory, and moral relativism seeped into Obama’s speech, and thus was not offended by an “everybody does it” and “who’s to judge?/eye of the beholder” defense. But to most others the effect was Clintonian. Somehow Obama could not just say,
There is nothing to be offered for Rev. Wright except my deepest apologies for not speaking out against his venom far earlier. We in the African-American community know better than anyone the deleterious effects of racist speech, and so it is time for Rev. Wright and myself to part company, since we have profoundly different views of both present- and future-day America.
The more the pundits gushed about the speech, the more the average Americans thought, “Wait a minute — did he just say what I thought he said?” It’s not lost on Joe Q. Public that Obama justified Wright’s racism by offering us a “landmark” speech on race that:
(1) Compared Wright’s felony to the misdemeanors of his grandmother, Geraldine Ferraro, the Reagan Coalition, corporate culture, and the kitchen sink.
(2) Established the precedent that context excuses everything, in the sense that what good a Wright did (or an Imus did) in the past outweighs any racist outburst of the present.
(3) Claimed that the voice of the oppressed is not to be judged by the same rules of censure as the dominant majority that has no similar claim on victim status.
What is happening, ever so slowly, is that the public is beginning to realize that it knows even less after the speech than it did before about what exactly Obama knew (and when) about Wright’s racism and hatred.
Hanson reports...
Over the past four days, I asked seven or eight random (Asian, Mexican-American, and working-class white) Americans in southern California what they thought of Obama’s candidacy — and framed the question with, “Don’t you think that was a good speech?” The answers, without exception, were essentially: “Forget the speech. I would never vote for Obama after listening to Wright.” In some cases, the reaction was not mild disappointment, but unprintable outrage.
Further...
The blame, such as it is, for all this goes to the Obama campaign “pros,” who, in their apparent arrogance over Obamania (a phenomenon due to the candidate’s charisma, not their own savvy), simply went to sleep and let the senator and his wife resort to their natural self-indulgence — itself the offspring of the Obamas’ privilege and insularity. Any amateur handler could have scanned that speech and taken out just 8-10 phrases, called for a tougher stance on Wright, a genuine apology, and put the issue behind them.
Now it’s too late. Like Hillary’s tear, one only gets a single chance at mea culpa and staged vulnerability — and he blew it.
Read the whole thing. It'll make your day.
March 24, 2008. Permalink
AND HITCHENS TOO
Christopher Hitchens is also unkind toward Saint Barack of Chicago, making it clear that he had warned earlier that Obama would have a Wright problem:
It's been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it's at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. "If Barack gets past the primary," said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, "he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen." Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he'd one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago "base" in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.
Here's more of the same, red meat well served:
Looking for a moral equivalent to a professional demagogue who thinks that AIDS and drugs are the result of a conspiracy by the white man, Obama settled on an 85-year-old lady named Madelyn Dunham, who spent a good deal of her youth helping to raise him and who now lives alone and unwell in a condo in Honolulu. It would be interesting to know whether her charismatic grandson made her aware that he was about to touch her with his grace and make her famous in this way. By sheer good fortune, she, too, could be a part of it all and serve her turn in the great enhancement.
I sometimes wish Hitchens wouldn't hold back. He concludes:
To have accepted Obama's smooth apologetics is to have lowered one's own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith. Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come.
I'm afraid so, I'm afraid so. Let's hope we learn the truth before the election, not after.
March 24, 2008. Permalink
IN THE REAL WORLD
While we fight an election campaign, there are other fights going on, and new ones planned. You've all read that the death toll of Americans in Iraq has now reached 4,000. Brace yourselves for some genuinely vulgar journalism in the next few days as the figure is exploited to hurt the Bush administration. No one would want to downplay the losses we've suffered, or, more accurately, that the families of these soldiers have suffered. But I recall vividly how, during Vietnam, photos of dead Americans, row upon row of them, were used by some news organizations to whip up anti-war sentiment. We're seeing the same device today. Some young journalists have learned well.
