One of the things I like most about the interwebs is the comments, which are often more telling than bloggers’ posts and most of the output from the MSM. Like this comment, from Ezra Klein’s blog, which describes Obama’s potential appeal on the (way) Left Coast, Northern edition:
I live in Berkeley California, and many of my leftist friends repudiate the Democratic Party for the usual reasons: it serves wealth and power, it’s pro-military, controlled by lobbyists, etc. …
What I’m asking myself this morning is this: will my radical friends, some of whom have been sitting on their duffs for a decade or two or three, find inspiration in this renewal of the Democratic Party? Will they roll up their sleeves now and get to work?
A chance to really shift our country forward in a progressive direction may only come along a few times in a lifetime. This may be one of those times. I hope we’ll suspend our disbelief, during this election season at least, and join this new, grassroots social movement.
Note that this guy rejects the Democratic Party as a servant of American power but loves Barack Obama. What this says to me is that some folks are proudly reading Obama as laudably anti-military, anti-capitalist, and anti-democratic. (This falls in perfectly with Obama-as-Blank-Slate: people project onto him whatever they damn well please.)
I think these people are in for a surprise. But if Obama is the Democratic nominee, I think he may be in for an even ruder surprise. By repeatedly painting McCain as the past, Obama is going to look like even more of a punk than he does now, when he’s merely trying to overthrow the evil Clintons.
Some weeks ago, Andrew Stuttaford, writing on The Corner, said that if Obama is the Dems’ nominee, this will be an election about narrative, and that in that case, McCain is the only Republican who will be able to give Obama a run for his money.
I agree. If this is how the race shapes up (but I wouldn’t count Hillary out, though even steady-as-she-goes Engram is wavering at this point), it will be a feast for those of us who love stories with an unpredictable ending.
The conflict is this: All Hat No Cattle versus All Cattle No Hat.
You all know Obama’s strengths. Here are some things you may not have thought of when it comes to John McCain.
McCain is the living symbol of grit, determination, decency, self-sacrifice, and honor in the face of utter and complete hopelessless. He can milk this, but he won’t; his surrogates will do it for him.
McCain’s son Jimmy, a Marine, just got back from Iraq. That ought to be good for a few votes and, even more important, lots of credible first-person testimony about conditions on the ground in Iraq.
John McCain is also the author of many books about the honor of serving one’s country:
Faith of My Fathers : A Family Memoir by John McCain and Mark Salter (Paperback - Aug 22, 2000)
Worth the Fighting for: A Memoir by John S. McCain and Mark Salter (Hardcover - Sep 24, 2002)
Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember (Modern Library Classics) by John Mccain and Mark Salter (Paperback - Aug 7, 2007)
update: Jonathan Martin, writing at The Politico, makes much the same point:
they’ve been slow out of the blocks in recognizing another danger zone.
“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country,” Michelle Obama said Monday in Madison, Wis.
By that evening, the quote was the top headline on the Drudge Report and quickly found its way onto conservative blogs.
Yesterday afternoon on his influential radio show, Rush Limbaugh played the clip and then lit into both Obama’s.
“Doesn’t it just grate on you that liberals in general are not proud of their country, period?” Limbaugh asked.
By last night, the conservative commentators on Fox News were in high dudgeon over her comments, repeating them over and over before lambasting her and predicting they would be used against the candidate this fall.
While Jeff Jarvis and Nicholas Lemann think out loud about how to improve journalism going forward***, CNN makes a laughingstock out of such agonizing efforts by doing the thinking for its “journalists.” The other day, on-air talent received instructions to be sure to remember to praise Fidel in its Cuba coverage. (Allegedly, the email reprinted below is authentic; I have no way of verifying this):
From: Flexner, Allison
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:46 AM
To: *CNN Superdesk (TBS)
Cc: Neill, Morgan; Darlington, Shasta
Subject: Castro guidance
Some points on Castro – for adding to our anchor reads/reporting:
* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.
* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.
* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.
* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.
Any questions, please call the international desk.
Allison
I’ve got some questions: why is CNN so shy about blasting a decrepit monster who has kept his people half-starving and cut off from the rest of the world for 50 years? why must CNN be “balanced” when talking about a megalomaniac who ruined the lives of three generations (if not more) of Cubans?
Christiane Amanpour, a loyal company soldier for CNN and the queen of moral equivalency (aka “balance”), apparently got TPTB’s memo and did her duty:
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well as Morgan alluded to, look it is a desperate place for a lot of people there because it’s poor and it’s badly run if you like, in terms of people can’t afford to make ends meet. By and large, there are a lot of rationing going on in terms of food. But it’s never enough to allow them to meet their monthly requirements of food and medicine and the like.
So there’s a lot of difficulty in day-to-day living, not to mention the fact there’s plenty of political dissidents. There are journalists who are dissidents. There are people in jail just for wanting to write the truth or speak the truth or even to organize politically which they cannot.
So, that’s a fact of life in Cuba and it has been for the decades that Castro has been in power. And that offsets some of the genuine progress that he’s made in terms of education, health care. People have talked a lot about that. But day-to-day life for them is very decrepit and very hand to mouth and, obviously, they want change.
—————
*** It’s an effort I salute wholeheartedly. I come down on the side of wanting some kind of “expertise” from journos along with their journalism skills—and we might start with refresher courses in geopolitics, geography, and international relations for on-air “talent” NOW.
As for the future, every profession is becoming more specialized, and why should journalism be an exception? People will always want and need reliable, vetted up-to-the-minute information about the things that disrupt or intrude on (or threaten to) their daily lives (hard news). The news media is an extension of our (i.e., humans’) survival radar; it’s an early-warning system to alert us about those things we can’t see with our own eyes or hear with our own ears. That’s what journalism is for.
Those people who aspire to do long-form general-interest writing in periodicals like The New Yorker or The Atlantic, or who want to offer long-form commentary in political periodicals like The New Republic or The Nation, should be given a different title. It’s not that they don’t qualify as journalists. It’s that they serve a different function: Their function is to examine people or phenomena microscopically and to analyze them deeply, in the service of a reader’s long-term knowledge.
The news, by contrast, serves a different demand: up-to-the minute information, along with instant “analysis” of what it might mean for the consumer. Being a good writer is not the same thing as being a good reporter.
No, I’m not talking about Barack Obama’s pretty, meaningless, but inspiring words (the exact same unoriginal words used by Deval Patrick, offered up to him and to Obama by their mutual media strategist, David Axelrod, as I mentioned here yesterday).
I’m talking about the poison emanating from the mouth Ahmadinejad:
Also Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent verbal attacks against Israel were unacceptable. …
The meeting [with Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gillerman] followed yet another verbal attack against Israel by Ahmadinejad .. .
“The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast,” the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran.
In the hour-long conversation with Ban, Gillerman said it is “outrageous for a member state to use racial, Nazi like statements against another member state.”
He said that such expressions warranted the condemnation of Iran by the international community.
Ban, who agreed to meet on very short notice, said such statements are “unacceptable and unforgivable,” according to Gillerman. Ban vowed to deal with the matter soon but did not explain how he intended to do so.
Iran wants Israel to take the threat of military force off the table. Good luck with that!
