I knew John McCain would not argue on the issues. I knew he would follow the tried-and-tested Republican strategy of lying, deceit, and calumny. The other said they would not be swiftboated again, and here we are, again, in a situation whereby the Republican shamelessly lies about his opponent on military matters. And the media yet again plays along, and will probably develop a collective sense of regret some time next year, long after the damage is done.
You probably know what I am talking about. McCain accuses Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters. The implication is obvious. It’s also a lie: the Pentagon did not want it to be a political event, since Obama was bringing a campaign military adviser with him, and so he decided not to go. Also note that when McCain makes snide remarks about Obama finding time for the gym– he shows footage of him playing basketball with soldiers.
I was hoping for better from McCain, especially since he was at the receiving end of these same Rovian tactics in 2000. Now he has hired Karl Rove. Just remember: calumny and lying to smear a person’s character is a grave sin.
It says a lot about the substance of the McCain’s candidacy when the bulk of his press releases entail criticism of Obama rather than anything positively related to the McCain platform.
So he didn’t NOT go because he couldn’t take a photgrapher.
He didn’t go because he didn’t want to go.
Go figure!
IMHO: he preferred shooting hoops to visiting with some of the finest young people on the face of the Earth. Why? Because they’d make him look bad.
But, that’s okay. He’ll bring back legal and safe partial abortion. All is forgiven!
I assume you can also keep us informed on the daily embellishments, missteps, misspeaks, stretches of the truth, partisan sniping, refusal to answer questions ect. emanating from the Obama camp.
Or perhaps it would be better to have less partisan cheerleading from now until this long election season is over.
Actually the way I heard it, Obama tried to go but was stopped because the Pentagon failed to inform him that in order to keep it from being a “politicizing” campaign affair, he could only go if he brought certain individuals, (can’t remember their titles); who had actually just prior to this left the country. I heard that Obama was rather upset about the untimely dissemination of information.
Either way, to claim that Obama did not want to go seems patently false, and any attempt to use this as a cheap-shot about his stance toward the military is transparently uncharitable and, to be honest, seems a little desperate doesnt it?
There’s plenty to criticize Obama on. Why make stuff up? Doing so smacks of fear or the inability to recognize what is legitimately worthy of criticism.
Pax Christi,
Speaking of McCain, watch this video, it’s hilarious. Obama – Britney – Paris: http://www.geraldnaus.com/?p=10701
Exactly what is Obama’s substance ? That he’s a legend in his own mind ? Let me quote him:
I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions
and
I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.
He’s a twofer – God the father & the son. I guess Michelle’s the holy spirit.
This is just as creepy as any televangelist. Obama is the Benny Hinn for Whole Foods shoppers.
Then read a fantastic WaPo article mocking him in brilliant manner – by their lead political writer, no less. http://www.geraldnaus.com/?p=10699
Politicians politick. None is this is very noteworthy. As always, it’s going to be a long campaign season with many hundreds of examples either “side” can point to.
(Gerald, the Dana M. article has some of the most recent examples of my previous comment.)
McCain hired Rove? God help us.
Josh Marshall pointed out that McCain’s latest is to tie (at least subliminably) McCain with very “white” starlets likes Paris Hilton, thus evoking one of the most despicable political ads in recent history: the attack on Harold Ford in 2006 by associating him with having a good time with young white women. The instrinsic evil of racism did not die with Jesse Helms.
It happens every time. Gore was an exagerrator, Kerry a flip-flopper, Obama an elitist– this is a classic GOP trick to hide the fact that their policies are hugely unpopular. And the media buys into it every time.
I actually had hopes that this cycle would bring the sort of gentlemanly debates envisioned by Goldwater and Kennedy for 1964. Someday, perhaps.
To be clear, I believe McCain (and his campaign) will bear primary responsibility for any ugly tone happening this cycle. Obama is doing his best to remain above such despicable tactics as McCain’s race-baiting.
McCain sounds like a raving, bitter old man lately.
Poor guy.
Wrong on timetables in Iraq. Wrong on talking to Iran. That was his whole campaign.
[...] if anything Haystack said is “worse” than this tripe) PermaLink | | Trackback/Pingback [...]
And the descent of the word “racism” continues. How long before it has no discernable meaning whatsoever?
If you cannot see that ad as playing off the 2006 Ford hit-job, then you may want to look a bit harder.
Of course, I’m still waiting for your assessment on Mr. Obama’s intelligence and impulse control levels, based on all of the ‘evidence’ you have gathered from genetic and evolutionary biology.
Yawn…
If McCain himself even pursuing this issue? I’d signed up to get the campaign emails just so I could track what they were putting out (not having a TV, one misses the news cycle silliness which is generally a blessing) and the alert they sent out today asking people to watch their new TV ad was about energy policy — not about Obama’s itinerary.
