Friday, May 25, 2012
A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. Anyone on this tedious rightblogger watch will have noticed the howling frenzy into which Elizabeth Warren's old claims of Cherokee ancestry has driven them. There has been a torrent of gags about "Fauxcahontas," citations of Cher's "Half-Breed," and other leading indicators of the state of Republican minority outreach.
Their main complaint, to the extent that it is coherent, seems to be that Warren must have expected career advancement from her claim. No evidence that she received such perks (appointment to a "Native American Chair" at Harvard, for example) has been discovered, but they keep pitching -- and often tying it to the Obama "born in Kenya" crap they've also been pushing for a few weeks. "I don’t know whether either Obama or Warren intentionally misrepresented their backgrounds," says David French of National Review, "but one thing I do know: The more diverse they seemed, the better it was for their academic careers. " *
I've found the whole thing depressing for a couple of reasons. First, because in the real world playing Indian is not remotely a big deal. Anyone who spends any time in the south or the west will meet many white folks who say they're one-eighth Choctaw, or Sioux on their great-grandfather's side, or such like, usually on no better grounds than Warren's claim that she heard of her Cherokee forebears from her mother. That right-wingers who claim to be conversant with ordinary Americans don't know or pretend not to know this just adds some bitter irony to the situation.
Second, it's just the sort of idiotic thing that, at the nadir of my despair of American politics, I am inclined to expect a major race to be decided upon.
Well, it looks like I was wrong:
A new poll shows the US Senate race in Massachusetts tightening, with challenger Elizabeth Warren running essentially even with incumbent Scott Brown (R), and with relatively few voters undecided...
Back in February, the poll found 49 percent for Brown and 40 percent for Warren. The share of respondents saying they were undecided has fallen from 9 percent in February to 5 percent in the new poll, taken earlier this week.
Warren appears to have solidified her position despite controversy that has emerged in recent weeks over whether she inappropriately identified herself as a "minority" law scholar and whether that self-identification may have advanced her career.
Warren's campaign may still go Pete Tong, in which case I'll probably think up some other reason to be pissed at the voters of Massachusetts. But thank God it won't be over this stupid bullshit.
* UPDATE. I neglected to add that French offers nothing to back up this assertion except tales of his own days at Cornell, which he portrays as overrun by affirmative action hires and admissions and therefore proof that Obama went to the Columbia admissions office dressed in a loincloth and munching on a dog, which is the only reason they admitted him and kept him on despite his suppressed lousy grades.
7:56 AM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, May 23, 2012
KILL 'EM WITH KINDNESS. These days of gay presidents, when even the black people conservatives were counting on to fuck up the Rainbow Coalition aren't behaving as expected, must be hard on the hardcore. The Anchoress -- that shut-in who never shuts up -- preacheth:
Beyond the bumperstickerspeak and repetition of the feelings being promoted in the pop-culture and on execrable morning talk shows, I dare say it’s the Catholics who are saying the most interesting, compelling and thoughtful things about homosexuality, life, love and faith right now.
And she's not talking about "Pray I don't kill you, faggot," or any of those Catholic classics I recall from my childhood. No, drastic times call for drastic measures. So she offers instead a video by Michael Voris, whose work I've noticed before, which brings us a kinder, gentler message -- "moved unsentimental old me to tears at one point," sniffs The Anchoress -- about how the proper Catholic should feel about those strange and miserable creatures whom they are called by Christ to pity:
For the man or woman who discovers this about themselves, the reaction must range from bewilderment to sadness to anger. The feelings of different-from-everyone-else that every person feels from time to time and sometimes even frequently must reach a level of intensity that those who do not suffer from this could not likely understand. This is the first and foremost source of compassion that we must always feel and exhibit toward our fellow dignified humans who have this cross of self-doubt, difference, a future wracked with uncertainty.
Also, homosexuals are "never really able to see any hope whatsoever down the road." Say, homosexuals, why do you call yourselves gay? The whole thing sounds like a drag and I don't mean RuPaul.
But wait, there's hope! On the other hand, says Voris, gays are "more intensely loved by God than most others," because they are "victim souls" who "suffer in a way more exacting than the rest of us" with "the cross of homosexuality." If you're a Catholic homosexual, all this suffering can get you into heaven (assuming you never have sex or impure thoughts or, if you do, repent of them in a timely manner, meaning before you get hit by lightning or something). In fact, your suffering, celibate example can bring "countless souls to Christ."
If you're not a Catholic, well, you know, aitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks.
