Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Unsubstantial”

1 Comment

I know you’ll be as shocked as I was to hear that the White House (and US media) overhyped the success of the president’s trip to Europe.

Mr Sarkozy is pouring cold water on President Obama’s efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated. Behind leaks and briefings from the Elysée Palace lies Mr Sarkozy’s irritation at the rock-star welcome that Europe gave Mr Obama on his Europan tour earlier this month.

The American President’s call “to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare” was hot air, Mr Sarkozy’s diplomatic staff told him in a report. “It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States,” they said. Most of Mr Obama’s proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, the leaked report said.

“Unsubstantial.” Sarkozy is apparently more perceptive than 53% of the US electorate.

[Afternoon update]

But wait! There’s more!

On the US President, Mr Sarkozy said: “Obama has a subtle mind, very clever and very charismatic. But he was elected two months ago and had never run a ministry. There are a certain number of things on which he has no position. And he is not always up to standard on decision-making and efficiency,” he said.

The US President had underperformed on climate change, said Mr Sarkozy: “I told him: ‘I don’t think that you have quite understood what we are doing on carbon dioxide’.”

In another swipe at the American leader, Mr Sarkozy was quoted today making a dubious joke about the Obamania sweeping the European media. According to L’Express news magazine, Mr Sarkozy talked to another set of visitors about Mr Obama’s planned visit to the Normandy beaches in June, Mr Sarkozy said: “I am going to ask him to walk on the Channel and he’ll do it, you’ll see.”

He also implied that Spanish PM Zapatero isn’t the brightest bulb on the string (which wouldn’t surprise me). And you have to admit, he sure looks like Mr. Bean.

Anyway, I’m glad to see that The One has so restored respect for America and the presidency with our allies.

Humor, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Low Self Esteem

1 Comment

Frank J. says that we should pity the pirates, and ask ourselves why they plunder us:

…for a change, let’s really look at pirates. You may just see how they are the victims in all of this. That may seem ridiculous to you. After all, aren’t they the ones taking hostages? But ransoming hostages is just how they make their living. Do you get angry at an IRS agent or a lawyer for just doing his job? The issue is why pirates find pillaging and plundering their only options.

It’s not going very far out on a limb to say that pirates suffer from low self-esteem. They often have inferior prosthetics, such as hooks and peg legs, and that alone makes them feel disconnected from “normal” people. Then there is the scurvy and the inevitable depression that comes with it. Throw in the addiction to rum, and it’s obvious to anyone that we have individuals in severe need of help. Just look at a pirate’s choice of a pet: the parrot. It’s an aloof animal that does nothing but repeat the pirate’s own words in a mocking tone. If that were not enough of a cry for help, there is also their habit of burying treasure. It’s like they don’t even feel they are worthy of the fruits of their plundering and murder and thus deny it for themselves.

We have to help them. Do it for the children. As one commenter notes, pirates are people, too.

Media Criticism

I Wish It Were True

6 Comments

Ed Driscoll thinks that the seppuku of the MSM is complete. I doubt it. For one thing, to perform seppuku requires that one have some semblance of a sense of honor. I agree, though, that the CNN reporter’s behavior was shameful:

Roesgen didn’t bother angrily confronting that protester who compared the President to Hitler when Bush was in office. No, she used them as a prop to illustrate her story. Double standard much?

But that’s all right because, as we all know, Bush really was just like Hitler, if not much worse.

[Afternoon update]

Here’s a video of the righteous reaction of some of the protesters to Roesgen’s hackery.

[Another update]

The Boston Globe is amazing:

When the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reported that the Boston Globe-Democrat hadn’t run a single story on the national “Boston Tea Party” movement (key word: Boston), I’ll admit I was surprised. Their blatant political bias is obvious, and every rational reader knows their “news” coverage is driven by their politics. But not one story? From a journalistic standpoint, it’s utterly indefensible.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I picked up the BG-D this morning–the day after thousands of BOSTON-are citizens gathered at BOSTON Harbor for a BOSTON Tea Party to protest (in part) the taxpayer abuse by our BOSTON-based state government…and found a single local story in the BOSTON paper. Buried on page A16 there was a small AP story with the dateline “Frankfort, KY.”

