This is causing an uproar:

I report. You decide whether it is, as the Obama campaign noted, “tasteless and offensive” or whether those Obama folks aren’t awfully thin-skinned.

Hey! Even Andrew Sullivan agrees with me:

I thought it was quite funny myself. This was obviously intended ironically, and it’s not exactly Parade magazine.

There is a sickness afoot in the land when a popular non-political blogger makes note of a politician’s lowering of his own standards and his commenters attack him for speaking his mind.

Jeff Jarvis:

Whenever you want to show how soft big media are on Barack Obama, refer back to Howard Kurtz’ column on their coverage of the candidate’s hypocritical flip-flop on campaign financing. Chapter and verse.

Some comments [e.a.]:

Just drop it. It’s clear you were a Clinton supporter, but if you want a Democrat in the White House in 2009, the political reality is that attacking Obama is the same supporting McCain.

Jeff, would you consider some even handed-ness in your political posts ? It makes your position on press bias seem fairly hypocritical.

Jeff replies:

I am likely to be an Obama voter but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold him to high standards. I am not a member of his cult so I can disagree with him. It’s allowed out here. No, I won’t drop it.

Commenter:

Jeff, you’re entitled to “hold Obama to high standards,” just like the rest of us. And I realize, in a post like this, you’re trying to expose the inherent bias of the media, not bash Obama. But that’s what you’re indirectly doing.

I realize you’re trying to change the media, but please don’t (conciously or unconciously) swiftboat Obama in the process.

Commenter Steve:

So, if I support Senator Obama, I am a cultist?

Jeff responds:

No, Steve, but I’m being told I can’t criticize him and hold him to high standards. That’s a cultist talking.

Last word (not on Jeff’s blog but here on mine, where I’m the editor) goes to this commenter from Jeff’s blog:

Obama supporters panic whenever a story appears to question, criticize, or point out the hypocrisies of their candidate.

Indeed! and get a load of this attack, published at the HuffPo, on Jon Stewart for—gasp!—making fun of the Obama Messiah. Joseph Palermo builds his case by accusing Stewart of having been complicit in selling the war in Iraq to the American people:

Slamming the UN weapons inspectors as ineffectual twits dominated right-wing talk radio at the time and The Daily Show was in effect regurgitating the talking points of those who wanted to bring the country to war. Dissing the UN’s efforts on Comedy Central inadvertently helped make the case for war. It is kind of like when Dick Cheney pointed to the New York Times to buttress his warmongering saying: “Hey, even the liberals agree with us!”

Then Palermo goes on to warn Stewart to watch his mouth when he’s making fun of Obama:

When Jon Stewart seeks “balance” for his targets of satire he can end up reinforcing the false impressions that the Bush Republicans want people to have. It’s unfortunate because political humor is a powerful force that can sway some of those “low information” voters the pundits have been flogging lately.

So too was the case last night when Jon Stewart ran a bit about Barack Obama’s decision to eschew public financing. The Daily Show seized the issue as an opportunity to display “balance” and to poke fun at the Obama campaign. But not only did the bit fall flat it played right into the Republican line, which is full of half-truths and outright lies about Obama’s decision.

During the primaries, Keith Olbermann attacked Stewart just for mentioning Obama’s middle name.

Here’s what I think: this attempt by hyper-partisan ideological enforcers to shut down the debate among Democrats about Barack Obama will backfire. Badly.

Intimidating people who are on your own side (Jarvis and Stewart are both Democrats, from what I can tell) is never a good idea, especially here in America, where, as Jeff said, we don’t—and won’t—shut up.

Undoubtedly, those trying to shut down the debate are the product (or the masters) of our elite universities, where diversity is god but where diversity of opinion is unwelcome.