If you were thinking of dropping a comment over there, don't bother. The Anchoress has closed them. As she explains in another post:
I’m distracted enough without having to moderate comments, so yes, they are still closed until after June 1.
I’m frankly considering never reopening them! [smiley face]
I get the feeling our mean fake nun is clutching the metal ruler 24/7 these days.
UPDATE. In (uniformly brill, as ever) comments, DocAmazing considers an angle I'd missed: "Voris' thesis implies that Andrew Sullivan has a deep internal life. I just can't see it."
7:59 PM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, May 22, 2012
SHORTER VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Those desperate Democrats will certainly fight dirty this year. Here's some bullshit about Obama getting bad grades in college. Yes, certainly they will fight dirty, these Democrats, because they are desperate.
6:40 PM by roy edroso
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Sunday, May 20, 2012
NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the controversy over a 1991 press booklet that described Obama as "born in Kenya," which rightbloggers have taken up as proof that Obama wanted people to think he was a foreigner.
I noticed on the pixel trail that, while nearly all the folks pumping this story insist that they, personally, believe Obama was born in Hawaii, a large percentage of their commenters talk old-fashioned birtherism (e.g., "so sick that they are going to let this illegal President stay in the white house"). But why not? The subject is a magnet for conspiracy theorists of all stripes, and as long as you're entertaining the idea that an ambitious American politician would want to portray himself as ineligible for the Presidency, you might as well also talk about Barry Soetoro's fake birth certificate and plot to firebomb the U.S. from within with Bill Ayers.
Once upon a time these guys were a fringe, of the sort that any political movement would need to lose if it were going to be taken seriously; now, they're an important part of the Republican base.
One of my favorites from the story is Rosslyn Smith of The American Thinker, who had many angles to offer, including this:
The political left has a long history of using plays, movies, and TV series to push their agenda because dramatic media showcase their agenda items to good effect. Many audience members get so wrapped up in the images, characters, and action that they don't stop to think about the huge dose of political propaganda being served on the side. This is one reason why the left talks so much of narratives. The political right, on the other hand, completely dominates the emotionally cooler medium of talk radio...
So: Leftists hypnotize the American people with Glee and Syriana while conservatives stay aloof in the cool, Apollonian heights of The Rush Limbaugh Show, talking about where Barack Obama was born. This is the most convincing evidence I have yet seen of the existence of parallel universes.
UPDATE. Among the many sterling comments to this post, wjts gets extra credit for answering the tendentious questions asked by afterbirther Roger Kimball. My favorite:
Why can’t we see a certified copy of his birth certificate?
Because there's a problem with your wireless connection.
10:38 PM by roy edroso
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Thursday, May 17, 2012
THE LATEST CRAZE: AFTERBIRTHERISM! The brethren learn that in 1991 a publicist said Obama was Kenyan, and suddenly birtherism is resurrected -- in a new, Möbius strip form, Afterbirtherism, in which Obama is attacked as not being foreign born:
It is evidence--not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.
Well, if that isn't an impeachable offense, why do we even have a Constitution?
The publicist says there was nothing sinister in it, she just fucked up, and rightbloggers go, oh sure you did -- you "fucked up" at concealing your decades-long plot to deceive the American people! The Right Sphere has our favorite version:
Despite the numerous times the article states that the booklet does not change the fact that Obama was born in Hawaii, the moron Left and their smear merchants are running with the “Breitbart.com has gone birther” narrative. This is their way of trying to kill the story before it makes it to the mainstream media, or at the very least, poison the story and change what the mainstream media says about the new information.
Later, this cowboy hears the publicist's explanation, and sees that it's all been just a misunderstanding and -- oh, who am I kidding?
Not good enough. Who gave her the “fact” she failed to check? There was no google or wikipedia back in 1991. This is not the end of the story.
Second place goes to American Thinker's Thomas Lifson, who closes his Afterbirther essay thus:
It is the sort of thing that can be discussed by anyone, and presents visual elements, which operate on a different part of the brain than words do.
Worthy of Criswell, that one.
Looking at the ferocious stupidity of the posts and of their commenters (love the guy at Gateway Pundit who says, "Everyone should call the New York Times and ask why their journalists never found this or reported on it"), it's clear that the people who go for this don't even qualify as a fringe -- they're like severely mentally-disabled children who react spasmodically to certain colors or shapes. Yet as long as there's clicks and cash in it, the ones who are not dumb but merely cynical, like Ole Perfesser Instapundit, will indulge them.
On the bright side, I can't imagine normal people hearing this bedlam and being convinced of anything except the need to get away from these nuts. Maybe soon the Afterbirthers will just retreat into their private world, and leave the fate of the nation to people who haven't completely lost their minds.
