President Obama will deploy an additional 1,200 National Guard troops to the southern border and request $500 million in extra money for border security, according to an administration official. The decision comes as the White House is seeking Republican support for broad immigration reform this year.
The official said the new resources would provide “immediate enhancement” to the border even as the Obama administration continues to “work with Congress to fix our broken immigration system through comprehensive reform, which would provide lasting and dedicated resources by which to secure our borders and make our communities safer.”
The 1,200 troops will join about 340 already working in the border region, the official said. They would provide support to law enforcement efforts against drug trafficking by increasing monitoring of border crossings and performing intelligence analysis.
Not that I’m gloating about the success of our plot to take over the judiciary, but if Elena Kagan is confirmed, there will not be a single Protestant on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hey-heh-heh. I mean, uh, isn’t this interesting?
The fact that Ms. Kagan is Jewish draws attention away from the fact that two-thirds of the court is now Catholic. Crafty, eh?
In case you’re wondering about a comment by Kathryn way down back on this post (comment No. 36, I believe), she’s responding to something I wrote on Twitter earlier today:
Driving in Columbia today, I wondered: Do they issue you a “COEXIST” bumper sticker when you move to Shandon?
And to save you having to look, KB said:
They do indeed issue a COEXIST bumper sticker at closing when you buy a Shandon house. Do you get the Confederate flag one when you buy your house in Lexington County or does that cost extra?
You’ll note how that drips with Shandonista scorn. For that matter, my daughter responded thusly on Facebook:
Yeah, but mine’s not on my car since I don’t use fossil fuels, I just stuck it next to my LGBT rainbow and my peace sign on my reusable organic cotton grocery bag.
As a Lexington Countian, let me reply that indeed I do have a Confederate flag. It was given to me by John Courson. It once flew over the State House. But it ain’t a-gonna fly there no more.
Oh, and my wife noted something about Shandon to me just this evening. They might have a lot of nice things we don’t have (such as sidewalks), but there’s one thing they have that we can do without — big ol’ honkin’ cat-sized rats (I added the modifiers) running down the street trying to escape the overburdened sewer system.
Earlier today, I set forth a morally ambiguous view of the Franken amendment. For the simpler, this-is-such-a-slam-dunk-it’s-funny view, I share with you the way the matter was presented by Jon Stewart.
You can’t say you don’t get all sorts of views here. And there’s no question, this whole gang-rape issue is funnier the way Jon Stewart tells it than the way I do, but… oops — is the way I just put that prejudicial? (Could it be I’m one of those fogeys who is offended by the idea that so many college-educated young people rely on this guy for their news?)
Whatever. Just go ahead and make up your own minds.
At Rotary yesterday, at the beginning of the Q-and-A session with our speaker, I got a look from blog regular KBFenner (on this blog, we’ve definitely got anything that happens at the Columbia Rotary covered) that seemed to say “Are you going to ask a question, or what?”
But I don’t ask questions in those settings. One reason is habit. As a longtime newspaperman, I always felt like I could ask this or any other source any question I might have at some other time. I felt like Q-and-A periods should be left to the laypeople who didn’t have such opportunities.
Maybe I should change that habit now that I no longer have such opportunities — or no longer have them without trying, anyway. But I still feel like if I really WANT to ask a newsmaker a question, I can get it answered without taking up precious Rotary time.
There’s another reason I don’t ask questions: I tend to ask quirky questions that in such a setting might not be taken the right way. In an hour-long conversation, you can give a quirky question context (although I certainly embarrassed Cindi a few times, I’m sure), but when you raise your hand in a big group and stand to ask it, there’s no way to make it come out right.
For instance… Monday, our speaker was Brig. Gen. Bradley W. May, commanding officer of Fort Jackson. He was, as all such officers have been in my experience, a really impressive guy. Good command presence, cool, calm and collected even in the adverse circumstances of being subjected to civilians’ questions. The kind of guy whom you meet and think, “Why can’t this guy be our congressman?” Or something like that. (And the answer is, because guys like this don’t run.) Not everyone who is or has been an officer in the U.S. military is like this (ex-Marine Rob Miller, for instance, lacks that presence, as does reservist Joe Wilson), but people who rise to this level generally (no pun intended) are.
Anyway, people were asking all sorts of questions, none of which was anything I would have asked. They were either things I felt I already knew the answer to, or things that I wasn’t wondering about. What I WAS wondering about was this: How come soldiers come to Rotary in their BDUs?
Now you see, there’s no way that would have been taken right. It would have been seen as disrespectful. And I would never want to communicate disrespect, because I deeply respect and admire Gen. May and the soldiers who accompanied him, and am as grateful as all get-out for their service.
But I DO wonder about the fatigues. I mean, fewer and fewer Rotarians are wearing suits, but for the most part, it’s a business dress kind of thing. Now I know Gen. May meant no disrespect to us whatsoever; I’ve grown accustomed to soldiers dressing this way — as though they’re going into combat, or about to police the area for cigarette butts, rather than sitting behind a desk all day or going to business meetings. It’s official; it’s accepted. This is the way they dress.
What I wonder about is WHY they dress that way when they’re not in the field. They didn’t used to. I grew up in the military, so I grew up with dress codes. I know that within my lifetime, a soldier couldn’t leave the post without being in his Class As. It was all about spit and polish. Can’t let those civilian pukes see you looking sloppy, and so forth.
And while I was never in the military myself (the general on Monday referred to the fact that only 3 out of 10 Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 are qualified to serve in the military; I was one of the 7), it touched me. Here’s an anecdote from my youth that I related in a column back in 2001:
One balmy night in Hawaii 30 years ago, I drove up to the sub base gate of Pearl Harbor Navy base.
I was in high school and still an inexperienced driver, and I forgot something: I didn’t click off my headlights so the guard could see the sticker that would assure him this ’58 Oldsmobile was cleared to enter. Not realizing this, I failed to understand the guard’s gesture that I douse the lights, at which point he proceeded to get my attention as only a Marine sergeant could do.
Fully understanding his command to halt, I did so and started rolling down the window. He leaned in to demand some ID, but then stopped, and gave me a stare that made me feel like a boot who had called his rifle a “gun.” In a voice like Doomsday, he demanded to know, “Are you out of uniform, sailor?”
In an instant, all of the following ran through my mind:
I was wearing a Navy-issue denim work shirt, the kind sailors wore to swab decks (not what they wore on liberty). It was in my closet, and I had put it on without thinking.