Those often kindly teachers, however, do have a sense of urgent mission. Even if we put them on truth-serum, the academics who dominate the humanities and social sciences on our campuses today would state that K-12 education essentially has been one long celebration of America and the West, as if our students were intimately familiar with the Federalist Papers and had never heard of slavery or empire. Having convinced themselves that the students whom they inherit have been immersed in American and Western traditions without critical perspective—they do believe that—contemporary academics see themselves as having merely four brief years in which to demystify students, and somehow to get them to look up from their Madison and Hamilton long enough to gaze upon the darker side of American and Western life. In their view, our K-12 students know all about Aristotle, John Milton and Adam Smith, have studied for twelve years how America created bounty and integrated score after score of millions of immigrants, but have never heard of the Great Depression or segregation.

Academics, in their own minds, face an almost insoluble problem of time. How, in only four years, can they disabuse students of the notion that the capital, risk, productivity and military sacrifice of others have contributed to human dignity and to the prospects of a decent society? How can they make them understand, with only four years to do so, that capitalism and individual- ism have created cultures that are cruel, inefficient, racist, sexist and homophobic, with oppressive caste systems, mental and behavioral? How, in such a brief period, can they enlighten “minorities,” including women (the majority of students), about the “internalization” of their oppression (today’s equivalent of false consciousness)? How, in only eight semesters, might they use the classroom, curriculum and university in loco parentis to create a radical leadership among what they see as the victim groups of our society, and to make the heirs of successful families uneasy in the moral right of their possessions and opportunities? Given those constraints, why in the world should they complicate their awesome task by hiring anyone who disagrees with them?

Disagreement is at the foundation of human existence, and American democracy is successful (among other reasons) because it takes this fundamental fact of human nature into account.

Plus: If Barack Obama cannot stomach, answer, and withstand criticisms from his own side, he is unlikely to be able to withstand criticism, or attacks, from his political opponents.

Don’t you hate it when David Brooks uses his New York Times perch to remind his readers that life is full of unexpected turns, expecially ones that reflect well on BushHitler?

Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.

Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals. … The additional fact is that Bush, who made such bad calls early in the war, made a courageous and astute decision in 2006. More than a year on, the surge has produced large, if tenuous, gains. Violence is down sharply. Daily life has improved. Iraqi security forces have been given time to become a more effective fighting force. The Iraqi government is showing signs of strength and even glimmers of impartiality. Iraq has moved from being a failed state to, as Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations has put it, merely a fragile one.

The whole episode is a reminder that history is a complicated thing. The traits that lead to disaster in certain circumstances are the very ones that come in handy in others. The people who seem so smart at some moments seem incredibly foolish in others.

Yep. (This also applies to Brooks, by the way, who referred to the Iraq war as “a disaster” many times during what he now refers to as “the dark days of 2006.”) He’s not humble enough to acknowledge his own previous cocksureness and foolishness. But he’s out there on the cutting edge of what should be opinion right now. We’ll see how it plays.

Brooks sets the stage:

The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson [about orthodox thinking] during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

It’s unlikely that there will be many such souls, but count me among those who grudgingly (grudgingly because we are of a certain [anti-Vietnam War] age) admit that Bush’s stubbornness has, on balance, been a good thing for America in the immediate wake of 9/11. Many of America’s cocksure enemies have stood down in the wake of Bush’s cowboy-like cocksure aggressiveness. Bush himself has said he regrets the language he used; I didn’t hear him say that he regrets his “going on offense” against America’s enemies, as indeed he shouldn’t.

Something else has been gained in these long seven years. Brooks doesn’t mention it, but I will:L Islamism now has many respectable enemies—including several of Britain’s most famous public intellectuals and novelists.

The New York Times doesn’t quite approve of such heterodox thoughts as this one expressed by Ian McEwan, the author of Atonement:

“As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark skinned, he who criticizes it is racist.” He added: “This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on — we know it well.”

The Independent, a British paper, referred to McEwan’s words as

an astonishingly strong attack on Islamism

and pointed out that these words could,

in today’s febrile legalistic climate, lay him open to being investigated for a “hate crime”.

