The politics of hate.
Let them eat paint.
Who's weirdest wins.
The party of adults, revitalized.
The penniless father of the iPod.
WIMP or CHAMP?
The Euroweenies are getting the roles confused.
Faster shrinking brains, but more synapses?
Is Kim Jong-Il dead?
What makes a startup succeed?
The vanishing barn.
Life in a country where Sarah Palins are not allowed.
Red state feminism.
World: vote for Obama.
Creating artificial life.
Gordon Brown chooses Obama.
Stevie Wonder had it wrong.
The Democrats need to learn some respect.
4 comments:
As a companion piece to "The Democrats Must Learn Some Respect" I submit "Politics & Intelligence" from Shrinkwrapped.
Shoulda said this with the first comment but I hadn't actually read the FT article, just Shrinkwrapped's commentarty about it.
Since we've recently had our little Lipstick on a pig episode, leaving that one temporarily used up, I'd like to point to the Pig in prom dress that Mr. Crook gives us:
"The irony in 2008 is that the Democratic candidate, despite Republican claims to the contrary, is not an elitist. Barack Obama is an intellectual, but he remembers his history. He can and does connect with ordinary people. His courteous reaction to the Palin nomination was telling. Mrs Palin (and others) found it irresistible to skewer him in St Paul for “saying one thing about [working Americans] in Scranton, and another in San Francisco”. Mr Obama made a bad mistake when he talked about clinging to God and guns, but I am inclined to make allowances: he was speaking to his own political tribe in the native idiom."
The candidness shown by Mr. Obama when he speaks "in the native idiom" to his "political tribe" is not worthy of any "allowances". The leopard is merely preening, he cannot change his spots. Regardless of background, Mr. Obama feels every bit as much disdain, disgust, contempt and, yes, even hatred, for the great unwashed that are not part of his "political tribe" as does every member of that tribe. They are, after all, nothing but poorly (albeit relentlessly) educated savages of the most ignoble variety.
A beady-eyed McCain gets a boost from the charismatic Sarah Palin, a powerful new feminist -- yes, feminist! -- force.
Plus: Obama must embrace his dull side.
By Camille Paglia
As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama's efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin' his g's like there's no tomorrow.
It's analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not.
Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes -- be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.
The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick -- there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly -- though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into "Star Wars" -- a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.
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Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy -- one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama's triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football -- or one of the great light-saber duels in "Star Wars." (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in "The Phantom Menace.") This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.
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It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism -- one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.
But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.
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