But then, I’m one of those racially insensitive people who considers the most (and only) notably thing about Paris Hilton to be that she’s shallow and crass. So if I saw that McCain was trying to associate Obama with her, I’d assume that he was trying to suggest that Obama was shallow and celebrity driven.
Not a deep contribution, perhaps, but then no one has really been saying much substantive recently. The Obama campaign has been an examplar of substance-less puffery, and the McCain campaign can’t seem to sort itself out and talk about anything.
What I wish we could see would be some solid debates on real issues between the candidates. But so far as I know the Obama campaign is still refusing to have any. (McCain, as trailing candidates usually are, is eager to have them.)
I would like to point out that the ad actually shows Obama shooting hoops with soldiers. This was the subject of much humor on last nights Jon Stewart show.
These latest tactics just show how desperate the Republicans are getting… All you read are (childish) attacks against Obama that really don’t help and convince me with every passing day that McCain is not worth considering at all. His campaign must really think we’re stupid. First, the “holiday” gas tax. WRONG. Second, how “supposedly” Bush had something to do with lowering the price of oil with his opening of offshore drilling. WRONG. Third, this Germany base stuff… Obama, in my eyes, is a flip-flopper, which has turned me off already, but McCain treating us like we’re idiots… that’s not good.
If you cannot see that ad as playing off the 2006 Ford hit-job, then you may want to look a bit harder.
Saying that the ad was playing off the Ford Playboy ad is more than a bit of a stretch. I wonder if Marshall thinks Karl Rove is secretly behind those Obama Girl videos.
“I was hoping for better from McCain, especially since he was at the receiving end of these same Rovian tactics in 2000. Now he has hired Karl Rove. Just remember: calumny and lying to smear a person’s character is a grave sin.”
And Morning I hope we shall recall this. Forgive me for being disagreeable but you are perhaps the last one to be givjng this high moral standing lesson after watching a year of your postings. Just saying politics is a a emotional game and you perhaps are the last to be casting stones in this direction.
Morning,
I will say this though. At least you have the guts to keep your comment section open unlike some which is one reason why I will keep listening
“These latest tactics just show how desperate the Republicans are getting… All you read are (childish) attacks against Obama that really don’t help and convince me with every passing day that McCain is not worth considering at all.”
Katrina I awaiting your latest post castrating Obama mailing and emails talking about how McCain left hispanics on the issue of immigration reform.
These guys sound like jealous middle-schoolers…..
To: Interested Parties
From: Rick Davis, McCain Campaign Manager
Date: July 30, 2008
Re: Barack Obama’s Celebrity
Barack Obama is the biggest celebrity in the world, comparable to Tom Cruise, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. As he told Congressional Democrats yesterday, he has become the “symbol” for the world’s aspirations for America and that we are now at “the moment … that the world is waiting for.”
Only a celebrity of Barack Obama’s magnitude could attract 200,000 fans in Berlin who gathered for the mere opportunity to be in his presence. These are not supporters or even voters, but fans fawning over The One. Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand “MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea” and worry about the price of arugula.
Yet, despite all of the fans, paparazzi and media adoration, the American people still have questions: Is Barack Obama prepared to lead? Is being famous the same as being a credible commander in chief?
Like most worldwide celebrities, this status has fueled a certain arrogance. As The Washington Post reported this morning, Barack Obama has gone from his party’s presumptive nominee to “its presumptuous nominee.” His advisers are constantly reminded that their candidate is not actually the President of the United States, despite the “presidential” seal. On his plane, his chair reads “President.”
the Pentagon did not want it to be a political event, since Obama was bringing a campaign military adviser with him, and so he decided not to go.
So why didn’t he leave the campaign adviser and go in by himself. No cameras. No photo-ops. No reporters. Just him and a heartfelt thanks to those who were gravely injured in the service of our country.
But time is money. If he can’t make political hay out of an event… well… there’s only so many hours in a day.
MM, stop being an apologist for this guy. It’s unseemly. Kind of like the “planned release” of the prayer at the western wall.
Yeah, Obama voted for the Webb GI bill, the one that McCain railed against vociferously.
And McCain will giddily throw our GIs into World War IV , whenever he bombs Iran, in order to live out his residual soldierly fantasies…
Who supports our troops?
“So why didn’t he leave the campaign adviser and go in by himself. No cameras. No photo-ops. No reporters. Just him and a heartfelt thanks to those who were gravely injured in the service of our country.
But time is money. If he can’t make political hay out of an event… well… there’s only so many hours in a day.”
Tony do not ask those questions. It is much more fun to bash Karl Rove
(HP) “Over at the Atlantic, Marc Ambinder has an interesting reaction from former McCain strategist John Weaver to the Arizona Republican’s new ad attacking Barack Obama’s celebrity status (complete with references to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears). Calling it “childish,” Weaver also claims that harping on Obama “reduces McCain on the stage.”