Despite adding to the “febrile” climate surrounding this issue, at least the Independent is honest enough to give a full airing to McEwan’s views, which I reprint here with some emphasis [e.a.]:

McEwan – author of On Chesil Beach and the acclaimed Atonement and Enduring Love – has spoken on the issue of Islamism before, telling The New York Times last December: “All religions make very big claims about the world, and it should be possible in an open society to dispute them. It should be possible to say, ‘I find some ideas in Islam questionable’ without being called a racist.”

But his words in the Corriere interview are far stronger, although they do fall short of the invective deployed by Martin Amis. He has said “the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order”, and told The Independent’s columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a Muslim, in an open letter: “Islamism, in most of its manifestations, not only wants to kill me – it wants to kill you.”

McEwan’s interviewer pointed out that there exist equally hard-line schools of thought within Christianity, for example in the United States. “I find them equally absurd,” McEwan replied. “I don’t like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don’t want to kill anyone in my city, that’s the difference.”

But McEwan’s specific irritation is reserved for those who find ideological grounds to condemn his and Amis’s views. “When you ask a novelist or a poet about his vision regarding an aspect of the world, you don’t get the response of a politician or a sociologist, but even if you don’t like what he says you have to accept it, you can’t react with defamation. Martin is not a racist, and neither am I.”

Thank you, Ian McEwan. And may others join you in perpetrating the “hate crime” of speaking out in favor of freedom of expression, even (perhaps especially) when your ideas are out of favor with “expert and elite opinion” [Brooks's phrase].

The editors of the Chicago Tribune aren’t saying that she did this, but what if Michelle Obama had been caught on tape taunting “whitey”? You got a problem with that, you overprivileged Caucasian?

Are there really white people out there so ignorant of history, so unaware of the nuances of language and so threatened by minority grievances that they take genuine umbrage at the term “whitey”?

More a taunt than a threat, the word has no ugly history and hints at no particular stereotypes. It may have been hurled in a menacing fashion in ugly personal confrontations from time to time, but it’s never been used to keep a people down, to put them in their place, to rank them as subhuman.

I hate the concept of “hate speech” for just this reason: one man’s hate speech is another’s righteous grievance. But riddle me this: who’s to judge?

Freedom of speech, for all—that’s the ticket.

If I were in the Obama camp, I would quit trying to sell the idea that the “change” he’s offering is generational, because, as I recently noted, the Clinton generation (of which I’m nominally a part) is not exactly ready to hand over the reins (and Obama’s tendency to talk like a punk doesn’t help matters).

But generational change is how some Dems are painting the “differences” between the Clinton and Obama camps—differences that are being elided as Obama “Moves to the Center,” claims Thomas Edsall in the HuffPo [e.a.]:

In the international relations policy arena, sources in and out of the Obama camp described a more subtle process taking place, as Obama is forced to decide which Clinton experts to add to the team, and at what level in the hierarchy.

“While there are exceptions on both sides, one of the key differences between the Clinton and Obama foreign policy gurus is generational. And this generational split has significant consequences,” one knowledgeable expert said, speaking on background. “In the main, the senior folks in the Clinton administration (1993-2001) went with Hillary, while many of the less senior people went with Obama.”

Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy advisers came of political age during the Cold War, in many cases during in the Carter administration, and tend to see the world in terms of states and state conflicts, this source said. In addition, many of Hillary Clinton’s top advisers “spent eight years dealing with Saddam [Hussein's] intransigence in the 90s,” making them more receptive to the arguments for invading Iraq.

Conversely, this expert argued, many of the Obama advisers are post-Cold War theorists who tend to see the world in terms of failed states, the influence of technology, food crises, non-state actors like Osama bin Laden, the spread of nuclear weapons, and the uneven distribution of the benefits of globalization.

