Ross Douthat says that journalists should look at claims of Rick Perry's or Michele Bachmann's religious dominionism, or whatever, with the same eye as claims about Barack Obama allegedly palling around with socialists.
Well, wrong on half, and the half-right portion is itself only half right. Let me explain.
Douthat is right that, to some degree, some GOP wingers pander to the religious right. He cites Rick Perry and the cervical cancer vaccine pandering to Merck even in the face of outcry from Christian rightists and others. But, he ignores, even while citing the diversity of the Christian right, that its "success gospel" subset would be perfectly OK with pandering to big business. He also gives little more than lip service to the "What's the Matter with Kansas" issue of many winger GOP politicians pandering to the Christian right then not following through.
Where he's 100 percent wrong, the half where he's totally wrong, is making the analogy to the 2008 claims against Obama.
Why? Obama wasn't even pandering to "socialist," to Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers or any others. Let alone actually trying to put in socialism in the White House.
The GOP's wingnuts are at least pandering to the Xn Right, on the other hand.
And, in the case of a Bachmann, if not a Perry, actually trying to implement Xn Right beliefs as part of public policy.
I'm inventing a new scale for judging the stupidity of mainstream media punditry. (With some "equivalency" exceptions, MSM news coverage is still generally OK.)
This scale will be 1-10 "doorknobs," based on Alcoholics Anonymous' claim that one's "higher power" can even be a doorknob.
There will be two ratings ... one a general one, the other scaled to the "base point" of a columnist I review regularly.
This column gets 7.5 doorknobs overall (higher is stupider) and 5 Douthat doorknobs (it's about the middle of his stupidity range).
Showing posts with label Ayers (William). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ayers (William). Show all posts
August 28, 2011
August 26, 2011
Obama, Alinsky, Ayers, Dohrn - questions from the left
Even before Barack Obama was elected president, it was a favorite trope of wingnuts to call him a socialist or worse, based on him following in the footsteps of “radical” community organizer Saul Alinsky and “palling around with former Weather Underground members Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
True progressives, probably, should ask just the opposite question of the presupposition behind the wingnut statements, and wonder just how little that troika rubbed off on Obama.
Now, Alinsky is dead, so we can’t ask him for his take, but, we can ask, as far as ideology rather than methodology, just how much in Alinksy’s footsteps did Obama walk?
I’d have to say … not a lot. And, while I’ve not read Dreams from My Father, I have read Dave Mendell’s excellent bio of Obama, From Promise to Power, and he didn’t indicate any radicalism, or that close to it, in Obama’s community work. Of course, Alinsky never did anything radical himself.
And, we could ask Ayers and Dohrn, despite their relative domestication now, what they think of the Obama today - the Obama who doesn't confront racial issues on the domestic side, and who is a warmonger in Afghanistan, Libya (and possibly Syria next).
In fact, I'd love for a reporter to do just that.
That said, Obama, in his version of Clintonesque triangulation, would probably like it if they said they weren't going to vote for him this time around.
At the same time, exactly what answer Dohrn and Ayers gave ... or tried to avoid giving ... would show indeed how much they've "mellowed" ... or more ... since the '60s and '70s.
True progressives, probably, should ask just the opposite question of the presupposition behind the wingnut statements, and wonder just how little that troika rubbed off on Obama.
Now, Alinsky is dead, so we can’t ask him for his take, but, we can ask, as far as ideology rather than methodology, just how much in Alinksy’s footsteps did Obama walk?
I’d have to say … not a lot. And, while I’ve not read Dreams from My Father, I have read Dave Mendell’s excellent bio of Obama, From Promise to Power, and he didn’t indicate any radicalism, or that close to it, in Obama’s community work. Of course, Alinsky never did anything radical himself.
And, we could ask Ayers and Dohrn, despite their relative domestication now, what they think of the Obama today - the Obama who doesn't confront racial issues on the domestic side, and who is a warmonger in Afghanistan, Libya (and possibly Syria next).
In fact, I'd love for a reporter to do just that.
That said, Obama, in his version of Clintonesque triangulation, would probably like it if they said they weren't going to vote for him this time around.
At the same time, exactly what answer Dohrn and Ayers gave ... or tried to avoid giving ... would show indeed how much they've "mellowed" ... or more ... since the '60s and '70s.