I had recently gotten my hair cut — not to Marine standards, but short enough to look to Marine eyes like a particularly sloppy sailor.
Over the shirt, I was wearing a maroon jacket that was, to say the least, decidedly non-regulation.
I had no right to wear that shirt. The sergeant had instantaneously enlightened me on this point. Though I had grown up in the Navy, I was still a member of that lowest of all categories of humanity — a civilian.
Could they throw you in the brig for just looking like a sailor out of uniform? The sergeant sure looked like he had that authority — and the inclination.
Despite appearances, there was nothing routine about entering a U.S. Navy installation. This facility was guarded by the U.S. Marine Corps, and I had to be prepared at all times to give an account of myself.
“But … but … I’m a dependent, Sarge,” I finally managed to explain as I dug my ID out of my wallet. After examining the card carefully, the gyrene waved me in, still eyeing me like the worm that I was.
A dependent. Some excuse. I drove away wishing I had been a sailor out of uniform. He would have put me on report, but I would have been less embarrassed…
Sometime between 1971 and the present — maybe about the same time that Army officers started addressing sergeants as “sar’unt” (which, as near as I can tell, they picked up from Dale Dye), all that went away. You could still see Marines dressed like that sentry — impossibly crisp shortsleeved khaki shirt with the collar open to reveal a T-shirt, dress blues pants, etc. — on recruiting duty. But soldiers, right up to commanding generals, dressed like they were on the front.
I’m not sure when it changed. The 80s, or earlier.
The funny thing is, they still HAVE the Class As. In fact, a soldier who spoke to Rotary two years ago wore his. I don’t know why the regulations would require him to wear his while speaking to Rotary, but not other soldiers under similar circumstances (I’m assuming there’s a regulation involved, of course). Not only that, but they have those blue dress uniforms that look like they’re in the Union Army circa 1863, which are pretty sharp.
But enough about the Army. Let’s talk about something I theoretically understand — appropriate civilian attire. Recently, I’ve had it impressed upon me that I am among the few, the proud, who still wear a coat and tie every day. I do this even though I’m unemployed. In fact, I do it particularly because I’m unemployed. People with secure (they think) jobs can afford to look like slobs; I have to look like I’m constantly being interviewed. That’s the way I think of it, anyway.
Friday, I had lunch with Jim Foster (of the state Department of Ed, formerly of The State) at Longhorn Steakhouse (that’s what I was doing while some of y’all were freaking out over the multiple e-mails). As we sat down, he said, “Why are you dressed like that?” I brushed off the question, because there was nothing remarkable about the way I was dressed: starched shirt, bow tie, jacket. But he persisted: No really, why are you dressed like that?
Well, I said… I always dress like this. Doesn’t everybody? Well, obviously HE didn’t. Neither did anyone at the surrounding tables. Finally, when someone walked in wearing a suit, I almost pointed him out.
Then yesterday, I dropped in on Bob McAlister over at the offices of his consulting business. You know, the former chief of staff to the late Gov. Carroll Campbell. A guy with pictures of himself with George W. Bush, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Jack Kemp and other GOP luminaries all over the office. He was wearing a rumpled blue sport shirt (untucked, I believe) that looked like he’d gotten if from L.L. Bean about 15 years ago. He had taken off his shoes — no, excuse me, his bedroom slippers, which had also seen better days.
He said he didn’t wear a tie except under the most exceptional circumstances. It was easier, and he saved a lot on dry cleaning. He said when he was about to go to a business meeting in D.C. recently, he was told to ditch the coat and tie so he wouldn’t stand out. With some trepidation he did, only to be relieved that he had. We discussed it for awhile, and agreed that in other parts of the country, the phenomenon is more advanced than here. We’re slower to change. I mentioned to him how offended I’d get when Knight Ridder executives would come visit the paper in the years after the corporate move to California — here would be these guys who make a million dollars a year meeting with us, and we’d all be in coats and ties (the men, anyway; the women wearing some distaff equivalent), and they’d be wearing unbuttoned shirts with no ties. Yeah, right, like you guys are all Bill Gates or something just because your office is close to Silicon Valley. I hated it.
At the advertising agency where I’m hanging out (and where I’m typing this), no one but me wears a tie most days. Not exactly Mad Men.
At the Capital City Club, the rules were relaxed over the summer to allow gentlemen to have lunch in the main dining room without jackets. Ties haven’t been required for some time. These must be the end days. Next thing you know, we’ll have dogs and cats living together…
So today, I succumbed to the pressure. For the first time this season I donned my black camel-hair jacket, with white dress shirt and hounds-tooth slacks — but didn’t put on a tie. I felt like I was going skinny-dipping in public or something, but hey, if this is the style.
Then, as soon as I got downtown, I stepped onto an elevator, three other guys got on with me — and they were all dressed in suits and ties. They would have put Don Draper to shame. And I looked at my reflection in the mirrored door, and I looked like I’d just gotten out of bed or something. I wanted to ask myself, “Mister, are you out of uniform?…”
That’s it. Soon as I get home, I’m putting on a tie. I might sleep in it.
The last couple of days, whispers about a certain public figure being homosexual have gradually been seeping into the MSM. My question is, should they?
Actually, I have several questions, including:
What does it matter if he is? Aren’t we supposed to not care? I’m constantly told by my children and others of their generation that we’re not supposed to care, that it’s the same as being hetero — even as some of that generation use “that’s so gay” as an apparent pejorative, which confuses me because it’s so, well, my generation.
At what point does the usual MSM dodge for reporting unsubstantiated rumor — that blogs and other low-threshold media have reported it to the point that the resulting buzz (not, of course, the underlying rumors themselves, perish the thought) has made news to the point that it must be reported — rise above being a lame excuse?
Should I even be writing about it here, even in the rather priggish manner in which I am doing so?
I almost did so yesterday, when WIS actually did a report on the subject, which caused a bit of triumphalist chortling in the blogosphere. But I didn’t. Such is my reluctance to address such a subject. (The WIS report raises a subquestion: Should one say “crap” on broadcast TV?)
But now that Peter Hamby of CNN — yes, a national news organization — is reporting that Jake Knotts is actually accusing our governor of coordinating this whispering campaign against Jake’s ally — an accusation for which I’ve seen no justification, in the governor’s defense (merely having an apparent motive does not make one the prime suspect) — I’m faced with the fact that just about everyone but me is talking about this. (Such as Politico, and both national and stateblogs.) No newspapers so far, though, unless I’ve missed something. I can well imagine the conversations going on in newsrooms as they decide what to do, or whether to do anything. And I remain surprised that WIS did it first.