I guess the Boston Globe-Democrat staff just couldn’t resist a “KY” reference…

To add ignorance to incompetence, the AP story spreads the canard that our Tea Party was part of some national Republican effort. They link it to FreedomWorks and the GOP–neither of whom had anything to do whatsoever with our event…though I’d be happy to send them the invoice for our expenses.

Here’s the Boston Globe-Democrat’s model for journalistic success:

1. Ignore a national story inspired by local Boston history for as long as possible;
2. Refuse to cover the story when it becomes local;
3. Misreport the story with a wire report from Kentucky;
4. Then wonder why you’re losing $1 million a week.

Or blame it all on Craigslist.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“The Meeting Was Really Kind Of Creepy”

5 Comments

Nope, no fascism to see here. Move along, people, move along.:

One topic under the microscope, our insider said, was on-air CNBC editor Rick Santelli’s rant two months ago about staging a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest the president’s bailout programs — an idea that spawned tax protest tea parties in other big cities, infuriating the White House. Oddly, Santelli was not at the meeting, while Jim Cramer was, noted our source, who added that no edict was ultimately handed down by the network chieftains.

As he notes, that’s the same White House that pretended yesterday that it was unaware of any of the tea parties.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

President Of The World

2 Comments

Victor Davis Hanson:

He is beginning to mention the novelty of his racial heritage a lot, usually in the context that we are now in a new world of Obama, and that his very presence is a rejection of the old and illiberal America.

That the veteran Colin Powell and Russian-speaking Condoleezza Rice ran American foreign policy the last eight years, in a way unthinkable in Europe, is never voiced. Suggesting that China would have an Uighur foreign minister, that Saudi Arabia would have a Christian foreign minister, that France would have an Algerian foreign minister, that Germany would have a Turkish foreign minister, or that Russia would have a Chechen foreign minister is as absurd as suggesting that a Powell or Rice was never a big deal.

So what Obama leaves out about America is telling. He touches on slavery, lack of voting rights for blacks in the South (although he conflates this issue and implies to foreigners that African Americans could not vote in the North as well), our past treatment of Native Americans, and the dropping of the bomb against Japan.

These transgressions are rarely put in any historical context, much less referenced as sins of mankind shared by all of his hosts (the pedigree of murder, exploitation, and rapine of his foreign interlocutors is quite stunning). We don’t hear many references to the American Revolution, or the great tradition of American ingenuity embodied by Bell, Edison, or the Wright brothers.

We hear nothing about our Gettysburg, or our entry into World War I. Iwo Jima and the Bulge are never alluded to. Drawing the line in Korea and forcing the end of the Soviet monstrosity are taboo subjects. That we pledged the life of New York for Berlin in the Cold War is unknown. Liberating Afghanistan and Iraq from the diabolical Taliban and Saddam Hussein is left unsaid. The Civil Rights movement, the Great Society, affirmative action, and present billion-dollar foreign-aid programs apparently never existed. Millions of Africans have been saved by George Bush’s efforts at extending life-saving medicines to AIDS patients — but again, this is never referenced.

This is how far you have to go to parody the guy.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Major Category Error

32 Comments

This comment just showed up in my post on media double standards on the DHS thing, and it makes a very common error among the left.

Amazing – Republicans are outraged when the DHS, a monster of their own creation, turns against them.

Two points. First, I am not now, and have never been, a Republican. The people who are outraged are not “Republicans” but rather, small-government types and veterans, the two groups that were slandered. It may be that many of them happen to be Republicans (and certainly many more than are Democrats), but this is not about Republicans.

The second point is that I was never in favor of a Department of Homeland Security, so the notion that I’m somehow hoist on my own petard here is hilariously ignorant.