He’s not the only conservative to wonder about that possibility.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum says McCain’s latest ad only addresses one type of voter, while perhaps turning off others. “McCain goes into this election with two problems. One is that the Republican base is demoralized and unenthusiastic,” Frum said. “The other is that the Republican base is shrunk while the number of independents has grown. The strategic dilemma he faces is to energize his core constituency while swinging the much larger centrist constituency [over to him].
“This ad does a good job of energizing that base, reminding them of things they might not like about Barack Obama,” Frum added. “But I wonder whether more offshore drilling is going to be such a big issue with independent voters. And I wonder whether there is not a risk that if McCain’s own ads are more consistently negative than Obama’s, that he forfeits some of the advantage and stature he’s got over Obama.”
“And McCain will giddily throw our GIs into World War IV , whenever he bombs Iran, in order to live out his residual soldierly fantasies…
Who supports our troops?”
Mark,
McCain has no “soldierly fantasies”. He has been speaking out against torture. He has a son that was in the combat zone and no doubt as well as perhaps one other will be serving in one.
Political ads are generally silly, and this one is no exception. It does focus attention on the Obama-as-an-inexperienced-lightweight narrative, which I think could be effective for McCain (if he ever becomes organized enought to have a consistent message). It’s amazing to me that McCain is within even 6 points of Obama given the respective organizations of their campaigns.
Even for an election year, accusations that the ad is ‘racist’ strike me as the product of a feverish imagination…but everyone is entitled to their preconceptions, I suppose.
“He’s not the only conservative to wonder about that possibility.”
Marc Ambinder is a conservative?
You guys are all f-ing hypocrites.
You are defending a man who is acting bat-shit crazy, even going so far as saying his opponent would actually “lose a war to win an election.”
Some raising of the state of discourse in the public sphere.
I agree with G Alkon,. To respond to you guys virtually requires one to sin.
Try reading again…
The reference is to John Weaver.
“These latest tactics just show how desperate the Republicans are getting… ”
…or how hypersensitive many posters are to the faults of one candidate but not the other. The same could be said for these petty, hyperbolic posts about McCain (Czechoslovakia anyone? Karl Rove Agnostic?). There are any number of reasons to dislike McCain, but if every comment from one political candidate (but not the other!!!) is going to be scrutinized with somber reminders that calumny and lying are grave sins, this is going to be a very, very long four months.
At least the Democrats are — as it was in the beginning, is now, and presumably will be forever — avoiding anything that might be remotely considered lying, deceit, and calumny.
I understand Henry’s point in another thread that some here at VN seek to be (not Henry’s words) contrarian in order to show that Catholics shouldn’t be wedding themselves to the GOP. I get that, and I agree. But c’mon… the McCain celeb ad is racist? Racist??? Really? That’s about equivalent to Limbaugh’s denigration of the patriotism of those who question the Iraq War.
Bulletin: Democrats play dirty, too. Doesn’t justify the GOP, but an acknowledgment of said fact would prevent misconceptions about partisanship.
I’m not surprised that the likes of Josh Marshall would say such a thing — while he’s smart enough not to believe that the ad is actually racist, he’s putting that charge out there just to smear a Republican candidate (for what admittedly is a dumb ad). I assume folks here are doing the same thing.
These guys sound like jealous middle-schoolers…..
Hahahahaha… I was thinking the same thing… you gotta give it to them though… At least it is not “dirty” politics per se… they’re just “jealous middle-schoolers” :)
To respond to you guys virtually requires one to sin.
THE MOST TRUTHFUL COMMENT IN THE HISTORY OF VOX NOVA!
Mark, I do hope you read that Milbank article in the WaPo. I’m no fan of the GOP, I actually like McCain better than the party, but Obama really is execrable, completely independent of his policies. His vanity and hubris are astounding. But I guess when a journalist ecstatically yells “HE TOUCHED ME!”, it’s easy to believe in one’s own hype. A legend in his own mind who’s never done anything. Personally, I’d like a President McCain with a gridlocked Congress. Paralysis is always great when it comes to the government. Gerrymandering is half the problem – both parties rig districts, and then you get these whackjobs on both sides, frequently running unopposed. The Congressional Black Caucus and the Southern Congressmen, for example, have among them some assorted nuts.
I can understand why one doesn’t want to vote for the GOP, but being ecstatic about Obama is a sign of dementia.
MAN was I confused. Milbank in the Washington Post? Ohhh… different Milbank.
“Now he has hired Karl Rove.”
You have a source?
MM
Is it a lie to say that McCain hired Rove when Rove is an unpaid, informal advisor to the campaign? One might think so.
