Entries Tagged 'plain talk' ↓

John McCain captures his Reagan moment, sticks it to Obama, and uses him as a footstool from which to launch his campaign for real:

“In my other profession and the war I served in, the country relied overwhelmingly on Americans from these same communities to defend us. As Tocqueville discovered when he traveled America two hundred years ago, they are the heart and soul of this country, the foundation of our strength and the primary authors of its essential goodness. They are our inspiration, and I look to them for guidance and strength. No matter their personal circumstances, they believed in this country. They revered its past, but most importantly they believed in its future greatness, a greatness they themselves would create. They never forgot who they were, where they came from, and what is possible in America, a country founded on an idea and not on class, ethnic or sectarian identity. And America must not and will not forget them.

The McCain campaign will now start his “Forgotten Parts of America” tour.

Is it impossibly corny? You betcha.
Will it work? Maybe, if the media gives him some airtime … which is doubtful.

Political correctness (for the purposes of this post, I will define it thus: “You’re not allowed to say that; only I am allowed to say that”) was the left’s gift to America. The left meant well. (I know, because I was on the left—comfortable and at home on the left, that is—at the time.)

Now the left, represented by the Democratic party, is having interesting problems. (I haven’t felt comfortable on the left for a long time, because the left has abandoned liberalism, I believe, but that’s another story for another day.)

My point is this: Two candidates who represent the apotheosis of progressive ideals are vying for the presidency. One is black. The other is a woman. If you’re a sensitive, well-meaning progressive, how do you support one of these candidates without smearing the other and earning yourself the label of “sexist” or “racist”?

To her great credit as a media critic and journalist (and without a lot of pickup by other media writers, except for Mickey Kaus and I’m not sure he counts except in the blogo-universe, where he counts a lot, in my book), my cyber-pal Rachel Sklar of ETPhas been asking this question for a while now (though somewhat less directly than I write about it here).

On January 3, she wrote (re the Obama and Oprah Show):

[F]raming Obama’s support in terms of a wave of hope and optimism and Clinton’s support as inevitability imposed by a suffocating dynasty might have been just a tad unbalanced. It’s funny, even as I write this I feel the need to check and recheck to make sure I don’t somehow say this wrong. Obama is that candidate — the one you are careful writing about. I don’t think it’s just me.

Kaus picked up on it the next day:

Rachel Sklar notes an insufficiently remarked on Obama advantage: (”[E]ven as I write this I feel the need to check and recheck to make sure I don’t somehow say this wrong. Obama is that candidate — the one you are careful writing about. I don’t think it’s just me”) …

Last night, Rachel put up a very long post analyzing the sad but inevitable viral viciousness of the Obama “fairy tale” remark by Bill Clinton (which he ihas been going out of his way to explain)[e.a.]:

Context isn’t just important, it’s everything — especially in these days of insta-pickup by blogs and online news sites, where just a snippet of text is enough to launch a million clicks.

You’d think that in the case of this election, where the race is tight and a nasty rumor or smear can make all the difference, people might want to be a bit careful. Alas, no.

Now Jules Crittenden picks up the theme. Understandably, being on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Rachel (I assume), he’s got a somewhat different take—namely, how “careful” is everyone supposed to be and for how long?

My big question is, does this mean if Obama gets elected no one can ever use the words “fairy tale” again, or any other words that might suggest he doesn’t know what he’s doing or what he’s talking about or that he might be full of it, because that might be perceived as racially insensitive? That’s a pretty serious issue, regardless of Obama’s politics, if political speech is going to be curtailed about something as important as the performance in office of the president of the United States, because someone’s feelings might get hurt. I’m guessing anything remotely resembling any of the delightful remarks about Chimpy’s appearance, intelligence, preparedness for office and performance in the last seven years would pretty much be out.

Here’s the thing. I believe that Barack Obama is not likely to have his actually feelings hurt by “racially insensitive” speech (no more than I would be if I were running for office and encountered “religiously insensitive” speech). Despite the smooth presentation, he is a hard-ass politician who came up through Chicago, which has a history of dirty, vicious politics. Alleged racial insensitivity and gender insensitivity are, in this race, merely cudgels with which to beat political opponents. They’re powerful and loaded cudgels, but they are still only cudgels (and not evidence of real racism and real sexism, which are not about the things you say about people but about the things you do to people who are less powerful than you).