All military deaths are tragic, whether in combat or through accidents or training. However, it must be said, not coldly but reasonably, that we have lost fewer soldiers in Iraq in five years than we lost on Iwo Jima in 1945 in less than two months. That doesn't bring any son or daughter back, but it puts things into some kind of historical perspective, something the news media should be doing.
We should also be aware that the battle isn't over. Far from it. Now there comes a new warning, and we should take it seriously:
An audio message attributed to al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman Zawahiri, has called for attacks on American and Israeli interests.
The voice, not confirmed as Zawahiri's, urged retaliation for Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip.
The speaker said Muslims should support Palestinians by focusing on armed struggle, not just demonstrating.
The message was posted on an Islamist website and follows two audio speeches purportedly from Osama Bin Laden.
The graphic accompanying the audio carried the logo of al-Qaeda's media arm, al-Sahab.
"Strike the interests of the Jews, the Americans and all those who participated in the attack on Muslims," the message said.
Other warnings, directed at Europeans, were issued last week. There's been little coverage.
March 24, 2008. Permalink
WILL WE HAVE MORE OF THIS?
We are starting to see the first protests against this year's China Olympics. The protests are aimed at China's crackdown in Tibet. The New York Times reports:
OLYMPIA, Greece — Demonstrators angered by China’s crackdown in Tibet upstaged an Olympic flame-lighting ceremony here on Monday, unfurling a banner and calling for a boycott of the Summer Games in Beijing before they were arrested by the police.
An actress playing a Greek high priestess held the torch with the flame for the Beijing 2008 Olympics during the lighting ceremony on Monday in Olympia, Greece.
The protest occurred as Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee, was addressing thousands of spectators, dignitaries and Olympic officials, minutes into a flame-lighting ceremony guarded by 1,000 police officers and commandos concealed in laurel groves.The brief disruption was broadcast live by Greek national television, but China state television cut away to a prerecorded scene, blocking millions of Chinese views from watching the tumultuous start to the Games in their nation.
Authorities released no immediate details of the incident but the Athens chapter of Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based media rights group, said three of its members had staged the protest.
The three remained detained at a local police station and faced possible criminal charges for evading security, breaking into the ceremony’s ancient grounds and flashing a black banner depicting the Games’ trademark Olympic rings as handcuffs.
“We cannot let the Chinese government seize the Olympic flame, a symbol of peace, without denouncing the dramatic situation of human rights in the country,” the group said.
Moments after the incident, a Tibetan woman doused herself in red paint and lay in the road in front of a torch runner while police officers arrested two other Tibetan protesters planning a peaceful demonstration about a mile from the ancient sanctuary at the birthplace of the Olympics Games.
There is great symbolism in the fact that the protest took place at the birthplace of the Olympic games. This can grow, and should. At the very least, world leaders should avoid the Olympics, while allowing the athletes to compete. Sadly, President Bush has rejected such a gesture, which is a disappointment, considering his stated commitment to democracy.
As discussed here several days ago, there are plans to protest the running of the Olympic torch through San Francisco in April. That's good. It might also do something to redeem the political image of San Francisco.
March 24, 2008. Permalink
MEDICAL MIRACLE
Finally, a medical story to cheer you:
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Four months after he was declared brain dead and doctors were about to remove his organs for transplant, Zach Dunlap says he feels "pretty good."
Dunlap was pronounced dead Nov. 19 at United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, Texas, after he was injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident. His family approved having his organs harvested.
As family members were paying their last respects, he moved his foot and hand. He reacted to a pocketknife scraped across his foot and to pressure applied under a fingernail. After 48 days in the hospital, he was allowed to return home, where he continues to work on his recovery.
On Monday, he and his family were in New York, appearing on NBC's "Today."
"I feel pretty good. but it's just hard ... just ain't got the patience," Dunlap told NBC.
Dunlap, 21, of Frederick, said he has no recollection of the crash.
Now, isn't that just inspiring?
It must have inspired others because I know a political party that will meet in Denver this summer that was declared brain dead in 1972, and also feels pretty good, and also doesn't have much patience, especially when it comes to including Florida and Michigan at its convention.
And it also has no recollection of its crash.
Be back tomorrow.
March 24, 2008. Permalink