Moreover, I was opposed to many things that the Bush administration did, and continue to be. That doesn’t mean, though, that I was going to vote for the Democrats, because on most of the issues on which I disagreed with the Bush administration, the Dems would have been even worse. And that’s what the tea parties are about. They’re not Republican rallies, because many of those attending them are as angry at Republicans as they are at Democrats. They are an expression of anger at the political class as a whole.

And for those who whine about the lack of tea parties over the Bush deficits, sometimes quantity has a quality all its own. There’s a concept called a tipping point. There was anger over the Bush spending (anger that I expressed myself, often), but it only became incandescent when it became so outrageous, with a projected budget that generates more deficit and debt in a few months than the Bush administration had generated in almost eight years. This anger didn’t start when President Obama took office, though he has certainly increased it. It started last fall, when the Bush administration started handing out taxpayer money by the hundreds of billions with no oversight or accountability.

No, I’m not a Republican. But the Republicans have a chance to finally make me one, if they can listen to the tea partiers today, and recognize the error of their ways. I won’t hold my breath, though, based on a lifetime of experience.

Philosophy, Political Commentary

Classical Versus Modern Liberals

3 Comments

Alan Wolfe says there’s no distinction between them. Jonah Goldberg says that this is palpable nonsense:

Classical liberalism believed in objective rules constraining and delineating the role of government. Modern liberalism, born at the beginning of the twentieth century, holds that there are no rules rooted outside the prevailing sentiments of liberals themselves. It’s all up to what liberals decide is necessary. Stuart Chase — who reportedly coined the phrase “the New Deal” — argued that it was vital that liberals be put in charge of an “economic dictatorship.” “Why,” he asked, “should the Russians have all the fun remaking the world?” Thurmond Arnold, one of the intellectual titans of the New Deal, defined liberalism as “deuces wild.” Dewey believed there was no such thing as natural rights and argued for things like “social control.” Wilson believed that the U.S. Constitution — a classically liberal document, I think it’s fair to say — needed to be scrapped for a new, living constitution. Call me crazy, but I find these to be contrary, not merely “evolutionary” perspectives.

And he has some interesting thoughts from Albert Jay Nock:

…one never knew what Liberals would do, and their power of self-persuasion is such that only God knows what they would not do. As casuists, they make Gury and St. Alfonso dei Liguori look like bush-leaguers. On every point of conventional morality, all the Liberals I have personally known were very trustworthy. They were great fellows for the Larger Good, but it would have to be pretty large before they would alienate your wife’s affections or steal your watch. But on any point of intellectual integrity, there is not one of them whom I would trust for ten minutes alone in a room with a red-hot stove, unless the stove were comparatively valueless.

Liberals generally,—there may have been exceptions, but I do not know who they were,—joined in the agitation for an income-tax, in utter disregard of the fact that it meant writing the principle of absolutism into the Constitution. Nor did they give a moment’s thought to the appalling social effects of an income-tax; I never once heard this aspect of the matter discussed. Liberals were also active in promoting the “democratic” movement for the popular election of senators. It certainly took no great perspicacity to see that these two measures would straightway ease our political system into collectivism as soon as some Eubulus, some mass-man overgifted with sagacity, should manoeuvre himself into popular leadership; and in the nature of things, this would not be long.

All too prophetic.

[Early evening update]

Another nice find on Nock and liberalism:

The facts are clearly apparent. We now see on all sides the extraordinary spectacle of Liberals doing their best to destroy the cardinal freedoms and immunities which Liberals formerly defended, while all the forces which are historically and traditionally known as Tory or Conservative are arrayed in defense of those freedoms. Furthermore we see Liberals vehemently vilifying those who hold to the original basic principles of Liberalism, denouncing them as enemies of society, and doing all they can to discredit and disable them. These two are probably the strangest anomalies that recent history presents.

Of course, it’s become an old story by now.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!