UPDATE. Famous libertarian Nick Gillespie approaches the subject:
... Obama's most-ardent champions must agree this sort of thing is a pretty good catch by the Breitbart.com crew. When you're in a race that's heating up, this sort of blast from the past is the last thing with which you want to be dealing...
There's no question that this sort of document may add to the idea that Obama is willing to edit and revise his life story depending on circumstance (the insurance company story about this mother's treatments strikes me as a more telling example, since Obama is not really implicated in the author booklet in the same way).
To be fair, there's also a lot of stuff in there about how the distant past isn't as important as the present, so you know Gillespie's really part of the plague-on-both-your-houses libertarian Third Way, which is basically conservatism plus marijuana.
UPDATE 2. Gender of publicist corrected in post, as part of the cover-up.
11:09 PM by roy edroso
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IT'S TRAD, DAD. This Times story about some rich guy's attempt at an ad campaign against Obama has mainly gotten attention for a line in the brief referring to the President as a "metrosexual, black Abraham Lincoln." But what makes the whole thing a loser is the unrelenting focus on Jeremiah Wright:
The document, which was written by former advisers to Mr. McCain, is critical of his decision in 2008 not to aggressively pursue Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright. In the opening paragraphs of the proposal, the Republican strategists refer to Mr. McCain as “a crusty old politician who often seemed confused, burdened with a campaign just as confused.”
“Our plan is to do exactly what John McCain would not let us do: Show the world how Barack Obama’s opinions of America and the world were formed,” the proposal says. “And why the influence of that misguided mentor and our president’s formative years among left-wing intellectuals has brought our country to its knees."
The plan is designed for maximum impact, far beyond a typical $10 million television advertising campaign. It calls for full-page newspaper advertisements featuring a comment Mr. Wright made the Sunday after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he said.
I don't know much about Joe Ricketts, but clearly he's not paying attention to where his fellow conservatives have taken the discussion. There's nothing here about Obama eating dogs, having a composite girlfriend, murdering Andrew Breitbart, or unleashing black flash mobs on our nation's white people. There's nothing about him trying to take over the internet, or his wife taking ten million dollar vacations. And not one blessed word about Saul Alinsky!
It's like Ricketts walked in from 2008 telling everyone about this great new band called MGMT. As if! Ricketts should spend some time around the cool kids, from whom he will learn that a barrage of non-sequiturs is the New Style. Here's a fine example of the genre from one Leah Lax:
Yes I listen to the Tea Party. Org Bless their anti-Semitic Hearts (showing Jewish love) and today they came so close on who is Obama's Civilian Army they could not join the dots, it became very apparent that the Muslim Black Panthers are this very army. They are funded by the Nation of Islam they admit they are killers; they admit the murder of Malcolm X. But the Tea Party .org blog talk radio let it slip by without even thinking of the obvious.
They spoke about how Farrakhan is on the CIA payroll but why. Van Jones is on the same payroll as well as Bill Ayes The reason will be to provide a government split into sections 1 a Black nation for Islam 2 a communist nation , 3 a socialist nation. And one will be were the We the people who revolt against them will stay and live. This country will be divided into 4 sections . The South may be the We the People, the north east maybe the Nation of Islam, the upper mid-west may be the Socialist and the Communist will be beyond the Rockies.
Alaska and Hawaii will stand on its own the new Switzerland
Now we're getting somewhere! C'mon, pops, get with it. You'll be speaking wingnut in no time.
9:18 AM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
THE CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL TRADITION, PART 430,292. I see Perfesser Glenn Reynolds is back on the air. Let's look in:
YOU KNOW WHO HAS MORE PRIVATE-SECTOR BUSINESS EXPERIENCE THAN BARACK OBAMA? Yeah, Mitt Romney, sure. Everybody knows that. But also Rush Limbaugh. And I don’t mean for his radio show — his iced tea business is the real deal. I ordered tea Sunday night, and (with free shipping) got it this morning. That’s the kind of service I normally expect from Amazon and not much of anyone else. I don’t know how much tea he’s selling, but it’s probably a lot, and it’s certainly more product than Obama has ever sold. It’s good tea, too . . .
I forget. What is this guy famous for, again? I thought I had some idea, but it turned out I was thinking of Larry King.
UPDATE. From comments: "Kroger will sell you a gallon of the Turkey Hill iced tea for $2.29, and their house brand for $1.39. (It's on sale this week.) Maybe when you've got a well-padded ass resting in an oversized McMansion in a suburb that's far, far away from commercial development or funny-colored people it's worth the $10/gallon premium to have someone bring your iced tea to your door..." Well, you know, BigHank53: Markets in everything.
