Overheard at the hairdresser’s

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I went for some R&R at the hairdresser’s.

I tend to find this rather relaxing. It’s a chunk of time in which absolutely nothing is expected of me except to sit there, perhaps sip some chamomile tea, read a People magazine (or worse) while I wait, and chat about whatever comes up—often, the topic is the always-fascinating one of hair and its vagaries.

I tend to keep it light. I certainly don’t want to talk about politics. For one thing, I assume that I am odd woman out on that score, as I usually am in any social gathering in which I happen to find myself. For another, this is a break, not a busman’s holiday.

But yesterday there was a woman in the chair across the way from me who was talking to the woman cutting her hair, and I couldn’t help but overhear her (it’s a small salon) say:

“John won’t even let me say the words ‘Fox News.'”

Ha ha ha. One can laugh, or one can cry. Here’s a woman, no doubt proud of her modernity and independence from her husband, making a little joke whose irony she probably has no way to perceive. But her little yuk depends on the following:

The notion that her husband tells her what to do and what not to do.
That the best way to deal with competing narratives (or even facts that challenge your narrative) is to shut yourself off from them.
Beyond that, that it’s good to pretend they don’t even exist, and to ban their very mention from your house and your life—except, perhaps, to make a little joke that lets another person know that you’re on the side of truth and good, just like they are.

When you think about it, it’s no surprise that many leftists support the Islamists’ demands for censorship of any speech they deem to be blasphemy. Fox is the leftists’ blasphemy. And many of them would dearly love to wipe it off the face of the earth.

And they don’t see a thing wrong with that.

The missing minutes

The New Neo Posted on by

Now it’s being reported by William Jacobsen at Legal Insurrection that one or two minutes of the Romney 47% tape is missing, and that the missing portion occurs close to the time of the controversial part where he’s speaking about the 47%. David Corn, the writer at Mother Jones responsible for publicizing the tapes, is saying it was a random camera malfunction.

Jacobson also publishes a correspondence he had with Corn, in which Corn writes:

When we posted the complete tape, we stated there was a gap of one to two minutes, or less, according to the source. That seemed to be the appropriate time to do so. I will note that Romney, who clearly has thought about how to respond to this clip, has not said in the statements he has made since its release, “But then I went on to say”¦.”

This is disingenuous, according to Jacobson. Corn had not posted such a disclosure until Jacobson had written him to complain about the missing audio.

What’s more, Corn’s suggesting that Romney should have remembered his exact words from an unscripted talk he gave four months ago is, to put it bluntly, absurd.

But then, so many things are absurd these days. Perhaps the most absurd thing is that the MSM is a dedicated arm of the Obama campaign. There is so much important news happening in the world—and so much of it damaging to Obama—that the only thing left for the press to do is to ignore and/or distort it, and then to harp on “gotcha” stories of as little consequence as this talk of Romney’s.

We have indeed fallen through the looking glass, and we’re not about to emerge any time soon.

[BONUS POINTS: If you can immediately identify this photo, you’re probably at least as old as I am. My sympathies:

[ADDENDUM: Andrea Mitchell now says that NBC will not air the Obama “redistribution” tape because it’s not been authenticated.

Otherwise, of course, she would. Just as CBS was oh-so-careful with the Killian memos in September of 2004, and waited till they were completely authenticated to…

And then there’s the commendable reluctance of the exceptionally careful LA Times, which has been keeping from the public the Rashid Khalidi tape, said to be damaging to Obama, for well-nigh these long four years. What commendable restraint!:

Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi ”” former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?

At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.

The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency.

Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?

The sad thing is that, in the four years since this story first appeared, it has become more and more clear that even the release of such a tape might do nothing to hurt Obama’s support. I wonder if there’s anything that could surface about him that could matter at this point.]

[ADDENDUM II: A commenter at Ace’s adds:

The missing minutes will show up in late October. In them, Mitt dances on the backs of the poor in an overcoat and top hat, prodding them with his cruel platinum tipped cane. Then he cackles for a while. Then shares with the crowd how to be a billionaire and pay no taxes. Then some weird Mormon ritual involving the blood of real Christians.
Then he goes back behind the podium andstarts talking truthfully and sensibly about boring foreign policy crap like China and Palestinians.]

One more thing…

The New Neo Posted on by

…about the press and the release of Romney’s fundraiser remarks. The video was taken on May 17, 2012, and Mother Jones (who published it) has not (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) said when it obtained the clip.

I’m wondering about the timing. If the video was made a full four months ago, why the release now? Did the person who made it just recently give it to Mother Jones? Or has the publication had it a while and decided to sit on it until a time considered most propitious?

If the latter, why now, and what else are they sitting on? We’ve long expected an October surprise of one sort of other, and yet it’s not even October.

No candidate is perfect. All candidates make errors, especially when talking to supporters in a supposedly private setting. The real question is the nature of those errors, and whether voters care about them deeply or are more attuned to fundamentals. Sometimes the errors appear very small and yet they seem to matter to voters: Romney’s own father’s “brainwashed” remark, Ed Muskie’s tears (or non-tears, depending on who you believe), and the utterly ridiculous “macaca” episode of George Allen. I make no predictions about the American public, but I will say that “bitter clingers” didn’t seem to hurt Obama at all—perhaps because it only offended people who already were unlikely to vote for him. Will it be the same for Romney?