But should anybody be reporting any of this? Whose business is this?
It’s perversely interesting (if I may use that modifier) to see how things like this play out in this allegedly “enlightened” age. Consider for instance the subset of this phenomenon, whereby the apostles of tolerance are the first to “out” political conservatives who are said to lean that way. Their excuse, of course, is that they are exposing the ultimate political sin in this postmodern world, hypocrisy. One can do all sorts of hypocritical things in the name of exposing hypocrisy, including acting like there’s something wrong with someone being “gay” even when one adamantly insists the rest of the time that there is not.
Me, I’m Old School. Personally, I appreciate people not talking about their sexual predilections. For instance, I do NOT appreciate people talking ad nauseam about their “soulmates,” of whichever gender. When they do, I tend to harrumph.
And when third parties talk about someone else’s rumored predilections, I get really uncomfortable. It doesn’t seem right.
The whole thing is just so cringe-making that I might take this post down when I look back at it later.
The Henry Louis Gatescontretemps last week was a classic case of the kind of thing I studiously ignore — the kind of thing that ideological partisans love to shout at each other about, and which make it all that much harder to constructively discuss subjects that really matter.
Liberals, by and large, immediately plugged the event into their unfair-racial-profiling template, and proceeded to call for blacks and whites to “listen to each other’s narratives” and other such anodyne niceties even after it started to seem that police racism was probably not what caused the incident.
Conservatives, meanwhile, were following their own “narrative,” the one in which racism is often exaggerated and the real victim is the unassuming common man scorned by the deference-demanding “liberal elite.” Commentators on the right zeroed in on the fact that Mr. Gates is an “Ivy League big shot,” a “limousine liberal,” and a star professor at Harvard, an institution they regard with special loathing. They pointed out that Mr. Gates allegedly addressed the cop with that deathless snob phrase, “you don’t know who you’re messing with”; they reminded us that Cambridge, Mass., is home to a particularly obnoxious combination of left-wing orthodoxy and upper-class entitlement; and they boiled over Mr. Gates’s demand that the officer “beg my forgiveness.”
“Don’t you just love a rich guy who summers on the Vineyard asking a working-class cop to ‘beg’? How perfectly Cambridge,” wrote the right-wing radio talker Michael Graham in the Boston Herald.
Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.
Indeed, the very idea that the president would waste political capital on this at a time when the country needs him to be strong on health care reform is obscene, and a tragic waste.
Lede: Obama Would Take Bigger Role in Markets — OK, this is not a perfect “Buzz” lede because it didn’t quite HAPPEN, but the event was the president proposing it. And it’s more important than the gay benefits thing, and more new than the continuing Iran story. And nothing local or state was really lede-worthy.
Iran Regime Cracking Down — Continued post-election strife in Iran. Look for a sidebar to go with it. Lots to inform readers about here.
U.S. to Extend Gay Benefits — Just another turn in the screw of the Kulturkampf, but a fairly significant one.
Local/State
Handcuffed Tax Study Commission Created — OK, so I threw in an editorial modifier there. The thing is, you sort of need that to see why what happened is important. Two things were essential to making it possible for comprehensive tax reform to happen: There must be no sacred cows, and the Legislature must have a straight up-or-down vote on the final result — no tinkering. That’s the only way anything could pass that would really clean up the tax code. So what did they do? They passed a bill that walled off as sacred the biggest, baddest immediate problem in our tax system — the 2006 property/sales tax swap. (This demonstrates why a commission is needed, because the Legislature itself is too invested in bad policies it created.) Whether they required an up-or-down vote, I could not learn from the coverage I saw.
Vetoes sidebar — The XGR (that’s wire-service jargon for “legislature,” by the way) overrode all 10 of the governor’s vetoes. But that’s pretty much a dog-bites-man story now, isn’t it?
Tenenbaum Draws Bipartisan Praise — This good-news story (anytime you can document bipartisan consensus, it’s good news) is one where local and national intersect.
Just to relieve the negativity of my last post, let me say that it IS possible to find commentary on Judge Sotomayor worth reading. I thought that of the David Brooks piece that The State ran today eminently so.
Now, before you avowed liberals say “of course you think that; he’s a conservative” (just as conservatives like to say the opposite about me), allow me to direct you to his conclusion:
I hope she’s confirmed.
OK, have I got your attention now?
Mr. Brooks, unlike Mr. Toobin, has to overcome the problem that the judge is steeped in the Identity Politics that were all the rage when she and I were in college:
There was no way she was going to get out of that unscarred. And, in fact, in the years since she has given a series of speeches that have made her a poster child for identity politics. In these speeches, race and gender take center stage. It’s not only the one comment about a wise Latina making better decisions than a white male; it’s the whole litany. If you just read these speeches you might come away with the impression that she was a racial activist who is just using the judicial system as a vehicle for her social crusade.
What makes the piece worth reading is Brooks’ explanation of how his own examination of the judge (which is much more extensive than my own, but which he handsomely admits is not his area of expertise) leads him to get past those objections.
The problem with the overwhelming majority of comments you will see on the subject of the Sotomayor nomination, or any other nomination to the court, is that it is shallow, and informed almost entirely by the commenters’ partisan leanings. All you will learn from it is which side the writer chooses in our never-ending party madness, or the parallel culture wars.
That is unfortunately true of this piece in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin. It drips with this attitude: I’m a liberal, so I think this, and if you disagree with me you’re a conservative, and you think this. Never mind what you actually think.
The thrust of the piece is to stick up for the idea that Judge Sotomayor may have been selected in part because of her ethnicity and gender, as a good thing that should be neither side-stepped nor apologized for:
Still, even Obama, in announcing his choice, shied away from stating the obvious: that Sotomayor was picked in part because she is a Hispanic woman. (The President called his choice an “important step” but didn’t say why.) There was no need for such reticence. Earlier Presidents didn’t apologize for preserving the geographic balance, and this one need not be reluctant to acknowledge that Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group, who by 2050 will represent a third of the American people, deserve a place at this most exclusive table for nine. (Nor, of course, did he note that the nomination was in part to satisfy Hispanic voters—the electoral benefit being another constant among Presidents.) As Barack Obama knows better than most, it is a sign of a mature and healthy society when the best of formerly excluded groups have the opportunity to earn their way to the top.