The ad is stupid, but it dodn’t seem racist to me. It seemed like he was comparing Obama to vacuous celebrities, an interpretation which makes sense given McCain’s numerous other statements about the shallowness of adoration toward Obama. McCain hasn’t, to my knowledge, made comparable statements about protecting white women from uppity colored fellows. Because that isn’t what he thinks.
It’s sad to see how the McCain campaign has degenerated from the ideals he initially expressed. But it’s also dumb to resort to hyperbolic cries of racism all the time. (Wait, I said degenerated.. was that an agist, coded reference to McCain’s neurological state? Call the PC cops!)
Mark: You guys are all f-ing hypocrites.
You are defending a man who is acting bat-shit crazy, even going so far as saying his opponent would actually “lose a war to win an election.”
Some raising of the state of discourse in the public sphere.
I agree with G Alkon,. To respond to you guys virtually requires one to sin.
Michael I: To respond to you guys virtually requires one to sin.
THE MOST TRUTHFUL COMMENT IN THE HISTORY OF VOX NOVA!
You know kids, I read this and realized that all of us conservatives who comment on here should hang our heads in shame. We just can’t discuss abstruse issues with the reason and charity that you can. We can’t strive to explain Catholic teaching to people, we just yelp and engage in politics as if it were tribal warfare. We constantly mischaracterize the other side and then refuse to engage it.
Sigh.
Maybe some days we’ll be able to attain your level of discourse. In the mean time, have fun in the sandbox… The tone around here has been rising ever higher above my feeble conservative intellect.
I’m with Darwin–it was fun while it lasted.
You know, Michael, I was thinking I should post something more about the dustup in my comments box in which you were (I was coming to think) much too roughly handled re: the July 4 post. I edited out the insult from Victor and even suggested that he should apologize.
But after watching the way the comboxes here are allowed to fester, how insult is part and parcel of the way digbydolben, GAklon, DeFrancisis, etc. function hereabouts, all without the slightest hint of dissatisfaction from you or the other members of this blog, I’ve come to the conclusion that you had no cause to complain.
In fact, compared to what “wrong thinkers” receive here on a daily basis, you probably got off light.
I edited out the insult from Victor and even suggested that he should apologize.
I appreciate the fact that your conscience finally rose from its slumber and that you edited out one of the insults, even if it was a month or so after that combox battle, at the point when no one was bothering to pay any more attention. Which one, of the many, was it? And why didn’t you edit out any of the insults thrown by the mentally unstable sci-fi writer? Afraid your celebrity reader would be offended and take his nationalistic ramblings elsewhere?
Why are Mark’s comments about hypocrisy denounced insults, while folks with opposite political and ecclesial views (we know who they are, don’t we?) are given a pass when they say the exact same thing, often directly to the contributors of the blog? Do your conscience and sense of decency also have a party affiliation?
Gerald,
Notice how Darwin won’t address the charge. This is about the tone of the campaign. He and his fellow McCain minions have turned a blind-eye to the tnothing short of McCarthyite modus operandi of their man saying that his opponent is essentially treasonous, pulling the wool over Americans eyes, to win an election. Nothing I have done here remotely reaches the level of insult and slander of the candidate it question.
While I anticipate a characteristic 3-6 paragraph response, with its meandering around the issue, replete with ill-constructed analogies, I doubt the basic facts won’t remain.
Strike that ‘Gerald’.
I deleted a paragraph about how the Milbank claims have been discredited already.
“What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was…wait for it…using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch…”
That McCain memo calling Obama to task for his preferences in snack food and soft drinks was right on. Exactly the type of information I need to be an informed voter. Policy matters are so BORING.
The “mentally unstable sci-fi writer” is a personal friend, and has been for years. So no, it’s not a “fawn over the celebrity thing,” but if anything, “cutting my friends too much slack.” But thanks for the additional aspersion on my character, Mr. Iafrate. Two unwarranted insults in one sentence–you’re quite efficient.
And as to Steve’s actual “insults,” your response here confirms his criticism of *your writing style*. Would you tolerate the stuff said here in person? Is “f—ing hypocrite” a staple of your conversations in real life? “Over a beer”? Would you say the same things? Is digbydolben’s style something you endorse? GAklon’s?
Remember that accusation that you dodge criticism? Your response here isn’t a rebuttal.
Oh, and it couldn’t have been edited “a month later” because the insult was posted on July 12. Anything to make me look worse, eh? But I will draw deliberate attention to it today, which you can–and will–interpret any way you like.
Another thing, which will have to come as a shock to you–*I don’t read every thread here.* I didn’t know about Mr. Shaw’s minutes old insult until you linked with your usual pique. In fact, I don’t even know who Shaw is, but I’ll agree that calling someone a loon is repellent and has no place in honest dialogue. To the extent I can parse an actual argument from his tired conservative boilerplate, I disagree with it. I’d even go so far as to post over there to that effect, but I’m sure you’d spin that into another shot at my integrity.