Other wiseguys run up the flagpole MotherFucking Iced Tea™, Crunchy Con Flakes, etc.
10:16 PM by roy edroso
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ALEC AKBAR. Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute at the Washington Times:
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin recently came under attack from left-wing activists for meeting with representatives of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a nationwide association of conservative state legislators. This is but the latest salvo in a sustained attack on ALEC from the political left. The governor rightly has ignored the attacks, which really are efforts to stifle political speech.
Translation: About 30 people demonstrated on the sidewalk, and they weren't holding BREITBART IS HERE signs, so it's an "attack" -- indeed, a "salvo"! -- rather than Tea Party free speech.
ALEC’s critics paint it as a shadowy organization that pushes ready-made legislation to advance a corporate agenda. In reality...
In reality, or at least grammatical reality, you would expect the author to address these charges next. But Smith isn't done crying victim:
...the attack on ALEC is part of a much broader attack by those seeking to drive all market voices from the marketplace of ideas. ALEC’s critics say they object to its tactics, but what they really seek to attack is its ideological principles: free markets and limited government.
And apple pie. Don't forget apple pie.
In the course of this short editorial, Smith uses the word "attack" eight times. By the end, he's stepped it up to "thuggery" and "strong-arm tactics." Yet as aficionados of the genre will have guessed, Smith cites in evidence nothing more thuggish than that small sidewalk protest. His other claims are even sillier. Get a load, and I do mean load, of this:
This effort to drive out pro-market voices is far more extensive than the attack on ALEC. Anti-business forces already have succeeded at excluding business experts from governmental policy advisory councils and imposing second-class status on them in academic journals. Any nonprofit political organization that receives business funding comes under constant attack - unless, that is, the funding is aimed at expanding the size and scope of government.
Smith doesn't bother to explain how the big bad lefties are "imposing second-class status" on "business experts" in "academic journals." Maybe some think-tank like ALEC or CEI tried to plant propaganda in some peer-reviewed publications, and they didn't go for it. "Constant attack" we can take to mean that somebody disagreed with them, out loud. Actually that's all any of it means.
I talk here from time to time about the insidiousness of propaganda, and how its practitioners are not just making bogus cases but also corrupting the language by the poisonous example of their obliviousness to meaning. Smith's effort is an especially clear example -- not fancied up by one of those bards of bullshit trained at Reason or the Wall Street Journal, but done straight to the template by someone too busy, uninterested, or incapable of normal human interaction to do anything else.
Smith may be as terrible a writer as he appears, but I wouldn't swear to it, because the sort of thing he's doing doesn't call for good writing -- it calls for its opposite. Good writing is supposed to clarify, and Smith's intention is to obfuscate.
He has a strong motivation to do so. Some folks besides the usual suspects have caught on to ALEC, and are reporting its true mission of muscling government to do the bidding of business (and lying about it). Even worse, this reporting has actually been heeded by audiences, causing businesses and politicians to disassociate themselves from ALEC.
Smith could have told us all that, but doing so would have invited readers to ask what's so unjust about the press accurately reporting what ALEC does, and ALEC affiliates deciding to quit the organization in consequence. They might then figure out that Smith's only real complaint is that his team suffers from it. So Smith just plays victim up and down the block -- which is still ridiculous, as both CEI and ALEC are well-connected and -funded wingnut welfare queens. But victim status, as has been obvious for decades, is the one reliable equity of modern conservative thought, and in the last ditch that's what they go with.
Besides, it's in the Washington Times -- it doesn't have to be too convincing. Sometimes you just gotta go through the motions. Don't cry, it's soft duty and the money's good!
Christ, I'm glad I'm not in that line of work.
10:28 AM by roy edroso
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Monday, May 14, 2012
NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about Obama's gay marriage statement and the delusional rightblogger reactions. One of the main reasons I believe in the justice of marriage equality is that the guys who are against it write such incredibly shitty polemics. Clear thinking makes clear writing, and the obverse is also true. Get a load of this from The Right Scoop:
They are actually comparing race to sexual preference? Yes, I said preference. Unlike skin color, there is NO evidence to support the idea that babies are born gay. People want to believe it’s innate but it’s just that, a belief. And a well crafted belief to elevate the idea of being gay far above preference into something that can tear at the fabric of the institution of marriage.
I suppose it's elitist of me to say so, but when your opponents argue like this, you can be reasonably certain you've picked the right side.
12:58 AM by roy edroso
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