Actually, there IS good reason for such reticence and the president is to be praised for recognizing that. Mr. Toobin raises as an argument the tradition, dating to the earliest days of the Republic, of providing geographical balance on the court, followed by such notions as the “Catholic seat” or the “Jewish seat.” (Interesting thing about that is that if Sotomayor is confirmed, we’ll be down to one Protestant seat. Which is wonderful for me as a Catholic — or would be, if I didn’t consider it anathema to think in such terms.)
In fact, I think the “geographic balance” is a bad practice to institutionalize as well. If a legislature wants to have representatives of various congressional districts on a board or commission, OK. But in the absence of such requirements, it is a disservice for a president or governor to consider whether a person is from Charleston, or is Latina, or what have you. Those biographical details are points you MIGHT bring up in introducing a speaker, depending on the audience. But they are NOT qualifications for the Court, and only legitimate qualifications should enter into the discussion.
So no, comparing the idea of considering a nominee’s ethnicity to considering his or her hometown doesn’t strengthen your argument.
But that part is just hapless. This part, the part in which prejudices about what other people think are aired, is actually offensive:
As with earlier breakthrough nominations, Obama’s selection of Sotomayor has stirred some old-fashioned ugliness, and in that alone it serves as a reminder of the value of a diverse bench and society. Some anonymous portrayals of the Judge offered the kind of patronizing critiques (“not that smart”) that often greet outsiders at white-male preserves. Women who have integrated such bastions will be familiar, too, with the descriptions of her temperament (“domineering”), which are of a variety that tend to reveal more about the insecurity of male holdovers than about the comportment of female pioneers. The pernicious implication of such views is that white males, who constitute a hundred and six of the hundred and ten individuals who have served on the Court, made it on merit, and that Sotomayor is somehow less deserving.
People who share Mr. Toobin’s mindset are nodding their heads right now: Yep, that’s exactly what those pigs say about women. Yep, that’s the kind of code we hear about minorities. Which, to borrow Mr. Toobin’s condescending tone, tells you more about the nodders than it does about the people they’re nodding about.
Let me propose a couple of thoughts: What if she isn’t “all that smart?” I have no idea whether she is or not, but that can be true even of Latinas, you know, just as it can be of white Anglo men (and are you going to say you don’t know some white guys who aren’t as smart as they should be?). And what if she is domineering? That, too, is possible. It is not automatically impossible for a woman to be overbearing. She doesn’t get a free pass on that by virtue of gender — except among the people who are nodding at Mr. Toobin’s stereotypes.
The interesting thing that apparently escapes Mr. Toobin is that in fact, a white male would have to be very secure indeed in his judgment to offer such a criticism of a Latina nominee — if he dared to do it on the record and for attribution, which evidently none are doing, which is the only point here that argues for the insecurity Mr. Toobin suggests.
As for the last point in that paragraph: Exactly who said the other hundred and six individuals were immune to the objections of not being smart enough, or too domineering? I missed that part. Oh, yeah, I forgot: Surely all the powerful white guys out there ARE saying that, because, you know, that’s how they are. Everybody nod now.
Anyway, I had hoped for something more subtle and thoughtful and nuanced from The New Yorker. The cartoons are certainly more sophisticated than this. So is this wonderful little piece in the same edition, in which a Chinese woman describes what Hemingway meant to her in the summer she was watching her mother go mad. A sample:
I was reading “A Farewell to Arms” one night when my father came into my bedroom. The family was counting on me, he said. Neither he nor my sister could keep my mother from going mad. “She loves you more than your sister or me.” I promised to try my best. When he left, I turned off the light. There was not a trace of a breeze. Through the open window, I could hear a chess party, a group of old bachelors under a street lamp, laughingly cursing one another’s moves on the chessboard. I listened to a man slapping mosquitoes, and wished that I were the hero of Hemingway’s novel. I would have given up the use of both my legs to be in Italy, drinking vermouth, watching horse races, and exchanging off-color jokes with my fellow-officers as the old bachelors were doing outside.
Sound interesting? It was. I got something fresh and original and worth reading from each paragraph. But I can’t say the same for Mr. Toobin’s bit of partisan cheerleading. Or perhaps I should say, nodleading.
To conclude: One reason you don’t see me taking sides on Sotomayor — I might express concerns, or seize upon encouraging signs, but I have no idea whether she should be confirmed or not — is because I don’t subscribe to either side in this game. I have to think for myself. And I have not had time — nor am I likely to have time — to study her record closely enough to pass judgment one way or the other.
Nor should I be expected to. That’s why we have a system of representative democracy. We elect people to take the time to study these things, and vote in good faith based upon their best judgment. Unfortunately, that breaks down when the elected representatives themselves surrender their thought processes to the parties and interest groups that depend upon pointless conflict for their very existence. And even more unfortunately, elected representatives are all too eager to do that.
Here’s the problem with live blogging and twittering and all that (which is the same as the problem with 24/7 TV “news”) — if I were to write what I’m actually seeing and thinking and experiencing, I’d write stuff like this from sitting in the gallery at the SC Senate:
The guy who reads the bills aloud sounds a lot like Richard Gergel — but he’s not Richard Gergel.
We just spent a long time being introduced to a 100-year-old lady by Jake Knotts. One of the things I learned about her (I think) is that she was once John Spratt’s schoolteacher. She was presented with a framed resolution, and the senators sang “Happy Birthday” to her. All this was explained when Jake said, “Miz Kennedy still votes, and you know who she votes for.” Well, bless her heart.
The senators THEN sang “Happy Birthday” to Hugh Leatherman, after he blew out a candle atop a stack of donuts. A senator explained that this “cake” consisted of 70 donuts, adding that “Each donut represents $1 million in stimulus we’re not going to get.” I guess he meant $10 million.
Kulturkampf was alive and well in the chamber, as one senator got up and said if we were going to protect children from smoking in cars, we should also protect UNBORN children from smoke in cars. An objection was voiced, so that was set aside.
And so forth, and so on. I came hoping to hear something about Vincent Sheheen’s proposal to get the stimulus funds in spite of the governor. But I either missed it (which I think is what happened), or they’re just too busy with “more important” stuff.
This is why I was an editor all these years — so somebody else could sit through all this stuff, and get to me when something actually happened.