Run your kiosk as you like.
I hear that for those past a certain age, Met-Rx bars are just too much on the system, despite their superior taste. Anything stronger than the bland Ensure variants makes those ‘more experienced ‘eaters prone to constipation.
John may be just grumpy about the sacrifices he must make, for the sake of health. He should set a better example for our country’s youth about willing sacrifice…..
It looks like lots of Dems are going to play the race card and not just MM.
Bloggers at the Huffington Post launched a backlash to the backlash against Obama’s overseas trip, arguing in part that he wouldn’t face such criticism of acting premature if he were white:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080731/pl_politico/12205
See this also:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080731/D928TNV00.html
MAN was I confused. Milbank in the Washington Post? Ohhh… different Milbank.
I was confused too :)
Don’t dismiss the racist undertones so blithely. As everybody knows, they have been playing the “southern strategy” since Nixon, and getting less than 10 percent of the black vote in return (ask them if they think the GOP is racist or not).
Try this out: the particular “celebrities” were not chosen by accident.
“Anyone with even a vague sense of pop culture knows that Britney and Paris are yesterday’s news. Here’s a link to Forbes’ Celebrity 100. Paris and Britney don’t even make the list any more.
Instead, the top 10, in order: Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Jay-Z, The Police, JK Rowling, Brad Pitt.
So, they didn’t pick other big celebrities, who were either men, or black, or married.
What they picked was two sexually available white women.”
(http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/2008/07/sex_celebs_why_britney_and_par.html)
Anybody wondering what the hell is going on need to look up the attack ads against Harold Ford in Tenesee a couple of years ago. Make the comparison.
MM, I’m not sure how your general “southern strategy” thesis is reconciled with the reality of black conservatives & GOPers (elected or otherwise… Armstrong Williams, JC Watts, etc). You would think that they’d acknowledge and denounce just tactics, especially when out of office. Perhaps there are other reasons why the GOP gets only 10% of the black vote.
As others elsewhere have noted in response to the “Britney & Paris are so yesterday” retort, the point seems to have been to show folks whose fame seems completely without merit, which isn’t the case with the top 10.
Britney and Paris are on regularly on the cover of supermarket magazines, which is my standard for what constitutes pop culture (since I don’t watch cable TV). In any event, the obvious point of the ad is that Obama is being glorified above any of his actual accomplishments, just like those celebrities (and given that that was the point, it wouldn’t have made as much sense to compare Obama to celebrities who are more genuinely talented). Again, it’s a stupid and insulting ad, and reminds me once again of why I don’t watch TV, but the only people seeing any racist insinuations here are people who hate McCain and who are desperately grasping for straws. (Indeed, the fact that they see “racism” here says more about their own perceptions than about any reaction that the average American would have.)
As everybody knows, they have been playing the “southern strategy” since Nixon.
The evidence for the “southern strategy” is pretty thin (the Nixon southern strategy that is. That the Democrats made an explicitly racist bargain with Southern segregationists for more than half a century is fairly well established).
Well I guess if the add is racist, this is anti-Semitic:
“I once heard a rabbi in Winston-Salem say that there were two misconceptions in United States—one, that Jews were smarter than most people and, two, that they have more media influence. It was a laughable and cleaver joke, but in truth both are true. There is nothing wrong with smarts and hard work, but using the media to support Israeli Zionist policies is not good for America…
In 2003 there were Americans with Israel citizenships in key positions of our Government who did not recuse themselves from the making decisions which led us into war with Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz Deputy to Donald Rumsfeld in the Defense Department, Lewis “Scooter” Libby Chief-of-Staff to Richard Cheney, Elliott Abrams assistant to Condoleezza Rice in the State Department, Douglas Feith in the Defense Department, Richard Pearl and other “neocons” in Defense were all persons in key positions in the Bush Administration making the case for war in Iraq. When a key Government official has to make a decision which may have a profound effect on our security and wellbeing, they should not have to choose between their loyalties.”
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stannutter/gG5nlZ
But while we’re talking about the sin of calumny being a grave sin, there’s always this:
http://vox-nova.com/2007/09/11/criticism-of-high-priest-of-official-religion-off-limits/#comments
Philip — thank you for reminding us of how Petraeus disturbingly slandered himself, the US army, the United States, and the Iraqi people in his report last fall.
Oh I don’t know about that. It seems what he said has turned out to be true.
The Southern strategy worked well for the Republicans until the late 1980′s.
As the gains of the civil rights movement in some areas have become taken for granted, any number of blacks have seen it in their interest to serve the conservative movement. (This is most evident in the always pressing need for “Black Republicans,” who can advance very quickly despite glaring personal and professional deficiencies — witness Clarence Thomas and Armstrong Williams and many others.)
