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Thursday, September 20, 2012
The Obama campaign just keeps getting better and better...
So the latest way that Obamanauts are showing their support for the President is by writing their prayer requests love notes to the Anointed One, and posting pictures on the internet. Like this one, from Democratic National Committee Chairperson Debbie Wasserman-Schulz.
Or this extraordinarily creepy contribution from Campaign Manager Jim Messina.
(I'm thinking a pre-emptive restraining order, keeping him 500 yards away from small children, is a good idea...)
But it seems to me that just two years ago, when Sarah Palin was spotted doing it, being photographed with writing on your hands was a rich source of mockery. My, how times change...
Reliably doctrinaire liberal Eugene Robinson, a man who once (allegedly) had an original thought, tells Sarah Palin, in essence, "I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it." He doesn't even have the Clintonian courtesy to tell her to "put some ice on that..."
In the spirit of civil discourse, I'd like to humbly suggest that Sarah Palin please consider being quiet for a while. Perhaps a great while.
...Surely a former governor of Alaska - who served the better part of an entire term - would never seek to give the impression that she views any conceivable event, no matter how distant or tragic, as being All About Sarah.
Did Sarah Palin thrust herself into this "distant or tragic" event? Uh, no. Not at all. So who made it all about Sarah? How about the Washington Post, Eugene? Your newspaper, the bird-cage liner in which this astoundingly dishonest piece is printed, linked Sarah Palin to the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, and not just once, but repeatedly. The media made up a storyline - "Sarah Palin's facebook map led to the shooting" - and then, despite the lack of supporting evidence, and the massive accumulation of contrary evidence, flogged that story mercilessly, at every turn. Your employer, the Washington Post, was a big part of that flawed storyline.
There are 10 pieces linking her to a mass murder in your newspaper over just four days. Your paper alone, Euguene. And I've linked 10 only because I was tired of gathering links, and 10 is clearly sufficient evidence. I would be willing to bet that there are more. And that's the Washington Post, which is, on occasion, a smidge (just a smidge) less outrageously liberal than much of the rest of the mainstream media. That's not including the NY Times and the LA Times and the Boston Globe and CNN and CBS and MSNBC, Eugene - it's just the Washington Post, your employer, the organization for which you ply your trade, putting that spectacular and original intellect on display. On Wednesday, the morning that Sarah Palin's video was posted, Eugene, you dishonest hack, your colleague Jonathan Capehart described her, accurately (unfortunately) as "the woman who has been at the center of a stormy national debate over our super-heated political discourse." Why is that accurate? Because your paper, and the rest of the media, populated by you and your ilk, made her the center of attention. You couldn't publish a single freakin' Tucson story without linking in Sarah Palin, accusing her by implication of complicity in a mass murder, an event with which she had no link whatsoever outside the fevered imaginings of what passes for minds on the left. And now you have the unmitigated gall to offer the world your opinion that Sarah Palin has made it "All About Sarah"? You have the temerity to accuse her of egocentrism for simply responding to the character assassination that you and your colleagues have been committing? You have the chutzpah to tell her to be quiet? "Sit down and shut up - you'll take it and you'll like it."
Mr. Robinson - You, sir, are an ass. An unmitigated, irredeemable ass. You're entitled to your own opinion, sir. You are entitled to dislike Sarah Palin, to think her speech was ineffective, inappropriate, poorly presented, or any other damn thing. But you're not entitled to your own facts, and the facts clearly show that, contrary to her making it "all about Sarah," it was you and your employer and your colleagues that dragged her in to the story by associating her with a mass murder in every story that was written about it. This is as disgusting a dishonest column as I've ever seen, and if you were capable of shame, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Lefty blogosphere, raising the tone of the debate yet again...
So here's the latest rage in the left-wing media - Sarah Palin's Arizona speech with all of the speech cut out, leaving only her breathing. Because, you know, none of them, or their idol Barack, would sound foolish with all of their words edited out.
It's a big hit with the brain surgeons providing content at Salon.com ("weird, creepy"), the rocket scientists writing for the HuffingtonPost and the nuclear physicists peddling their intellectual wares at TheDailyBeast ("freaky"). And many, many more. Because nothing says "I'm vastly superior to you" better than a childishly edited, out-of-context video.
Heartening to see them respond to the President's speech by raising the tone of the political discourse. Again...
A nice piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning about C.S. Lewis (and his place on Sarah Palin's reading list...