An hour of this can make you FEEL like you’re 100 years old…
Here's a place for those of you who are so inclined to comment on the Obama administration's new policy on stem cells. That is to say, the latest tilt in the Kulturkampf see-saw. Republicans get in charge, it tilts one way. Democrats get in charge, it tilts the other. And so it continues, even in the "post-partisan" era.
I don't know what to say about it myself because … I don't know; I guess I haven't thought about it enough or something. The partisans seem REALLY sure of their sides, and personally, I don't know how they can be. But maybe it's something missing in me.
I suppose I was relatively comfortable with the Bush position because, near as I could tell, it was a compromise. But then, if I'm reading correctly, the Obama position is ALSO to some extent a compromise, because some restrictions will remain. And yet it is touted as a total reversal, which perhaps it is. I find it confusing.
It's not something we have a position on as an editorial board, because on these culture war things we are often genuinely conflicted. Many editorial boards are quick to sound off on these things because they are more ideologically homogeneous than we are. For us, it's not so simple, and we generally prefer to use up our political capital with each other struggling over the very difficult issues facing South Carolina, which are tough enough.
Anyway, if you read the editorials of most newspapers on the subject, you might think that there is no controversy at all, that the Obama position is of course the right and true one, and you need to be awfully backward to think otherwise — nothing short of a triumph of science over the forces of darkness. Some examples:
The New York Times: "We welcome President Obama’s decision to lift the Bush administration’s restrictions on federal financing for embryonic stem cell research. His move ends a long, bleak period in which the moral objections of religious conservatives were allowed to constrain the progress of a medically important science."
The Boston Globe: "We applaud President Obama's executive order reversing the ban on
federal stem-cell research, and the return of science unhobbled by
political or religious considerations." (Actually, that quote is not from the editorial itself, but from the blurb summarizing it online.)
The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Americans are understandably divided over President Obama's decision to lift restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem-cell research. But he took the course that promises the greater medical benefit. In reversing a funding ban imposed by President Bush, Obama yesterday also took a welcome step toward restoring the rightful place of scientific research in guiding public policy."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Federal funding is no guarantee that embryonic stem cell research will provide hoped-for cures to dreaded diseases like diabetes, let alone guarantee that any cures might come soon. But the executive order that Mr. Obama signed on Monday will clear away bureaucratic and procedural hurdles that have hampered that research. It provides an important new source of funding. Perhaps most important, it signals a new commitment to science ideals, free inquiry and open debate in American public policy."
The relatively "conservative" Chicago Tribune was more muted in its praise and even-handed in its presentation, but nevertheless expressed approval for the Obama move, saying the Bush policy had been too restrictive:
Sensible barriers to federal funding for cloning and the creation of embryos for research purposes remain in place. On Monday, Obama asked lawmakers to provide the support that will put the country at the forefront of vital stem cell research. It's now up to Congress to get behind the scientists. All Obama did was get out of their way.
And The Wall Street Journal? No editorial. But they did run an op-ed piece criticizing the new policy, headlined, "The President Politicizes Stem-Cell Research," with the subhead, "Taxpayers have a right to be left out of it."
That last point is one that one doesn't see emphasized enough, which is that this is not about whether research is allowed, but whether we the taxpayers will pay for it. And that's a legitimate conversation to have.
Another point that I would appreciate being updated on, and that seems to get ignored in the shouting matches, is the idea that the science has made the political argument moot, in terms of moving beyond the need for embryonic cells. That was the point made in this Krauthammer column a while back:
A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells. Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.
Was that wishful thinking on Krauthammer's part? Did that turn out to be a dead-end? Maybe some of you who follow the issue more closely than I do can point to something I should read to that effect.
Anyway, I'll be interested to see what Krauthammer says about it, if he addresses it. He has an interesting perspective for someone wearing the "conservative" stamp. First, to my knowledge he's not anti-abortion. Also, he is a physician by training, and he served on the Bush administration's Council on Bioethics, which HE maintains (and I'm sure some of you will disagree, although I just don't know) was…
… one of the most ideologically balanced bioethics commissions in the
history of this country. It consisted of scientists, ethicists,
theologians, philosophers, physicians — and others (James Q. Wilson,
Francis Fukuyama and me among them) of a secular bent not committed to
one school or the other.
Anyway, that ought to be enough fodder to get y'all started, if you want to discuss this.
In other venues, Stein has expressed opinions critical of evolutionary theory and in favor of intelligent design, for which he has been sharply criticized in academic circles. He has also offered views on the role of science in the Holocaust that some have found offensive. Fogel said he had been only "vaguely aware" of these controversial views. After UVM announced Stein's selection Thursday, Fogel said in a written statement, "profound concerns have been expressed to me by persons both internal and external to the university about his selection." Fogel said he received hundreds of e-mails beginning Saturday — including only about a half-dozen from people at UVM — contending, generally, that Stein's views of science were "affronts to the basic tenets of the academy." "Once I apprised Mr. Stein of these communications, he immediately and most graciously declined his commencement invitation," Fogel's statement said.
And the culture wars go on and on and on… Bueller? Bueller?
So Obama’s hitting the ground running — jawboning Bush about Detroit, and so on — and that’s a good thing. Actually, he’s running BEFORE he hits the ground, which doesn’t happen until Jan. 20, but that’s good too. The nation needs leadership in a time of economic trouble, and it hasn’t had any lately.
Team Obama is also turning to some other priorities, such as shutting down Guantanamo (which, if and when it happens, will likely be cheered by John McCain as well — even if he may quibble over what happens with regard to trying the prisoners), and signaling that it is NOT going to dismantle our intelligence apparatus (much to the consternation of Obama’s base). All to the good, and all appropriate.
But one thing that the new team is signaling as a priority puzzles me. I first ran across it in the WSJ‘s weekend interview piece with Rahm Emanuel. Headlined with the quote, "Do What You Got Elected to Do," it looked at first as though it would make eminent good sense, invoking such themes as, "Barack Obama’s message of change and Bush and the Republicans’ record of incompetence." Fine. But then I got to this:
Asked what Barack Obama was elected to do, and what legislation he’s
likely to find on his Oval Office desk soonest, Mr. Emanuel didn’t
hesitate. "Bucket one would have children’s health care, Schip," he
said. "It has bipartisan agreement in the House and Senate. It’s
something President-elect Obama expects to see. Second would be [ending
current restrictions on federally funded] stem-cell research. And third
would be an economic recovery package focused on the two principles of
job creation and tax relief for middle-class families."