As the Southern strategy has become less effective, the fear- and hate-mongers have needed to construct new anti-white, anti-American others for the public to vent their hatred against — new blacks, as it were. The war on terror has served this purpose well.
Now G. Alkon, that sounds racist. Guess them uppity blacks don’t know their place.
BA — the Southern strategy worked precisely when the Democrats abandoned their alliance with the segregationists and pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
At that point, the racist white vote was ripe for the picking, and the Republicans became the party of over and covert racism.
It isn’t racist, though you may hear it that way because you would like to believe that Republicans have something to offer blacks other than a bit of money and condescending flattery.
Clarence Thomas is a greater insult to blacks, and to the memory of black suffering, than the most depraved fantasist could have ever imagined.
Gee, it seems saying a group of people don’t really know what’s good for them is kind of racist.
I’m saying Black Republicans don’t know much of anything about politics.
And you’ll find that most blacks, and many whites, agree with me!
What about Hispanic or Asian Republicans?
Clarence Thomas is a greater insult to blacks, and to the memory of black suffering, than the most depraved fantasist could have ever imagined.
What an ignorant slander. Since you know nothing about the man or his jurisprudence, I suggest that you read two books:
My Grandfather’s Son, by Clarence Thomas.
First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas, by Scott Douglas Gerger.
Or if reading a whole book would be too much, read the following article, by a liberal black law professor: “Just Another Brother on the SCT?: What Justice Clarence Thomas Teaches Us About the Influence of Racial Identity” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=638281
Clarence Thomas is a greater insult to blacks, and to the memory of black suffering, than the most depraved fantasist could have ever imagined.
Can you explain this, G? It seems pretty slanderous to me, but I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. I have no idea why you’d say something like this, but that’s why I’m asking.
Where’d Alkon go?
Clarence Thomas is the beneficiary of a certain peculiar kind of affirmative action: he has been promoted because he is a black “conservative.” This is not normal affirmative action: this is humiliating affirmative action; there are very few blacks who agree with him, there are many Republicans who want to have black allies for political cover, and so Thomas gets promoted, not just because he is black, but because he is one of a very small number of blacks.
Thomas is paranoid that people question his ability because of this arrangement. So he hates affirmative action. He wants to pretend that he hates affirmative action on its own merits, but he really hates it because he himself is the exemplar of the most extreme, grotesque, and humiliating affirmative action ever enacted. He confuses his own predicament with those of blacks in general. He is an extreme narcissist. He is consumed with rage and self-loathing.
That he has reasons for feeling the way he does, that his views fit into a position of “black conservatism” (which is just as repellent as any other “conservatism” of this mode, advocating violent self-discipline as the only means of “self-improvement”), is not relevant.
What is relevant is that he has let himself be used by cynical whites, hates himself for it, and tries to blame everyone else for his problems.
You’re right, it was unfair of me to say, “Clarence Thomas is a greater insult to blacks, and to the memory of black suffering, than the most depraved fantasist could have ever imagined.”
I should have said, “The Supreme Court appointment of Clarence Thomas is a greater insult to blacks, and to the memory of black suffering, than the most depraved fantasist could have ever imagined.”
He wants to pretend that he hates affirmative action on its own merits, but he really hates it because he himself is the exemplar of the most extreme, grotesque, and humiliating affirmative action ever enacted. He confuses his own predicament with those of blacks in general. He is an extreme narcissist. He is consumed with rage and self-loathing.
What a bigoted, prejudiced, and hateful thing to say. And just sheerly ignorant — no one who knows anything about Justice Thomas thinks of him as rageful and self-loathing. To the contrary, if you’re ever around him, he’s the most gregarious and warm person you’ll ever meet. Again, read up on the man. You would be surprised.
Wow, G. Alkon – You’re saying so much more than you meant to. I guess you’re not a “closet” racist anymore!
And needless to say, I don’t expect any of the people hyperventilating over imaginary racism in the McCain ad will rebuke GAlkon for his genuinely racist comments.
There is alot of self-loathing evident is Thomas’ autobiography
Have you read the book?
Yes.
Well, maybe so. A wiser choice of words “honest” — Thomas confesses to past bouts with alcohol, for example — especially as compared to the usual sugar-coated fluff that one invariably finds in political autobiographies. Moreover, most of the book deals with his childhood and upbringing. If you’ve ever read any autobiographies of people who grew up under segregation, you will recognize that Thomas’s book is one of the most powerful such books ever written.
A wiser choice of words would be “honest,” that is.
You guys are all f-ing hypocrites
Michael, I guess the libs around here aren’t subject to your “editing button” and “calls to apologize”.