Another way of seeing this “generational difference,” of course, is this: having experience (aka coming of political age is a form of experience, which the Clintonistas have) versus having smart-(ass) ideas (aka being post-Cold War “theorists”—which the Obamabots think they have).

Meanwhile, one prominent California family lives out a different kind of drama at home, where it’s not a left-sectarian fight but rather a GOP-vs-Dems debating (sorta) society:

Of all the supporters behind the two presumptive nominees for president this year, none are quite as intriguing as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has thrown his support behind Senator John McCain, and the governor’s wife, Maria Shriver, a Democrat and vocal backer of Senator Barack Obama.

The lawn of their Brentwood home has dueling campaign signs. The breakfast table has become a casual debating society. Ms. Shriver is even threatening to bring a life-size cutout of her preferred candidate into the house, something the governor has seen her do in other elections. “When one of the candidates screws up,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said of the cutouts, “the kids carry them outside.”

And to my great relief, the Dem side in this battle is represented by a fair-minded person—a “little-d democrat” [e.a.]:

“I think there are great benefits to having kids grow up understanding that we do not live in a one-party system,” Ms. Shriver said. “That there are two ways at looking at an issue. To be patient, and to compromise, those are good lessons not just in politics but for life. I grew up believing there was only one way to think. There isn’t.”

All hail the friendly enmity between people with different politics!

When I see stupid stuff like this from a media outlet that is pretending to provide useful information to its viewers, it drives me up a wall:

 

Common Misunderstandings About Muslims

Are Muslim Women Oppressed? Why Do They Wear the Hijab? Find Out Below

Misconception: Muslim women are oppressed and forced to wear the hijab.

Truth:

Women often see it as empowering because they are not viewed as sexual objects but judged by their character.

The “truth” about the hijab has nothing to do with female empowerment or sexual politics.

Wearing the hijab is a religious custom practiced by some Muslim women.

(AP Photo )

Just as wearing a hair covering is a religious custom practiced by some Jewish women.

Somehow, the New Yorker artist who made the cover pictured below forgot—or didn’t want to—include a religious Jew in the picture. Some discussion here.

His method is crude and colorful and thus apt to draw attention and the NYT’s Elaine Sciolino says it betrays his “sometimes sentimental and pedagogical approach to governing”—but you have to admit that the French president knows how to use his bully pulpit to good publicity effect:

 President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an intellectual bombshell this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. …

Education Minister Xavier Darcos explained later that the aim of the plan was to “create an identification between a child of today and one of the same age who was deported and gassed.”

As I said: crude. But he has made his point.

“It is ignorance — not knowledge — that leads to the repetition of abominable situations,” he said. “You do not traumatize children by giving them the gift of the memory of a country.”

I don’t know about you, but I find this refreshing in light of the cringe-inducing self-abasement of the British in recent weeks.

The Archbishop of Canterbury gets the Pope “he’s too nuanced for you all” Benedict defense:

Christina Rees said: “I am angry and frustrated at the way he has been treated. He has been vilified. Nobody is responding to what he said at the lecture, which was highly nuanced and complex, and delivered to a sophisticated audience.”

…

The Bishop of Gloucester, the Right Rev Michael Perham, said he felt the remarks had been taken out of context and should be studied more carefully. “The archbishop did not advocate the adoption of sharia law. What he did plead was for an understanding of it … He doesn’t deal in soundbites, but in careful rather scholarly discussion. That doesn’t easily transfer into popular news coverage, so he gets himself into trouble with people who get a distorted picture of what he is saying.”

All the more reason for (professional) death to come to the Archbishop.

You’re living in our real world, punk. In this world, when the media tries you and finds you wanting, you’re out—on this side of the Pond, at least. We’ll see what comes of you on your home turf.

The Daily Mail attacks the British Olympic Association for its ourtrageous coddling of the Chinese with a vivid reminder of Britain’s shame and dishonor in the run-up to World War II:

National disgrace: In a picture from a German archive never before published in Britain, the England football team give Nazi salutes in Berlin in 1938  [e.a.]