Lewis would likely have appreciated making Mrs. Palin's reading list. But he probably would have appreciated the questions about it even more. For Lewis, one of the best ways to know a person was to know what they read. He was convinced that books defined us and shaped our character. He realized that books did more than prepare people for interesting conversations with journalists—they prepare us to respond to the crises we encounter in our own lives.
So sometimes, someone links a Maureen Dowd column and I read it. Someone did that today on facebook, referring to this in glowing terms. So I clicked. And it demands a response. Which I generally refrain from doing on facebook, but did today anyway. Please, do NOT try this at home. Reading a Dowd column almost inevitably kills brain cells, and frankly, it hurts, so don't do it. I did it so that you don't have to.
...unlike Paris Hilton and her ilk, the Dumb Blonde of ’50s cinema [Marilyn Monroe] had a firm grasp on one thing: It was cool to be smart. She aspired to read good books and be friends with intellectuals, even going so far as to marry one. But now another famous beauty with glowing skin and a powerful current, Sarah Palin, has made ignorance fashionable.
What a load of hogwash. Take a whole lot of individual people with whom you disagree, find one misspoken phrase from a couple, misrepresent things that a couple of others have said or done (does Marueen even understand that the phrase "separation of church and state" is not in the first amendment? Christine O'Donnell does.), take a sardonic spoonerism that you've just missed, and accuse them of making ignorance chic.
What if someone had said that he'd campaigned 57 states and only had one more to go? Said "How's it going, Sunshine?" while campaigning in Sunrise, FL? Said that he sees many of America's "fallen heroes" in the audience? Claimed that 12 dead were 10,000? Is that person making ignorance chic? No, you ignore it, because Barack Obama's a Democrat.
You may not agree with Sarah Palin, but that doesn't make her ignorant, and it doesn't make those who agree with her ignorant. It is one of the least attractive memes of those on the left that those on the right are stupid. It's not true, it's unpleasant and it's unattractive. (Like pretty much everything Maureen Dowd writes.) It goes a long way to provoking the kind of bitter partisanship that you claim to dislike, because it creates an attitude and expectation that you never have to listen to anything that anyone on the right has to say. You just brush it off, because they're lesser beings, stupid, racist, homophobic, "bitter, cling(y), scared" and so you don't have to deal with anything they say. (Yes, I've noted this before.) You can ignore their arguments, because what could they be worth, anyway? You don't need to debate or discuss - you can just belittle. (Like pretty much everything Maureen Dowd writes.)
It's just like all of the leftists and Democrats and "journalists" (I know, that's redundant) laughing at Sarah Palin on Tuesday for her comment at a Tea Party rally on Monday that it was too early to "party like it's 1773." "She's so smart" said one. "Ummm..." said another. "WTF happened in 1773?" asked a third?
Umm...The Boston Tea Party.
(Skip the first link - it goes to the Dowd column at the Times and, as I said, it's not worth the time. The other two links are fine, and you should click them...)
That is why leftists see Palin as a genuine and significant threat of unusual magnitude. In the emotional thinking of leftists, she is a personal threat to everything each individual leftist has attained in life. They feel a sincere, visceral sense of danger about her because she attacks the very core of their egos. They feel the same hatred towards Palin that the European upper classes felt towards the upstart middle-class. They feel the same hatred that poor whites felt towards non-whites. They feel that way for the same reasons. If she succeeds, worse, if she is right, then they become nobodies.
As long as she is viewed as a significant political figure, the left’s obsession with Palin will never wane because it does not spring from rational roots. She threatens something too deep and too profound in a political subculture built around the belief that a small percentage of human beings have a vastly superior understanding of the world compared to all the rest.
Read the whole thing. It explains a lot.
And there were a lot of the same factors in play in the left's dislike for Ronald Reagan, too...
Sometimes, things are really obvious, but someone needs to say them anyway. Like this comment from Ace of Spades, on Chris Matthews' observation at a Palin book signing that "they look like a white crowd to me...I think there is a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs. other people.":
Liberals are fond of claiming their thinking is more nuanced, more multidimensional, more wide-ranging, than conservatives' thinking.
So why is it at every opportunity they indulge in retarded reductivism and reduce everything to the single variable of racism?
People don't want to give up their health care? Must be racism.
People don't want to pay more in taxes? Must be racism.
People don't want to import millions of new needy poor which they are then obligated to support through social welfare? Must be racism.
Racism, racism, racism. There seem to be no other variables in this equation or inputs in this program.