At this point, I got whiplash. Say what? Hey, I’m all for Schip and all that — for starters (it doesn’t get us to a National Health Plan, but it’s something). But I don’t recall it being, specifically, a main topic in the election. But let it pass; it fits under the umbrella of a topic Obama DID talk a lot about.
But stem-cell research? You’re kidding me, right? An issue from the very heart of the Culture Wars, the second priority of the new president? In what universe, other than that occupied by the NARALs on one side and the Right to Life lobby on the other?
Why would this supposedly pragmatic, triangulating new chief of staff choose such a pointlessly divisive cultural issue as Priority Two for a president who so famously wants to end divisiveness in the country? Does he want to make the biggest mistake since Bill Clinton, after winning as a Third Way Democrat, both lifted regulatory restrictions on abortion and tried to eliminate the barrier to gays in the military in his first days in office?
Obama making stem cells a top priority would be like … I don’t know… like a Republican getting elected and announcing that one of the first things he’ll do is intervene in something like the Terri Schiavo case. One can quibble all day about the efficacy of different approaches to research in this field — but lifting the very narrow restriction that exists on federal funding of this activity (not on whether the research will take place, but on whether we the taxpayers will pay for it) is all about bragging rights in the Culture War. It’s a big deal to the left to lift the restrictions and a big deal to the right to keep them in place, but it doesn’t bear much on the price of fish for the rest of us. In fact, the technology may be on the way to making the political argument moot.
At first I attributed this to some sort of misunderstanding. After all, this interview was conducted on the fly, in an airport, before Mr. Emanuel had even been officially offered the post of chief of staff. And it WAS couched in terms of what Obama’s "likely to find on his … desk soonest" from Congress, which is different from what his own priorities might be.
But then I started seeing other references to this Kulturkampf issue, references that indicated this would be a priority for the new administration. And I had to wonder why. Is this a sop Obama would throw to his base so they get off his back on intelligence matters? Maybe. And maybe it’s just some partisans on his transition team getting carried away with themselves.
Speaking of stuff that was on today’s op-ed page, did you read the other piece, the one by the two profs — no, wait, just one of them was a prof (at Furman); the other might more accurately be termed a "writer" — about how that awful John McCain ought to "know better" than to criticize Barack Obama over his associations because of the way he, McCain, was treated in the 2000 GOP primary here? An excerpt:
Here we go again. Politicians falling in the polls are resorting to
character slurs and political smears. To the people of South Carolina
it’s deja vu — all over again.
Last
week John McCain’s campaign launched a web advertisement about Barack
Obama’s ties to a “domestic terrorist.” Sarah Palin claimed that Obama
sees America “as being so imperfect … that he’s palling around with
terrorists who would target their own country” and repeatedly commented
on Obama’s “association” with “terrorists.”
It is a chilling indictment. But false.
Such
sad irony. In the 2000 primaries, after John McCain defeated a heavily
favored George Bush by 19 percentage points in New Hampshire, the Texas
governor’s campaign was in trouble. If Bush lost the S.C. primary,
where his opponent was already popular, he had little chance of
stopping McCain. Something had to be done. Anything.
What did you think of the piece? Personally, I thought the premise was silly and way off-base. So why did I run it? Well, we run all sorts of views on the op-ed page, and I think a lot of them are silly and off-base. That’s all part of the public conversation. Specifically, I chose to leave this one on the page for two reasons:
There are a lot of people criticizing McCain these days along precisely these lines, and this was practically a textbook case of it. I especially like the tut-tutting tone attesting to how very disappointed the authors were in McCain ("Such sad irony.") — that is a trait
common to these sorts of assertions. So this was a good example of
that, and written from an SC angle. I thought it such a good example that I even overlooked the painfully trite bit about "deja vu all over again." (If only poor Yogi had a nickel for every time, huh?)
It was good to run it as a counterpoint to the Charles Krauthammer piece we ran on Friday, which stuck up for McCain over the Ayers stuff, etc., and criticized him only for having been too fussy to bring this stuff up long before.
Why did I think it silly and off-base? Oh come ON, people! Raising the subject of Bill Ayers — even in clumsy, demagogic language such as "palling around with terrorists" — is in NO WAY like making up a lie about John McCain’s adopted daughter that is specifically and particularly and reprehensibly designed to appeal to the worst racist instincts in the S.C. electorate. Say whatever else you want to say about it, but that’s an extreme stretch. It is ONLY logical if you mean that saying something that reflects poorly upon an opponent’s character is the same as any other instance of doing so. Which is silly.
The authors’ perception of moral equivalence seems to lie in the fact that they believe this, too is "false." But I missed the part where they, or anyone else, has demonstrated that. To the contrary, Obama has had dealings with Bill Ayers, and while the exact nature or extent of said relationship remains fuzzy, what little we know indicates that it was more friendly than, say, inimical. So what you’re left with is quibbling over the quantitative meaning of "palling around," and the generally incendiary, hamhanded style of the assertion by that silver-tongued wordsmith Sarah Palin, or the coarseness of crowds who eat that stuff up.
Tell you what. I’m going to stop being shy and tell you what I really think — I disagree both with Messrs. Manuto and O’Rourke AND with Krauthammer. I just told you why I disagree with the first two gentlemen. The part I disagree with Krauthammer over is the idea that McCain should have been hammering on this stuff all along. Personally, I wish he weren’t bringing it up NOW. It’s not going to accomplish anything positive — it just speaks to the great divide in our politics left over from Vietnam. That was a battle we didn’t think we were going to fight in this campaign.
And here’s where there is a kernel of a point in the O’Rourke-Manuto piece; they just spoiled it by grotesquely exaggerating it. And it’s this: this is not consistent with the style that has make McCain so popular with those of us who love to watch both sides in the culture wars get mad at him. There’s nothing WRONG with mentioning Ayers; it’s not a foul. But it’s not the style of play we go to McCain for.
There are better ways to say what the McCain campaign has been getting at with the Ayers stuff. For instance, it was stated fairly well in a piece in The Wall Street Journal last week (although the overall thrust of the piece, headlined "News Flash: The Media Back Obama" is in itself another tired cliche):
…Mr. Obama… is the leading exponent of the idea that our lost nation requires rehabilitation in the eyes of the world — and it is the most telling difference between him and Mr. McCain. When asked, in one of the earliest debates of the primary, his first priority should he become president, his answer was clear. He would go abroad immediately to make amends, and assure allies and others in the world America had alienated, that we were prepared to do all necessary to gain back their respect.
