The latest Breitbart videos: Obama and Derrick Bell

The New Neo Posted on by

Breitbart’s Big Government has the promised video from Obama’s law school past. In it, Obama introduces—with approval—Harvard law professor Derrick Bell, and gives him a hug. In addition, another black professor at Harvard, Charles Ogletree, alludes to the fact that this tape was purposely kept quiet during the 2008 campaign.

The release of the video is meant to show a couple of things. The first is that Obama not only was “palling around” with radicals, but supporting their views. The second is that certain facts about Obama were suppressed during the 2008 campaign. And the third is that the media selectively edits things (they left out the hug, for example) to make them seem more favorable to Obama.

Taking all that into account, so far the video only pretty much tells us what we already knew. Now, Breitbart was famous for letting out only a little information at a time and saving the biggest guns for last, so perhaps there’s more. But if not, this seems pretty much a dud in terms of public perception.

There’s no question that Professor Bell was very radical and saw almost everything through the prism of racism and resultant grievance. But he was also a trailblazing guy, the first black law professor at Harvard. Obama was a trailblazer, too—the first black president of the Law Review, and as such he almost had to say a few nice words about Bell.

I’m not saying Obama’s words weren’t sincere—I think they were. But this sort of thing hasn’t exactly been a secret, nor does it have a whole lot of meaning that changes anything now. For example, Obama’s closer (and more recent) relationship to Reverend Wright is much more important, and it didn’t stop Obama from being elected. Nor is it news that the left and the press has tried to suppress and minimize Obama’s radical connections.

Plus, the video is twenty years old. Even if Obama’s views haven’t really changed, he could always say they have, in his defense. We all know that, in general, people tend to become less radical than in their student days (although Obama was a slightly older student than most), and Obama could plead that’s what happened in his case.

The only videos that would mean something at this point would be if Obama were caught saying very racist things about whites (and I’m not even sure that would matter), or saying something like, “My plan is to pretend to be a moderate, run for president, and then pull the country into the socialist far-leftist camp. Ha ha, suckers!” Short of that, I think it will most likely all be a big yawn. We already knew about Ayers, Wright, the socialist connections, Alinsky, and now we also know about Bell. Although it does all add up to a leftist, racially directed young manhood, at this point it’s pretty much “so what?” If people didn’t respond before, why would they now?

[NOTE: However, Wiki has now corrected the “dubious” designation on this excerpt (which was still standing last night at around 10:26 PM):

Students held vigils and protests in solidarity with Bell with the support of some faculty. One of these students was future U.S. president Barack Obama, who spoke at a protest at Harvard Law School on behalf of Bell.[dubious ”“ discuss] Critics, including some faculty members, called Bell’s methods counterproductive, and Harvard administration officials insisted they had already made enormous advances in hiring. The story of his protest is detailed in his book Confronting Authority.]

Doin’ the white man overbite

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: rdbrewer at Ace’s.]

Tom Brokaw comes up with a new way to mock Romney:

I’d never heard that expression “white man overbite” before, although I did see “When Harry Met Sally,” the film that put it on the map (although the word was originally “man’s”). I think that Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm overshadowed everything else in that movie for me.

Here’s the original “white man’s overbite” scene (unfortunately, the syncing is off, but you can still get the idea):

I’m not so sure it’s just a white-man thing, either—although this article is a parody); Obama actually didn’t do the overbite when he danced on Ellen’s show, as you can see here:

Here’s one I failed to catch first time around. Not a white man overbite in sight:

But wasn’t Bill Clinton, the white black man, famous for the white man overbite? Maybe not while dancing, but while showing “compassion”?

Reflections about Super Tuesday

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s funny how Romney’s victories on Super Tuesday are turned into defeats by much of the MSM.

He just squeaked by in Ohio, so he’s in trouble. Ignored is the fact that about ten days ago he was way behind in the polls. And here I thought Ohio was do or die for Santorum, not Romney.

Romney even won the Alaska caucuses, somewhat unexpectedly. But you don’t hear all that much about that.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve never thought it was in the bag for Romney, and I still don’t. For example, if either Santorum or Gingrich were to drop out—especially Gingrich—things could go quite differently. But I don’t think Newt’s ego would allow that, and it makes very little sense for Santorum, who’s doing much better than Gingrich at this point, to be the one to exit first. So I don’t see either one withdrawing until much more time (and many more primaries) has passed.