Here are the facts, from the Mail:

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes’ contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

It is contained in a 32-page document that will be presented to all those who reach the qualifying standard and are chosen for the team.

From the moment they sign up, the competitors – likely to include the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips and world record holder Paula Radcliffe – will be effectively gagged from commenting on China’s politics, human rights abuses or illegal occupation of Tibet.

Here’s the argument against, from David Mellor, also writing in the Mail:

The Chinese have no right to a free ride this summer. And it isn’t just because China isn’t a democracy or that basic human rights and fundamental freedoms are denied to its citizens.

China is a menace to the civilised world for many other reasons, ranging from its support for renegade regimes such as the government of Sudan, who used Chinese weaponry to commit the Darfur massacres, to its shameless emergence as the number one polluter.

The Chinese deserve as much criticism over their contributions to global warming as over their suppression of human rights.

Long live the British tabloid media!

[reposted to correct a typo in the title] 

Will sharia come to Britain? The notion certainly has a lot of people up in arms.

Ali Eteraz makes the case against (in case you need to hear it).
As for me, I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. For one thing—though it’s not PC to bring this up, but it does reflect reality—there most certainly is a supernationalist streak in Britain, most obviously represented by its soccer hooligans. Potentially violent, uncontrollable “Islamophobia” is a real concern among this demographic, and it is not to be ignored.

Perhaps it was those, er, “blokes” who the otherwise sharia-loving (and enemy of culture) Tariq Ramadan was thinking of when he nixed the Archbishop’s idea:

“These kinds of statements [about the addition of sharia in Britain] just feed the fears of fellow citizens. I really think we, as Muslims, need to come up with something that we abide by the common law and within these latitudes there are possibilities for us to be faithful to Islamic principles.”

For another thing, on one side of the front page of its website, the Daily Mail tears to shreds the sharia-embracing Archbishop of Canterbury:

Officials at Lambeth Palace told the BBC Dr Williams was in a “state of shock” and “completely overwhelmed” by the scale of the row.

It was said that he could not believe the fury of the reaction.

On the other side of its front page, the Daily Mail goes about its business, advertising its other typical features:

Femail

Bedraggled and bra-less: Britney back to her old tricks after hospital release
A spell in a psychiatric hospital seems to have done little to change Britney’s lifestyle - or her dress sense

Cheek to Cheeky…the girls bare all for a good cause
Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia has never much cared for the twinset-and-pearls image of an MP’s consort - but this pose with her identical twin sister Monica - is risque by even her raunchy standards

Rehab star Amy is all smiles after getting her teeth fixed ahead of Grammy performance tonight
Amy Winehouse is all smiles these days after finally being granted a US visa - and getting her teeth fixed

‘Sadistic Wife Swap nearly cost me my sanity’ says TV presenter Anna Courtenay
On last week’s Channel 4 show Wife Swap, businesswoman Anna Courtenay, 42, was seen trading her privileged expat life in Marbella for nine days with another family on an ‘eco-friendly’ tugboat. She was not prepared for the lengths to which producers were prepared to go in the name of entertainment

When the Mail is forced to clean up its lurid act, let me know. Likewise, satellite TV in Europe (which is a mixture of lecturing imams and soft-core pornography). Then I’ll get nervous about sharia.

In the meantime, I take comfort from the sensible attacks on the mental defective masquerading as the Archbishop of Canterbury:

The most damaging attack came from the Pakistan-born Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali.

He said it would be “simply impossible” to bring sharia law into British law “without fundamentally affecting its integrity”.

Sharia “would be in tension with the English legal tradition on questions like monogamy, provisions for divorce, the rights of women, custody of children, laws of inheritance and of evidence.

“This is not to mention the relation of freedom of belief and of expression to provisions for blasphemy and apostasy.”