You are defending a man who is acting bat-shit crazy, even going so far as saying his opponent would actually “lose a war to win an election.”
Mark, the facts speak for themselves. On the cusp of victory, Obama was still talking about unilaterally removing troops from Iraq even before he went there to see that the troop surge has worked beyond our best expectations.
A win in Iraq is a loss for the Democrats. Obama knows this. It is in his best interest (and the best interest of his party) that we lose, and George Bush doesn’t score any political points. Blood for oil? Heck, Obama doesn’t care about blood for the presidency. Besides, it’s only Iraqis, not “our kids”.
But what do you expect from a man who supports leaving babies who survive abortion to die if their mothers don’t want them.
…Thomas began his legal career in a series of jobs that, as he says, “bore the taint of racial preference.” Indeed, it seems that he has never had any other kind of job. Danforth, then the attorney general of Missouri, hired him out of Yale as a lawyer on his staff, and after a few years Thomas moved on to the legal department at Monsanto. In 1979, after Danforth was elected to the Senate, he invited Thomas to go with him to Washington. With Ronald Reagan’s election a year later, Thomas received a surprise job offer to join the Administration as the assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education. As at Yale, Thomas knew that the invitation was the result of his race, that he had been “singled out solely because I was black, which I found degrading.” Nevertheless, Thomas took the job and, a year later, when he was thirty-three years old, received a promotion to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Though Thomas doesn’t say so directly, it’s clear that he was given the job because he was black.
For almost eight years, Thomas seems to have done a competent job running the E.E.O.C. Reagan’s people had, in a model demonstration of affirmative action, looked beyond the traditional candidates for leadership positions, and taken a chance on Thomas, and he had done as well as any white executive could have been expected to do. But, as Thomas moved through the hierarchy of Republican Administrations, the paternalism didn’t seem to bother him anymore—or else he found it convenient to pretend that it did not exist. Thomas’s rhetoric against traditional civil-rights dogma became more strident, even as he became an ever more prominent beneficiary of it. In other words, Yale and Reagan treated him the same way, but he hates one and reveres the other. Thomas never acknowledges, much less explains, the contradiction.
This omission becomes even more glaring when Thomas begins to discuss his judicial career. In 1989, he was hardly an obvious candidate for the court of appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is generally regarded as second in importance only to the Supreme Court. Just forty-one years old, Thomas had never tried a case, or argued an appeal, in any federal court, much less in the high-powered D.C. Circuit; the last time Thomas had appeared in any courtroom was when he was a junior attorney in Missouri; he had never produced any scholarly work; his tenure at the E.E.O.C., although respectable, did not mark him as a notable innovator in the federal bureaucracy. He was, in short, a black conservative in an Administration with very few of them. That’s why he got the job.
And that’s also why, in 1991, after Thomas had been a judge for just sixteen months, Bush named him to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. At a press conference in Kennebunkport, when the President introduced Thomas to the nation, Bush said that the young judge was “the best qualified” nominee for the Court—a self-evidently preposterous statement. Indeed, in his book Thomas says, “Even I had my doubts about so extravagant a claim,” so he took it upon himself to ask C. Boyden Gray, Bush’s White House counsel, if he had been picked because he was black. According to Thomas, “Boyden replied that in fact my race had actually worked against me.” Gray said that Bush had originally planned to have Thomas replace Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., but Brennan had quit earlier than expected, in 1990, and Thomas was not yet regarded as ready for the promotion. As Thomas recalls the conversation with Gray, he said that the Bush Administration wanted “to avoid appointing me to what was widely perceived as the court’s ‘black’ seat.” But, of course, that is precisely what Bush did, and it is inconceivable that a young white lawyer who headed a modest federal agency would have been similarly rushed onto the Supreme Court. In the light of this conversation with Gray, though, Thomas declares that his race worked against him as a potential judicial appointee. It is hard to tell whether this is self-delusion or dishonesty.
–from J Toobin’s review of Thomas’ autobiography
That he took it upon himself to ask “Boyden” and then simply believes him is very pathetic.
A long blockquote from a Jeffrey Toobin article does nothing to justify your bigoted and ignorant statement. Have you read the liberal law professor’s article that I cited above? If not, at least keep your reactionary ignorance to yourself.
Michael, I guess the libs around here aren’t subject to your “editing button” and “calls to apologize”.
This ain’t my post, dude. It belongs to MM.
Anyway, I have been known to delete racist comments, but not accusations of hypocrisy. I also have no problem with profanity.
Michael,
I apologize for the comment. I misread a prior comment.
I’ve read the article. I couldn’t care less.
The quote from Toobin is relevant only because it points out that Thomas himself knew enough to ask whether his astonishing supreme court appointment was based on his race; he knew enough to ask, but then he let himself believe good old Boyden when Boyden said that it wasn’t.