What’s more, there’s no saying who would gain more of Gingrich’s votes, Santorum or Romney. My impression of Newt-supporters is that they like Newt’s fighting spirit, sharp tongue, quick wit, and history of leadership in the House. Neither Santorum nor Romney share those characteristics, so I make no predictions about which candidate would earn the lion’s share of Gingrich’s voters.

One thing that bugs me is this whining that Romney has so much money and that’s why he is doing well. Back in 2008 he had a lot of money, too, and the taunt then was that with all his money he couldn’t manage to buy the nomination. I guess the value of a dollar has really increased since then; it buys a lot more votes these days.

What’s more, it seems to me that the ability to raise money is an important part of politics. You may not like that fact—I certainly don’t—but it’s not something that’s about to change, and as long as that’s the way it is I’d rather have a candidate in there who’s good at it. Obama certainly is.

Romney has personal wealth, too, but so far this year he hasn’t had to dip into his own rather substantial savings. Where does he get his campaign money? Mostly from large donors, although he’s been courting the small ones, too. Is it really so surprising that business-and-finance-friendly Romney would appeal to people with money?

[NOTE: Toby Harnden has some good observations on Romney’s win/loss on Super Tuesday.]

Winning the lottery and sherbert

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a nice story about Louise White of Rhode Island, an 81-year-old lady who just won a 336 million Powerball jackpot. Not surprisingly at her age, Ms. White chose to receive the money in a lump sum of $210,000,000 rather than in 30 annuity payments spread out over the next 29 years. The government gets a nice fat chunk of it as well: $52.5 to the feds and $14.7 to the state of Rhode Island.

But one odd thing in the article especially caught my eye:

The funds will go to the Rainbow Sherbert Trust, named after the dessert that she purchased last month while buying the lottery ticket, although the correct spelling is sherbet.

Indeed. Many decades ago I noticed that the word “sherbet” is misspelled with such frequency that the incorrect spelling threatens to replace the proper one. Once you notice it, you see it almost everywhere.

The question is: why the persistent misspelling of that particular word? I’ve never come up with a truly satisfying answer, except that “sherbert” has a nice internal rhyme that mere “sherbet” lacks. But that doesn’t seem quite enough to explain it, does it?

At any rate, the time may be fast approaching when “sherbet” and “sherbert” will both be replaced by the more upscale (and expensive, of course!) “sorbet.” But that won’t happen if Ms. White and her family have anything to say about it:

White said in a statement that was handed out at the news conference that she was waiting that Saturday, Feb. 11, with a grocery list for someone to take her to the store. In her list was a Powerball ticket in time for the evening’s drawing. She said she the person who was supposed to take her that morning “was working all day at home and couldn’t get away.”

“Then around [7 p.m.] a family member wanted some rainbow sherbert to eat later, so they decided to go to the Stop N Shop,” White wrote in a statement.

“I had just finished making a sandwich and was asked if I wanted anything at the store and I said emphatically, ‘I can’t believe you asked me if I want you to get me something. NO, I don’t want you to get me something,'” she wrote in the statement, “I want to go with you!”

After buying the tickets, White said she was at home later that evening listening to the news “while the family enjoyed the rainbow sherbert.”

She listened to news and copied down the winning numbers, but didn’t check her tickets until later. When she realized she had the matching numbers, she yelled, “Is anybody awake? I want you to come look at something.”

She said she and her family were in disbelief, checking the lottery website, then re-starting the computer and checking it again.

“We hugged each other and jumped up and down screaming!!,” she wrote. “Then I was told to ‘Sign it quick!!'”

“We’re excited, very blessed and will determine in the coming months how we’ll spend the money, but we know we’ll always have rainbow sherbert,” she wrote.

Mitt the adult

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought this observation by “Trimegistus” (who sometimes comments here too) at Ace’s gets it just about right:

You know what else I like about Mitt? He’s a goddamned adult. He’s about the only goddamned adult in politics right now. Obama’s a perpetual grad student, Newt is the president of the high-school Young Republicans circa 1986, Santorum is an earnest Notre Dame freshman, and Big Ron’s the world’s oldest high school redneck stoner.

Mitt is an actual grownup with a functional family, he’s had a real job and did it well, he’s not running for President to get revenge on anybody or boost an inflated ego. He’s doing it to fix the goddamned country.

