Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Media’s New McCarthyism

Do you now, or have you ever had, a negative opinion about Barack Obama?

And you had better give the answer HUAC the media wants or you will be publicly and politically bludgeoned. Furthermore, you will also be destroyed if you do not publicly repudiate those among your colleagues who do not pass the loyalty test.

The media is currently on a full-bore witch hunt to root out and politically batter those in the GOP who refuse to vouch for Obama as a flag-waving Jesus freak.

Yup. It would be funny if it wasn’t so frightening.

I don’t know if Barack Obama loves his country. I don’t know if he’s a Christian (I don’t actually care whether he is or not, except for the fact that if he isn’t it’s just more evidence of his congenital mendacity). I have no evidence of either, except his word. And that’s not worth much.

[Update a few minutes later]

Who are you to criticize a government crackdown on the press, citizen?

Me, neither.

Business, Technology and Society

The Oxnard Train Derailment

3 Comments

That’s kind of an amazing scene. I’d expect a lot of injuries from being tossed around in those cars.

While this is the same line as the collision in Chatsworth a few years ago that killed so many, and that was also Metrolink, it’s just a coincidence — there’s no relationship between the two events. That one was caused by a driver who was texting and missed a traffic signal, resulting in a collision with a freight train.

Rice Avenue is actually a pretty major thoroughfare. If you’re coming down 101 from Santa Barbara, and want to take the coast highway through Malibu into LA, it’s the most direct route to cut over to the coast (you can’t hug the coast through Ventura and Oxnard, because Point Mugu Naval Air Station is in the way). So this will probably disrupt traffic somewhat. Also, it looks as though the track itself separate, so until they can repair it (and probably replace what looks like old, outdated ties with new ones), it will disrupt all rail traffic (it’s a line shared by both freight, and passenger traffic, with both Amtrac and the Metrolink commuter trains).

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Attacks On Barack Obama

113 Comments

…are interpreted by the media as attacks on them.

Appropriately so. They crammed him down the nation’s collective throat, twice. So when they see a public-relations threat to him, they swarm it like anti-bodies.

[Update a while later]

Yes:

When Giuliani told an audience ”I do not believe – and I know this is a horrible thing to say – but I do not believe that the President loves America,” he was inadvertently doing more than criticizing a president; he was in a manner of speaking, committing treason. The unprecedented firestorm of opprobrium that greeted Giuliani suggested that he had somehow hit a switch. It was like pushing an ordinary button in the wall and watching the skyscrapers out the window suddenly crumble in dust down into the ground.

What Giuliani had done was undermine Obama’s legitimacy. Because so much of Obama’s “power” comes from his special-ness that to question his patriotism is to strike at the basis for his governance. It was, as in a monarchy, tantamount to rebellion. The reason that similar remarks by Obama about George Bush’s patriotism evoked simple shrugs was because Bush was just an ordinary president, the latest in a line of politicians to occupy the office since George Washington.

But Obama is different. One cannot understand, for example, the vituperation vented by Dana Milbank at Scott Walker, calling him out for “cowardice”, arguing for his “disqualification” (yes those are the words) for the simple act of refusing to publicly repudiate Giuliani’s words about the president, unless one grasps this essential fact. Obama is different. The Obama phenomenon is founded so completely on his legend that to attack the legend is to undermine the very foundations of the tower on which he stands.

But this is not the first time the Obama myth has been directly impugned. The first major political figure to accidentally touch the Third Rail was Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has become an extraordinary hate object in the press, not because of any views he may hold on policy, but because Netanyahu had the temerity to disrespect Obama. Netanyahu must have been astonished by the charge of electricity that gave back on him.

Disrespect America, even attack it if you want, and you will not receive a tenth such voltage as did Netanyahu. The torrent of hostility poured upon Netanyahu was so out of proportion to any conceivable offense, that he probably felt obliged to persist in coming, reasoning that he must be on to something. Yet the myth of the president has been crumbling abroad for some time. Readers will recall that Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande recently made the almost unheard-of move of negotiating directly with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine without receiving instructions from the “leader of the free world”.

[Update late morning]

Rudy and the one-way taboo:

Democrats use “civility” as a shield because they know that conservatives care about civility, while Democrats don’t. Thus, reproached for incivility, Republicans will retreat, while Dems will say “screw you, I’m stickin’ it to the man.”

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!