(As always, be aware that the language at Ace's site tends to be a bit rough.)
A group of Alaska liberals, with the apparent cooperation of members of the Alaska Democratic Party have been filing ethics charge after ethics charge against Sarah Palin. The aim? Not to get her impeached and booted from office, because every single one of the charges are frivolous, baseless and even fairly deranged - one was even filed in the name of a soap opera character - but something far more personal.
These people want to bankrupt the Palins and leave them destitute. They want to empty their bank accounts so that they cannot afford the basics and necessities of life after Governor Palin leaves office.
Read the whole thing, and you'll discover that you've still got room for outrage...
The media isn't going to correct any of Biden's misstatements, they aren't going to challenge any of the misinformation about deregulation, the source of the problems, the government pressure on "predatory lenders" to make those bad loans - none of it. If the Republicans (that's you, Governor Palin) aren't going to either, then there's no point in continuing.
I'm getting close to "the worse, the better..."
UPDATE: (post-debate) I stand by what I wrote. The theme for much of the evening seemed to be "Vote McCain-Palin - we'll villify the rich, too, just not as enthusiastically!" But the insta-reaction that I'm seeing seems to indicate that I'm in the minority on this reaction...
Former back-bencher in the Illinois legislature Barack Obama, campaigning yesterday in Lebanon, VA:
Let's just list this for a second. John McCain says he's about change, too, and so I guess his whole angle is, watch out, George Bush. Except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove style politics, we're really going to shake things up in Washington. That's not change - that's just calling the same thing something different. But you know, you can put lipstick on a pig - it's still a pig.
No, he didn't. He didn't even imply it. He used a cliche which allowed others to infer it.
Well, he meant for people to infer it that way.
Well, maybe he did. But maybe he didn't - there are two possible scenarios here. (Unfortunately for the Anointed one, neither reflects well on him.)
Scenario 1: He intentionally invoked Palin's "lipstick" comment from her acceptance speech. He did it to entertain and amuse his base by allowing them to hear him call Palin a pig while maintaining a position of plausible deniability. (As near as I can tell, most people do not consider the deniability to be plausible.) In which case he comes across as an immature boor, someone who cannot resist the urge to stoop to name-calling.
Scenario 2: He used a hoary cliche that he's used before and made no mental connection between it and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. He was just speaking without a teleprompter and it slipped out. In which case, he's an idiot, once again saying something stupid the moment he goes off-script. Even if it's a phrase that he likes and uses, he should certainly be sensitized to the connection to the word "lipstick" at this point.
Most people, as I say, seem to be assuming scenario 1. Frankly, I've seen nothing whatsoever that leads me to believe that this guy is capable of going off-script and maintaining coherence, so I don't have a problem buying scenario 2.
So I'm willing to buy either of them, and await the Obama campaign's official position - is he an ill-mannered boor or a guy who can't walk and chew gum at the same time?
You're saying that he didn't mean to call her a pig?
Nope. I'm saying that I don't care what he "meant" to say. What he actually said, the actual words that he used and the actual context in which he used them, fall well within the bounds of acceptable political discourse. We know that the words are words he has used before in a context that could not possibly have implied that Sarah Palin, or any other woman, is a pig.
Well, it was certainly a sexist comment, and he should be roundly criticized on those grounds.
No. It is not a sexist comment. It's rude if intentional and stupid if not, but it's not sexist. He used a time-worn cliche. If McCain had chosen Mitt Romney as his VP and Obama has used that same cliche, no one would have noticed. The fact that he chose Palin does not make it a sexist comment, any more than the use of "niggardly" or "eeny meeny miny mo" or "pot calling the kettle black" is racist. For any of us to whine about it is buying into the left's political correctness and I'm not willing to do that. There's nothing wrong with his statement (other than, you know, being factually incorrect.) As campaigning goes, it's perfectly legitimate, and any complaints come across as whining, pure and simple. I refuse to cede to the grievance mongers and identify politics pimps that level of control of the language.
Again, I'm not going to debate whether he was thinking about her when he said it. He may well have been (though I think he's got a strong tendency to speak in familiar cliches when forced to speak extemporaneously). I'm arguing that it doesn't matter. There is nothing inherently offensive about the phrase, the context was appropriate, and since I abhor the left's insistence on flogging thought-crime, I don't want to see it from the right, either.
If John McCain had said it after Hillary Clinton had made a lipstick comment, the left and the media would go nuts.