Super Tuesday

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s the day that voters in ten states go to the polls with a total of 419 Republican delegates up for grabs in Georgia, Ohio, Alaska, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee, North Dakota, Idaho, Virginia, and Vermont.

That’s only half the number that were at stake in 2008’s Super Tuesday. But it’s still quite a few. They’re allocated proportionately now rather than winner-take-all, and polling shows that the most closely contested states are Ohio and Tennessee.

The accepted wisdom is that Santorum probably must win both to remain viable. Gingrich almost certainly will win Georgia, but it’s hard to see how that could change things for him unless Tennessee comes along for the ride, and even then it’s hard to see a path for him to become the eventual nominee. Paul—well, he’ll win some delegates and perhaps even a caucus state like North Dakota, but he’s still not going to be the nominee nor will he drop out.

The more interesting question is when and if Gingrich will withdraw; I predict it won’t be soon. And what will the turnout be?

[ADDENDUM: Drew M at Ace’s has a lot of good suggestions for changes in the primary rules. Don’t sit on a hot stove till they get implemented, though.]

And yet another changer: Daniel Knauf

The New Neo Posted on by

I love love love to read changers’ stories about their political conversions. They’re all a little bit alike and yet different. I get the urge to write to them and say “Hey, visit my blog; you’ll find a lot there that speaks to what you’re going through!”

But alas; quite a few (like for instance the latest person to “come out,” Daniel Knauf) seem to lack publicly available email addresses. Anybody have any idea how to reach him?

Knauf is a particular subset of political changer that’s surprisingly common: the Hollywood variety. And, Hollywood being what it is, he was also a silent changer till very very recently, when sorrow at Andrew Breitbart’s death and the nastiness of the left’s reaction to it caused him to burst his mental chains and say his piece.

Knauf’s original political turning point was also a very common one: 9/11. But I’ll let him describe what happened to him:

I remember watching the collapse of the first tower and feeling–literally feeling the breath just leave my lungs, my chest filling with a terrible, ghastly void; a sense of distant screams in a windswept wasteland and loss loss loss oh my God all those people all those people they murdered all those thousands of people…

Like every American, I was approached [the next day] by a number of colleagues who wished to vent and commiserate.

But unlike every American, my coworkers expressed little or no anger toward the terrorists who had committed this atrocity. Rather, they directed their vitriol towards American Imperialism, American foreign policy, American arrogance, American warmongering, American racism and, most of all, our American President, the evil, unfathomably stupid, idiot-Christian, bumbling Texan oaf, George W. Bush.

It’s hard to underestimate the profound shock this sort of thing can engender in a person who’d previously been oblivious to some of the worst excesses of the left. If Knauf was anything like me, he really hadn’t previously talked politics to most of his friends, and therefore didn’t even know their views in many cases. It just hadn’t come up, or if it had, he hadn’t paid much attention; it was just so much background blah-blah-blah.

But the drama of 9/11 made talking about these things impossible to avoid, and the emotion focused the attention quite sharply, and the resultant disclosures were enough to make a lot of people’s worlds turn upside down. I know whereof I speak.

Knauf’s reaction was not so unusual either, especially for those who earn their livelihood in professions where being on the right is a no-no and can lead to loss of income or fear of such:

And what did I say?

Nothing.

Not a damn thing.

I was just shocked silent. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing…

Over the ensuing years, I continued to remain silent whenever confronted by the toxic, batshit-crazy, knee-jerk, anti-intellectual, when-in-doubt-blame-America Leftism that pervades Hollywood. I saw what happened to others if they spoke up or disagreed with the party line. I actually witnessed one writer, who foolishly expressed his support for the war in Iraq, set-upon and viciously berated by no less than six crew-members for almost 20 minutes straight.

That night, he found his car had been keyed in our secure lot.

Hmm… must’ve been a random vandal.

Incidentally, though he had a storied career, an amazing list of credits and is one of the most versatile, talented writer-producers I know, the jobs gradually dried up for him and now he can’t, as they say, get arrested in this town.

So now Knauf’s cat is finally out of the bag. I bet it’s a relief. It will be interesting to see what happens to him.