Here’s the other thing: I believe that most normal people get that. Politics is a dirty business. There is no way for your candidate to win unless the other guy or gal loses. And you do whatever it takes for your guy or gal to win—no matter how dirty or hurtful. That’s just the way it is.

Political correctness may become a casualty of this election. Or, at least, one can always hope.

Right, Barack?

The quote of the day:

Since news of his arrest broke, [Senator Larry] Craig appears to be in deep political trouble.

Read all about the depth of his trouble here, if you care. But you might as well just read what McCain said:

“I believe that he pleaded guilty, and he had the opportunity to plead innocent,” said McCain, of Arizona. “So, I think he should resign. My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime you shouldn’t serve.”

Well, knock me over with a feather. I thought Barack Obama was going to be the feel-good candidate. But get a load of Rudy:

[In New Hampshire] Rudy Giuliani was telling a roomful of voters about a dream he had three times, when he interrupted himself. “Any psychiatrists here? Want me to lay down and tell you this? You do dream analysis, right?”

Minutes later the former New York mayor had moved on to the “fear of abandonment” his city suffered after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, his people’s need to be “embraced,” and America’s need to buck up because “when you concentrate on your problems so much, as a person or as a society, you sometimes lose perspective.”

Most of my fellow New Yorkers in the cohort—those who don’t scoff at the notion that he might actually get the Republican nomination, much less win an election against Hillary Clinton—are terrified of his authoritarian streak and his provocatively hectoring ways. Me, not so much. What drives me mad is his relentless, shameless, credit-seeking self-promotion; his jack-in-the-box ability to be right smack in the middle of every gathering of cameras and microphones in a 50-mile radius of City Hall; and his testy, prickly need to respond to every culture-war flare-up with a fusillade of insulting verbiage.

But Rudy 2.0 seems to be stickier than our Rudy.

On a trip [to New Hampshire] last week, Giuliani, 63, was thanked time and again for his leadership after the 9/11 attacks and almost as often for making New York a livable city. Those are the pillars of his candidacy, and he promotes them to the hilt.

Can you believe that we New Yorkers are going to get the celebrity smackdown we were so cruelly denied in the summer of 2000? If it weren’t downright tragic, it would be a hoot.

Sir Alan West, Britain’s new security minister, redefines Britishness for the 21st century:

“Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph. “I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.”

It will be interesting to see how a “start snitching” campaign*** cast in this light—i.e., yes we’re British, but this is war—goes over in Britain. While this is the same country whose population accepts the presence of millions of surveillance cameras for security and other law-enforcement purposes, West’s exhortation is yet another acknowledgment that Britain is on a war footing at home.

———–

*** I last wrote about snitching in mid-June.

Russ Feingold accuses President Bush of using politically incorrect language. The term “Islamic fascists” is offensive to Muslims, so it is to be avoided, Feingold the Scold insists.

“We must avoid using misleading and offensive terms that link Islam with those who subvert this great religion or who distort its teachings to justify terrorist activities,” Feingold said Tuesday in a speech to the Arab American Institute on Capitol Hill.

The Wisconsin senator, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said the label “Islamic fascists” makes no sense and doesn’t help the U.S. effort to combat terrorism.

“Fascist ideology doesn’t have anything to do with the way global terrorist networks think or operate,…”

Feingold is mistaken. They are fascists—motherfucking Islamofascists, to be precise—and no U.S. senator or EU representative will get me to stop saying so.

(via Publius Pundit, who covered the visit of the pestilential liar Khatami to Harvard’s Kennedy School)

Apparently, that’s Australian prime minister John Howard’s position after having hold Muslims they must integrate in their new country:

He told Macquarie Radio Australia had benefited greatly from immigration, but “there is a section, a small section, of the Islamic population … which is very resistant to integration”.

“What I want to do is to reinforce the need for everybody who comes to this country to fully integrate,” Mr Howard said yesterday. “Fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language if you don’t already speak it.

“And it means understanding that in certain areas, such as the equality of men and women, the societies that some people have left were not as contemporary and as progressive as ours.

“People who come from societies where women are treated in an inferior fashion have got to learn very quickly that that is not the case in Australia.”

Mr Howard was responding to a caller to the radio station who said she was concerned that immigrants were “not fitting in”.