It is impossible to imagine those words coming from Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama has uttered them repeatedly one way or another and no wonder. They are in his bones, this impossible-to-conceal belief that we’ve lost face among the nations of the world — presumably our moral superiors. He is here to reform the fallen America and make us worthy again of respect. It is not in him, this thoughtful, civilized academic, to grasp the identification with country that Mr. McCain has in his bones — his knowledge that we are far from perfect, but not ready, never ready, to take up the vision of us advanced by our enemies. That identification, the understanding of its importance and of the dangers in its absence — is the magnet that has above all else drawn voters to Mr. McCain….
The thing is, it’s impossible to imagine a campaign event for John McCain hosted by Bill Ayers. McCain has done a great deal over the years to reach out to people who were opposed to the war in Vietnam, and even to his former captors — he has acted heroically to normalize relations with their country. But there’s no way he would have been associated with a guy who’s proud of HIS association with the bombings of the NYC police HQ, the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon.
Barack Obama HAS been associated with that guy, however fuzzy (and subject to debate) that connection may be. And that speaks to a difference in worldview. But I doubt we’ll ever have an intelligent discussion of that difference.
Basically, it provides fairly strong evidence to believe that Bill Ayres — unrepentant Mad Bomber and live-in of Bernardine Dohrn — has been considerably more than "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" to Barack Obama. Sen. Obama was the chairman, from 1995-99, of a foundation that the author, Stanley Kurtz, describes as Ayres "brainchild":
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago’s public schools. …. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation’s other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.
… The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.
… Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
The CAC’s agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers’s educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland’s ghetto.
In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I’m a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk’s, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
Until now, the Obama/Ayres connection had been a minor worry at the back of my mind. This rachets that up a notch.
On a less serious note, I was amused to see that Ayres shared with Gov. Mark Sanford the goal of divorcing school funding from the institutional model: "Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate
with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from
groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead
CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such
as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn)."
No, it’s not the same as what Sanford would do. Of course, if we did have vouchers and tax credits, parents would be free to spend it on Mr. Ayres’ idea of a good education, or some other loony alternative, with no accountability to the public from whose school coffers that funding would be diverted. Maybe that’s why I was reminded.
Hunting suggests Palin is not pro-life The photo in your Monday issue of Sarah Palin and her daughter posing proudly with the caribou that Palin has just shot to death is graphic proof that Palin is not, as she claims and as she is often labeled, “pro-life.” “Anti-abortion” or “pro-human-fetus” maybe, but certainly not “pro-life.”
Sigh.
No, hunting is not proof that anyone is not "pro-life," in the sense that word is used in American politics — not unless the person in question is hunting humans.
A caribou is not the moral equivalent of a human being. The difference isn’t even quantitative; it’s qualitative.
Do ya see the difference? Are ya following me here?
This is not to defend hunting, by the way. I’ve never been able to square it in my mind. Killing an animal to avoid starvation, fine. But for sport, no. That, however, is a qualitatively different thing from killing humans.
We have here a hierarchy of moral considerations:
The lightest consideration is that if you want to say one shouldn’t hunt from helicopters, fine — it’s not sporting.
At a higher moral level, one should not hunt for sport alone anyway.
On the highest, a caribou still does not have the moral claim on us that a human does. Not the same at all.
By BRAD WARTHEN Editorial Page Editor THIS PAST week, I’ve been worrying a good deal over the very thing that
has had Republicans so giddy and Democrats in such dudgeon: the
distinct possibility that Barack Obama may lose this election.
At
this point, you reflexive Republicans need to remove your feet from the
stirrups of your high horses. I didn’t say I was worried that John
McCain might win. I like McCain. My worry arises from the fact that the other guy I like might lose, which is a different consideration
altogether.
Mike Cakora responded that Mr. Moyers
was “simply conveying the left’s notion that over the past eight years
the US has been governed, no, ruled by a war-mongering,
liberty-restricting criminal enterprise and now is the time to end
that… .”
For me, that brought to the fore a thing that had
until then dwelt at the back of my mind: that if Barack Obama loses
this election, Democrats — who have been very charged up about their
expectation of winning, and whose hatred of Republicans has reached new
depths in the past eight years, will be so bitter that — and I dread
even to form this thought — the political polarization will be even worse in this country. MoveOn.org, to name but one segment of the
alliance, will probably implode to the point of nuclear fusion.
(Republicans,
by contrast, have been expecting to lose all year. This had calmed
them. As recently as 10 days ago, when I wrote that Moyers post, I
would have expected the GOP to accept defeat in November relatively
fatalistically. Of course, that was before Sarah Palin got them
excited. Now, if they lose, I expect the usual level of bitterness,
just not as severe as what I think is in store if Democrats lose.)
That’s
without taking race into consideration. But my attention was yanked in
that direction by a guest column by my old friend Joe Darby on Friday’s
op-ed page. An excerpt:
Those who criticized Sen. Obama for his
lack of experience, labeled him as long on rhetoric and charisma and
short on substance and said they can’t vote for him because they don’t
“know” him have gleefully embraced a governor who hasn’t completed her
first term…
When you strip away the hyperbole and the political
strategy, Sarah Palin has been hailed as an exemplary choice… simply
because she’s white and because white, middle America identifies with
her…
Somehow, Rev. Darby looked at the fact that Republicans like an inexperienced conservative Republican, but don’t like an
inexperienced liberal Democrat, and saw it as racism. After more than
half a century living in this country, I should not be shocked at yet
another excruciating instance of the apparently unbridgeable cognitive
divide between black and white Americans. But I was shocked, and even
more worried.
I had already sensed a potent paradox flowing
through the black electorate: disbelief that a black man (if you
consider Obama to be a black man, which I don’t — another subject for
another day) has won a major party nomination, combined with an
expectation that he will now go all the way.
But that had not
prepared me for Rev. Darby seeing racism in the fact that Republicans
like Sarah Palin and not Barack Obama. To my white brain (and I don’t
think of myself as having a “white brain,” but my inability to follow
such logic as this suggests that I do), this made no kind of sense. I
invite you to go read the piece — the link, as usual, is on my blog —
and see if it makes sense to you.