To spend one’s life thinking about one topic, and to have failed to advance beyond elementary self-deception, is sad indeed.
Note: there is nothing wrong with race-based appointments as far as I am concerned; even the radical affirmative action practiced by Republicans in search of exemplary black co-partisans is inevitable and not particularly objectionable; what is sad and pathetic, indeed dangerous, is Thomas’ flagrant self-delusion.
Let me give you one other bit of information: there is nothing at all wrong with self-discipline and self-reliance; I am all for radical individual creativity and courage; I would not be alive if certain of my ancestors had not, at moments all alone, stood up for themselves against all odds and “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.”
But when people start preaching self-reliance and all the rest as the basis of a social policy, when they start saying that certain suffering groups need to practice it as the basis of their general improvement, what you are hearing is a brutal alibi for murder.
To preach self-reliance to the suffering is cruel and anti-Christian. Helping them BE self-reliant is wonderful indeed; but that doesn’t happen by hectoring them with demands for discipline; it happens with love.
The fact that Clarence Thomas suffered as a young man by being hammered with this sort of brutal teaching makes me feel sorry for him; it doesn’t make his “jurisprudence” any less appalling.
Tony,
Go plat with your surrogate tools…
I don’t believe you read the article, if you maintain that Thomas’s jurisprudence is “appalling” from the perspective of someone who cares about minority rights. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Go read the article, and try to understand where Thomas is coming from (if you’re going to make nasty accusations about his thinking, you should at least take the trouble to educate yourself rather than persisting in such stupidity.)
I concur with J.Toobin (and G Alkon) on the Thomas situation. The latter is a sad man.
I see no reason to think that you know what you’re talking about either.
Xenophobia is the McCain tactic of Friday, Aug. 1. In the new ‘issue-based’ attack ad, “New Taxes and Foreign Oil”, there is the text of ‘foreign’ next to Obama’s face.
As Joe Klein has said recently , many of us were simply wrong to assume that McCain was a “decent man”.
I’m also told that, if you play the ad backwards, you can hear a voice saying Obama’s middle name over and over again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2dloF–BVg
This new ad shows McCain’s new low. Sorry folks, all politics is soteriological; everyone promises some kind of salvation. McCain promises to be the one to save the world from Obama. Talk about dualistic. And I am sorry, the “messiah” meme does make a mockery out of Christ.
The Moses scene was hilarious! Thanks for the pointer.
Wait, you believe this?
Sorry folks, all politics is soteriological; everyone promises some kind of salvation.
Some politicians say, “I’ll do a better job at promoting economic growth.” Other politicians say that, just because they’re in the race, “this is the moment that the world began to heal.”
And I am sorry, the “messiah” meme does make a mockery out of Christ.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s a mockery of Christ when people like Gerald Campbell claim that a mere politician has ability to reshape our souls, etc.
New low indeed.
So it’s OK for Obama to make utopian claims about himself, and for his followers to swoon with delight, but it’s a “new low” for someone else to poke fun at it? You guys have a weird sense of propriety.
I have not heard Obama make utopian claims about himself. It’s an invention of the McCain backers… who then “poke fun” at their own construction.
Aha, you’re in luck. Just watch the new video linked above. Then your ignorance of Obama’s words will be remedied.
I’ve heard all of those quotes before SB.
So you think “this is the moment the earth began to heal” isn’t over the top in any way? Again, you have awfully weird sensibilities.
Heard in context, no I don’t think it’s over the top.
Do you have any sort of media awareness whatsoever? Or are you nothing but a simplistic soundbyte kind of guy? You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.
That’s odd — you’ve certainly shown yourself to be cynical and iconoclastic when it comes to many other politicians and the very idea of the United States, so I’m not sure what makes you so naive when it comes to Obama the planet-healer.
I am most cynical in the face of flat out lies. Your party’s legendary for that sort of thing.
Obama hasn’t made utopian claims about himself. About America, yes, but not about himself.
If one actually read the context of what Obama says, it’s not as if he is saying when elected, fairy dust will sprinkle across the earth and everything will be fine. He is saying that if he is elected, he will bring in an administration which will be concerned about things such as the environment, and through work (yes, he has said through work; he doesn’t preach sola fidei) the factors behind the environmental crisis (or others) can be overcome. That’s all.
If he said “Tomorrow, there won’t be any trash in my home” would you act like he was saying something magical is happening, or would you imagine that — maybe he will take it out? The second is implied with the first. If you read the contexts, the implications of his words are just like this.
Re: Clarence Thomas: In a more literate age, perhaps putative Catholics wouldn’t have acted as if “self-loathing” is some sort of sin. They would have been familiar with St. Paul’s lament over the weaknesses of the flesh, St. Augustine’s Confessions, and many of the great saints who were forthcoming about their weaknesses and faults.