Limbaugh’s apology—once more, with feeling

The New Neo Posted on by

Rush Limbaugh apologized again to Sandra Fluke yesterday, and this time he sounded sincere, although he managed to get in a well-deserved (see this, for example) dig at the left in the process:

“I descended to [the left’s] level when I used those two words to describe Sandra Fluke,” Limbaugh said. “I’ve always tried to maintain a very high degree of integrity and independence on this program. Nevertheless, those two words were inappropriate. They were uncalled for. They distracted from the point that I was actually trying to make, and I again sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for using those two words to describe her. I do not think she is either of those two words. I did not think last week that she is either of those two words.”

He added: “It was way beneath me, and way beneath you. I was wrong. I genuinely apologize.”

Limbaugh claimed he was not forced into issuing an apology to Fluke, despite calls from prominent conservatives””including House Speaker John Boehner and GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum””to do so, as advertisers of his show fled in droves.

“The apology was sincere and heartfelt … pure, simple, heartfelt,” he said. “All the theories, all the experts are wrong.”

I thought the original two words Limbaugh’s referring to (prostitute, slut) were inappropriate, too. Not because they’re un-PC, but because they didn’t even make sense as a joke. As I wrote here, in my previous one-and-only post on the subject (and the present post will probably be my last):

But when last I checked, prostitutes were paid by their clients to have sex, not by the general public to use contraception. What’s more, birth control pills have no connection with frequency of sex, because they must be taken regularly and are not act-dependent, whereas act-dependent condoms and diaphragms/cream cost the same whether the sexual acts are with one partner many times or different partners many times (the latter being the definition of “slut”).

So, what do you think? Is Limbaugh honestly sincere [*see note] on this? Or was his hand forced by either his lawyers or his advertisers, or both?

The whole incident has made me reflect on the Limbaugh phenomenon, something I usually ignore. I freely admit I’m not a listener, which makes me not an expert on what it is that makes him so appealing to so many. In the past, when I’ve tuned in now and then, I’ve usually tuned out in just a few minutes, partly because I’m not an auditory learner (I much prefer to read), and partly because I find his style doesn’t suit me and the content doesn’t say much to me. I don’t find him funny, and the few times I have listened to him at any length I’ve quite regularly found some of his comments offensive (unfortunately I can’t quote which ones, because I never thought to take notes and I haven’t heard his show in ages).

But that’s just me. I’m well aware that others—many many many others—may and do differ. My impression is that they find him both hugely entertaining and tremendously informative, which so far has been a winning combination for him and a tremendous threat to the supremacy of the MSM and its prevailing message. For that, members of the latter institution have probably long been aching to take him out in some way, and now they almost certainly see their golden opportunity.

I think that’s the deepest source of Rush’s apology, and the genesis of his sincerity: he recognizes that he may have given his enemies the rope with which to hang him, because his remarks were just stupid and over-the-top enough to give their attacks credibility. He’s kicking himself for that.

*NOTE: Honestly Sincere—

Movie snacks: they’re too much

The New Neo Posted on by

Movie popcorn, candy, and soft drinks have gotten ridiculously expensive. The theaters consider their patrons to comprise a captive audience slave to its munchie cravings, much like the passengers in an airport waiting for a plane are forced to pay the higher prices at the food stores there.

But isn’t the solution to this weighty problem not a lawsuit, but instead to refrain from buying those in-theater snacks? And to bring your own if you feel you just gotta eat at the movies?

I would have thought so. But I don’t go to the movies much anyway—I prefer the Netflix-type arrangements—and when I do I actually don’t buy the food anyway. They’re “too much” in more than just price, they’re enormous and getting larger all the time.

So I wasn’t aware till I read the article that many movie theaters actually ban the importation of food by its patrons, so that people have to resort to smuggling it in if they want to beat the high prices. Maybe that’s why women’s bags have gotten so large lately, too; they have to be, in order to store the contraband.

It’s that time again, again

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Bumped up. I’ll do this for a few more days this go-round.]

passhat.jpg

Yes, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Time passes so quickly when we’re enjoying ourselves.

But yes, it’s been a while since I asked you to donate to a semi-worthy cause: this blog. And so I’m going to ask you again to use the “donate” button on the right sidebar beside the photo of the hat, and give whatever you see fit.

Every single donation— large or small—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog. If each reader gave even a few dollars, it would be a glorious thing. But whether you decide to donate or not, please keep visiting and keep commenting. Comments are a very big part of what makes this blog work.

I thank you all in advance. I’ll probably repeat this notice every now and then, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. But I’ll be discreet about it. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on NPR, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.