An
anxious murmur is rising among black voters as the presidential race
tightens: What if Barack Obama loses?… If Sen. Obama loses,
“African-Americans could be disappointed to the point of not engaging
in the process anymore,” or consider forming a third political party,
said Richard McIntire, communications director for the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
This is not a good place to be.
I
first met Joe Darby 15 years ago. The newspaper sponsored a black-white
dialogue group that was coordinated by a reporter I supervised. Joe was
one of the panelists, and I was struck by his patience and mildness of
manner in explaining his perspective to whites flustered over black
citizens’ sense of aggrievement.
I’m sure Joe would have been
just as patient with the white acquaintance — someone I’ve known for
many years, and who is no kind of racist — who approached me Friday
morning to say, “That Joe Darby is a racist.” I insisted that I knew
Joe Darby well, and he was not, but this reaction was just what I had
predicted to a colleague when I saw the proof the day before: The guest
column was the kind of thing that alienates white conservatives,
driving the wedge of race deeper into the nation’s heart. (So why run
it? Because I knew Rev. Darby and others sincerely believed what he was
saying, and a newspaper’s role is to put everyone’s political cards on
the table.)
Fifteen years after that black-white dialogue
experience — and many, many less formal such dialogues later — I find
myself close to despair that mutual understanding can be achieved.
For me, reading the piece by my old friend Joe Darby on today’s op-ed page was another excruciating instance of the apparently unbridgeable cognitive divide between black and white Americans. I always find it very troubling — in fact, I lack words for just how much it troubles me.
Somehow, Joe looked at the fact that Republicans LIKE an inexperienced conservative Republican, but DON’T like an inexperienced liberal Democrat, and saw it as racism. I realize that after my more than half a century of living in this country, I should not be shocked at such things, but I was. Shocked, and very worried.
Remember this post about Bill Moyers’ hyperbole about the stakes in this election. Something one of y’all said caused me to express my worry about what will happen if Barack Obama loses this election: Democrats, who have been VERY charged up about their expectation of winning, and whose hatred of Republicans has reached new depths in the past eight years, will be so bitter that — and I hate even to think this thought aloud — the political polarization will be even WORSE in this country. MoveOn.org, to name but one segment of that alliance, will probably implode to the point of nuclear fusion.
(Republicans, by contrast, have been expecting to lose all year. As recently as last week, when I wrote that earlier post, I would have expected the GOP to accept defeat in November relatively fatalistically. Of course, that was before Sarah Palin got them excited. Now, if they lose, I expect the usual level of bitterness, just not as severe as what I think we’re in store for if Democrats lose.)
And that was without considering race. If you add in the expectations of so many black voters this year, the potential for bitter disappointment is incalculable. This year I’ve noted a potent paradox in the attitude of many black voters: A disbelief that a black man (if you consider Obama to be a black man, which I don’t — another subject for another day) has won a major party nomination, combined incongruously with the notion that if he doesn’t also win the general election, it’s because of racism.
Even though I was aware of that, Joe’s piece was a shock, because it wasn’t just generalized excitement about Obama combined with being prepared to resent it if he loses. It was the logic, or lack thereof, that Joe employed in seeing racism specifically in the fact that Republicans like Sarah Palin and not Barack Obama.
An anxious murmur is rising among black voters as the presidential race tightens: What if Barack Obama loses? Black talk-show hosts and black-themed Web sites are being flooded with callers and bloggers reflecting a nervousness — and anger — over the campaign. Bev Smith, a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host, devoted her entire three-hour show Monday night to the question: "If Obama doesn’t win, what will you think?"… If Sen. Obama loses, "African-Americans could be disappointed to the point of not engaging in the process anymore," or consider forming a third political party, said Richard McIntire, communications director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
This is not a good place to be.
I first met Joe Darby about 15 years ago. The newspaper sponsored a black-white dialogue group that was coordinated by a reporter I supervised. Joe was one of the panelists, and I was struck by his patience and mildness of manner in explaining his perspective to whites flustered over black citizens’ sense of aggrievement.
I’m sure Joe would have been just as patient with the middle-aged white acquaintance — someone I’ve known for many years, and who I am quite sure is not a racist — who came up to me this morning and said, based on the op-ed piece, "That Joe Darby is a racist." I insisted that I knew Joe Darby well, and he was not, but this was exactly the reaction I had predicted to a colleague when I saw the proof the day before. I had said that what Joe had written was precisely the kind of thing that caused white conservatives to be profoundly alienated by the way many blacks express themselves politically.
Fifteen years after that black-white dialogue experience — and many, many less formal such dialogues later — I find myself close to despair that mutual understanding can be achieved.
Before I left the office last night, I glanced at my stats page in Typepad and noticed something odd: I was getting a lot of hits from Google on a year-old post headlined "Carol Fowler and the Dark Side" (which, now that I look back at it, was an odd headline for the subject).
Later that night, I realized why — the quote from Ms. Fowler on Politico. Sheesh. What a bunch of nothing — my post last year was more interesting.
Folks, compared to the usual overheated rhetoric from Democrats of a certain persuasion about those of
us who oppose abortion, this was nothing. When I heard the quote on TV (my wife watches TV news, even local "if it bleeds it leads" TV news, usually when I’m not in the room; but there I was trapped in my recliner holding a grandbaby and begging somebody to pop in a DVD — I ended up staying up way too late to rewatch "The Graduate"), I thought sure it would be something provocative. When I heard, "Choosing someone whose primary qualification seems to be that she has…," I thought the next thing would be a reference to some distinguishing feature of female anatomy. But when I then heard, "…n’t had an abortion," I could not freaking believe that someone was making an issue of it.
Come on, folks — at least what Don said was offensive, and I was fairly dismissive of that meaning anything, either. As any rational person who knows the way human beings talk with friends would be.
Anyway, that explains the uptick in interest over Carol Fowler. Again, sheesh.
And again, I will urge the partisans: Get over it. Democrats, quit your whining about "Swiftboating," which, I’m sorry to tell you, is not a real word, much less something for you to keep wetting your pants about, expecting the GOP to do it to you at any minute. That "quit picking on me" pose doesn’t work on anybody but your whiniest base. (And Barack, dismissing the GOPpers for acting hurt about "lipstick," then whining yourself about "Swiftboating" is about as petty as I’ve heard you get.)
And Repubicans, get over your crying about the lipstick and the Fowler remark and the mean media and the pregnant daughter and the rest.
And then let’s try to have a grownup election, OK?