Yes. So what? I hold the Republicans to a higher standard.
Even so, this is a gaffe, right? Shouldn't they hammer away at it?
If the Republicans make a big deal about this, they'll be mocked by many, including me. That's an old, old expression, and there's nothing wrong with Obama using it. He didn't call her a pig, and I'm going to be ticked off if there's a victimhood/sexism argument made. There is nothing at all wrong with him using that phrase. She's a big girl, and she can take care of herself. The fact that she used the lipstick joke doesn't mean that a common and effective cliche can no longer be legitimately used. Whining is unattractive, and I'm going to be very unhappy if I see any of it from the ticket. They've certainly dished it out - joyfully and energetically - and they can suck it up and take it.
And let's consider one more take on it. Let's say that a) Obama called Palin a pig and b) everyone knows it. How does it benefit the Republicans to whine about it? Take the high road. If everyone perceives him as calling her a pig, it'll hurt him much, much more than her. There's absolutely no political benefit for him (other than briefly amusing the furthest reaches of his base, the people who are going to show up and vote no matter what he says). Really, the Republicans should be quiet and pray that he calls her a pig again tomorrow and the next day.
So what do you think of this ad?
I don't like it. It offends me. There's a certain amount of pleasure at seeing the left "hoist with [its] own petard" but it offends me to have the Republicans invoking Katie Couric to call "sexism" here. And I'm concerned that they're overplaying their hand. Leave the whining and name-calling to the Democrats. Ignoring the comment, or acknowledging it humorously, taking the high road, does not have any potential downside. This approach does.
Someone's cocooned. It might be me, but I don't think so...
Today's Pauline Kael Award* for Cocooned Criticism goes to this analysis from Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com:
In exceedingly plain English, I think there's a pretty big who the **** does she think she is? factor. And not just among us Daily Kos reading, merlot-drinking liberals. I think Palin's speech will be instinctively unappealing to other whole demographics of voters, including particularly working-class men (among whom there may be a misogyny factor) and professional post-menopausal women. As another of my commentors put it:
Not only does Palin's inexperience trump Obama's... her "otherness" also trumps his. Where she comes from, the way she talks, her bio, lifestyle, and all the moose and caribou stuff... it makes her seem more exotic than Obama, who after all lives in the middle of America and has a life that people can readily understand.
Palin may be just as American as anybody, but she still seems to come from Somewhere Else.
This would be fine... even interesting and appealing... if she weren't attacking. But we have a deep, instinctive aversion to people who are part of us (even if we don't really like them much) being attacked by people we perceive as outsiders.
I don't know whether Nate and his commenter are correct or I am, but one of us is significantly out of touch with the majority of Americans.
I'd put money on it that a greater number of Americans will relate to Sarah Palin's background and experience than Barack Obama's. In this contest, it is Palin that is "part of us" and Obama that's the outsider. I think the perception he describes is just among that group of "Daily Kos reading, merlot-drinking liberals." The idea that "working-class men" might find Barack Obama more relatable than Sarah Palin strikes me as wishful thinking masquerading as analysis. The idea that Palin's "otherness" - having raised a family, hunted, fished, worked for a living, gone to a mainstream church, watched a son enter the militery - is somehow greater than Obama's "otherness" - raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, worked as a "community organizer," spent 20 years in a church listening to Black Liberation Theology - strikes me as fantasy bordering on delusion.
There's another bit that's extremely unpersuasive.
And not only is Barack Obama exceptionally well known, but perceptions of him are exceptionally well entrenched. In today's Rasmussen numbers, 63 percent of voters had either a very favorable or a very unfavorable perception of Obama. This is an extremely high figure. I looked up the Rasmussen numbers for other prominent politicians, and this number was the highest I could find ... actually tied with Bill Clinton for the highest:
Percentage viewing as Very Favorable OR Very Unfavorable
Obama 63
...
This is why folks like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton (and Hillary Clinton, for that matter) are Teflon politicians. It's not that they have some magical quality that keeps them out of trouble ... it's just that a very high percentage of voters have already made up their minds one way or the other about them, and can't possibly be persuaded otherwise.
Well, that last part is true, I suppose. But there are two problems with the whole bit.
100-63 = 37. Over one third of the electorate have not "made up their minds." In an election that's likely to be decided by less then 5% of the total vote, it's certainly worth spending some time to bang on the opposition. Maybe you can move 1-2% from very favorable to favorable, or from favorable to unfavorable, or from unfavorable to very unfavorable. The Republicans aren't going to get many chances to bang on Obama without the media running interference for him, and it would have been foolish for them to pass it up.