November 12, 2008
Paglia gets Obama concerns right, Palin fluffing wrong
Camilla Paglia says the media blew it for not giving a serious look at Wiliam Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. I agree.
I, too took more than a cursory glance at Ayers, and at the Woods Foundation. Some of the culture-specific educational programs it funded, while not quite as far as, say, an Ebonics Academy, were iffy enough that they should have been easy-picking low-hanging fruit for McCain.
The failure to capitalize reflects more on the ineptitude of his campaign staff than him in person in debates, though. All they had to do was pull up a list of grant recipients made while Obama was also on the board, and had McCain read through a few of them, in the form of rhetorical questions: “Sen. Obama, do you support … “ (If you haven’t actually done reading for yourself about Ayers, or Dohrn, Paglia has more on the top of the jump page.)
The reality is that Obama and other board members, like most nonprofit boards, probably rubber-stamped a lot of grants.
But, then, McCain could have gone after Obama for lack of involvement, and related issues.
That was the opening on Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
IIRC, Obama talked about praising Jesus “every Sunday” at Trinity.
Well, re his claims to have never heard stuff like that out of Wright, that would make him either:
• A massive liar about hearing difficulty, or
• A similar liar about his comprehension level, or
• A whopper-teller about his memory skills, or
• Ditto on the frequency of church attendance, or
• A champion-level Sunday morning pew sleeper.
I suspect the answer is a mix of points three and four. Which of those two is greater, I’m not sure.
I don’t doubt that Obama “fluffed” his church attendance to some degree. That in turn makes me wonder how much he’s committed to expanding Bush’s faith-based principles for reasons of faith, how much for reasons of campaign politicis, and how much for yet other reasons.
This is an issue that McCain could better have handled through 527 surrogates rather than personally.
Anyway, so far, so good from Paglia.
But then, turn the cyberpage, and read down a little bit, it’s off the deep end she goes.
Comparing Sarah Palin to John Edwards? Puhleeze. You know it's about more than abstract "experience," but knowledge and a willingness to learn.
And, to claim this was ultimately all about Palin’s pro-life issues is more ridiculous yet.
So, Ms. Paglia, if you wrote this part of the column even after Palin’s “Africa is a country” statement became public, well, you've reached a new low in some sort of po-mo idiocy.
I, too took more than a cursory glance at Ayers, and at the Woods Foundation. Some of the culture-specific educational programs it funded, while not quite as far as, say, an Ebonics Academy, were iffy enough that they should have been easy-picking low-hanging fruit for McCain.
The failure to capitalize reflects more on the ineptitude of his campaign staff than him in person in debates, though. All they had to do was pull up a list of grant recipients made while Obama was also on the board, and had McCain read through a few of them, in the form of rhetorical questions: “Sen. Obama, do you support … “ (If you haven’t actually done reading for yourself about Ayers, or Dohrn, Paglia has more on the top of the jump page.)
The reality is that Obama and other board members, like most nonprofit boards, probably rubber-stamped a lot of grants.
But, then, McCain could have gone after Obama for lack of involvement, and related issues.
That was the opening on Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
IIRC, Obama talked about praising Jesus “every Sunday” at Trinity.
Well, re his claims to have never heard stuff like that out of Wright, that would make him either:
• A massive liar about hearing difficulty, or
• A similar liar about his comprehension level, or
• A whopper-teller about his memory skills, or
• Ditto on the frequency of church attendance, or
• A champion-level Sunday morning pew sleeper.
I suspect the answer is a mix of points three and four. Which of those two is greater, I’m not sure.
I don’t doubt that Obama “fluffed” his church attendance to some degree. That in turn makes me wonder how much he’s committed to expanding Bush’s faith-based principles for reasons of faith, how much for reasons of campaign politicis, and how much for yet other reasons.
This is an issue that McCain could better have handled through 527 surrogates rather than personally.
Anyway, so far, so good from Paglia.
But then, turn the cyberpage, and read down a little bit, it’s off the deep end she goes.
Comparing Sarah Palin to John Edwards? Puhleeze. You know it's about more than abstract "experience," but knowledge and a willingness to learn.
And, to claim this was ultimately all about Palin’s pro-life issues is more ridiculous yet.
So, Ms. Paglia, if you wrote this part of the column even after Palin’s “Africa is a country” statement became public, well, you've reached a new low in some sort of po-mo idiocy.
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