Some of those people who "can't possibly be persuaded otherwise" can, in fact, be persuaded otherwise. Over the past couple of weeks, the very favorable rating for Obama went from 32% to 37%. The very unfavorable rating went from 29% to 26%. In other words, 10% of those who were very unfavorable to former back-bencher in the Illinois legislature Obama and "can't possibly be persuaded otherwise" were, in fact, persuaded otherwise.
Anyway, as I say, one of us is wrong. Time will tell which...
One more comment. This whole bit strikes me as an exceptionally poor tactical position for the Democrats to be in. Why in God's name are they spending time debating whether or not their Presidential candidate is more qualified or experienced or "one of us" than the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate? Is there any way that that's an argument or discussion that helps them? Where does that lead?
The Democrats say that Palin is not qualified or experienced enough to be President.
There is a debate over whether she is more or less qualified and experienced than Obama.
How can Obama be qualified if we aren't even sure he's more qualified than she is, and they tell us she isn't qualified?
No one's debating John McCain's qualifications.
Really, is this at all productive for the Obama campaign?
* - After the 1972 election, Kael is alleged to have said, "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him."
She hit everything that she needed to hit. She made it clear that she has actually accomplished things in government, and in positions where she had executive authority. She spoke knowledgeably about energy, clearly a topic on which she has significant expertise, and the international and national security implications.
"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems - as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to lay more pipelines...build more nuclear plants...create jobs with clean coal...and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers."
That was a very strong section, where she mentioned Russia and the Middle East. It may have been written for her, maybe she didn't know anything about it, but that's sure not the way that it came across.
And she whacked Barack Obama from pillar to post, but did it with humor and a smile on her face. And a wonderful delivery.
"When I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.
I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.
We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."
...
"I've noticed a pattern with our opponent.
Maybe you have, too.
We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers.
And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.
But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate.
This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it.
Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.
Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.
Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? Government is too big ... he wants to grow it.
Congress spends too much ... he promises more.
Taxes are too high ... he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific."
Really, just a fabulous performance. The media firestorm the past few days has even had a few people betting on when Palin would get dumped from the ticket. I suspect that there would be a lot stronger sentiment among Republicans for dumping McCain...
What interests the media? Let's look at a couple of stories.
Over the course of the last 30 days, the McCain campaign has raised questions - legitimate questions - about former community organizer* Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant terrorist William "Bill" Ayers. The McCain campaign even released an ad, to which the Obama campaign responded with an ad of their own, specifically about the Ayers-Obama relationship. The release of papers by the University of Chigago from the Annenberg Challenge revealed that Obama's earlier assertion that "this is a guy who lives in my neighborhood. ... He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis" was, at best, incomplete and inaccurate.
On Monday, it was revealed that Republican VP Candidate Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol, 17, is pregnant and preparing to marry the father.
Total stories mentioning Bristol Palin in the last 30 days: 2148 Total stories mentioning William Ayers in the last 30 days: 2017
But there's no media bias...
* - The Obama campaign has chosen to characterize Goveror Palin as the former Mayor of Wasilla. Following their lead, I plan to ignore the fact that Mr. Obama is a sitting United States Senator and refer to him as a former community organizer. At other times, I may call him a "former back-bencher in the Illinois legislature," which sounds even less impressive. Maybe I'll just let them choose.
Does Obama really want to be criticizing Palin's inexperience?
Apparently, the Obama campaign is concerned that "John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency." That would be a much better argument if the Democrats were not attempting to put a former community activist with zero foreign policy experience into the presidency....
With word that John McCain has selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-Presidential running mate, we now have the first candidate on a major party ticket for the Presidency or Vice Presidency who was born after I was.
Native-Mainer, trapped in Massachusetts, happily-married (18 years and counting) father of four. I've got opinions. Why do you care? You probably don't. But I'm going to put some of 'em out here anyway. I've been working as a computer engineer in Massachusetts and southern NH for the last 20 years, but I'm rarely if ever going to post on any topics related to that. A lot of what I write about will be the Boston Red Sox, as well as the Patriots and Celtics. I started studying Tang Soo Do after watching my kids all do it, and I may have the occasional comment on that. And I will be commenting on political issues that interest me. Which tend to be more national in scope than local.
And whatever else strikes me.
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