As for the issue of politicians speaking off-the-cuff to fundraisers, and getting burned for it, I had this to say about that, back in 2008 during Obama’s “bitter clinger” controversy:

For example, the San Francisco fundraiser at which Obama described the bitter clingers of Pennsylvania was meant to be a very private affair, no press allowed. But merely keeping the press out no longer keeps the media out, because we are all media (or potential media) now.

It used to be that candidates could feel safe from prying eyes and ears at these events. They were among friends. Now even friends can unintentionally betray by having access to internet sources””be they the Huffington Post (in Obama’s case), a blog, or You Tube””that can reach the general public with material that was supposed to be off the record. Loose lips can sink campaign ships, or at least cause them to take on water.

Romney should have known that. In fact, I’m sure he did know that. How careful a person must be, though, to have his/her every public utterance be something that can’t be used by opponents and enemies. Such a person really would be a robot.

Keeping shadows light

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been reading a biography of the painter Edward Hopper. Perhaps “reading” is too strong a word; like many biographies these days, it’s way too long, in this case nearly 600 pages of text plus a ton of notes.

So I’m skimming it; I’m interested in Edward Hopper, but not that interested, and the book itself just isn’t well-written. Where have all the editors gone?

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I was struck by this statement of Hopper’s, as recorded by his wife Jo in one of her diaries [“the Cape” here refers to Cape Cod, and “E.” is Edward Hopper]:

The Cape looks so brilliant. E. says it is because the shadows aren’t dark, like Maine. Shadows light, because of greater density of atmosphere. The brilliant light is diffused. A great deal of reflected light keeps shadows bright.

Hopper’s paintings were famous, and have become beloved—despite, or perhaps because of, their brooding atmosphere of solitude.

Light was one of the key ingredients. Hopper said that all he wanted to do was to “paint sunlight on a house.” He certainly did that, but I disagree with the reviewer in the NY Times that that was all Hopper did. Mere “sunlight on (or in) a house” cannot evoke moods quite like these:

And of course, one of Hopper’s most famous paintings of all is of the night and the sharp illumination of harsh indoor light:

It’s all a little gimmicky, I guess. But I think it only looks that way now that we’ve become so familiar with Hopper’s work, so much so that it seems a bit cliched.

It wasn’t a cliche at the start. And it was always heartfelt and uncontrived, which comes through loud and clear; Hopper was a difficult man and probably a loner, despite his long and troubled (and intense) marriage.

So, is the light in Maine different from that in Cape Cod? I’ve been to both many times, and I have to say I’ve not really noticed it.

But then again, I’m not Edward Hopper.

Mitt sez…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that a lot of people want to be on the dole, and they won’t vote for him anyway.

Mitt sez the Palestinians don’t want peace.

This is scandalous? This is news?

Ah, but the media can make a statement that the sky is blue into a gaffe, if Mitt sez it.

Meanwhile, Obama’s Mideast policy is in flames, his State Department failed to offer the Benghazi consulate the basic protection that it obviously needed, and from the MSM we hear the sound of crickets chirping.

The Fourth Estate and the end of the republic.

One possibility, though (and it’s only a possibility): do the majority of voters secretly think what Mitt said on those secret tapes was correct?

The Twitter button

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, the Twitter button is now there, and I don’t like the way it looks. But I’ll keep it up for a while and see how it goes. It can always be removed at some point if it continues to be more of a nuisance than a help.

I’m going to stop there, though, at least for now. No Facebook button. I don’t use either Twitter or Facebook, but my ever-helpful tech adviser has told me that people can tweet a post or recommend it on Facebook pretty easily, even without the buttons.

Tweeting

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve noticed a couple of requests that I add a Tweet button to the blog. You may recall that my technical skills are abominable, and that I have to await my tech helper on that score. So this is just to let you know I’m working on it, but it may take a while.

Also, a question: would a Facebook button be a good idea, too?

Big Brother CNN

The New Neo Posted on by

I was at a doctor’s office today and had to sit in the waiting room for a few minutes, listening to the blah-blah-blah noise pollution of CNN. They were crowing about how terrible Romney is and how great Obama’s been doing; no surprise there.

I rarely listen to CNN except when forced to, in doctor’s officers and airports and such (in fact, I don’t listen to TV news very much at all). I’ve become so accustomed to the CNN drone in those settings that it rarely occurs to me to ask: why always CNN? Why not Fox for a change?

Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t a public venue in the entire US where the default station might be Fox. But I certainly haven’t noticed one. Nor am I saying that public waiting rooms should play us cable news stations at all; I’d much prefer silence, especially nowadays, when at least half the people carry their entertainment with them in the form of iPods and iPhones and the like (even the occasional book is sometimes spotted, a rara avis).

But it strikes me that this hegemony of CNN as public background music is part of the reason for the nation’s leftward drift. It reminds me ever-so-slightly (or maybe not so very slightly) of the telescreen in 1984, which (if I remember correctly) could not be turned off, or the mind-shaping recordings that the residents of Brave New World had to listen to for their “education.”

“What’s the lesson this afternoon?” he asked.

“We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes,” she answered. “But now it’s switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.”

The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. halted and, bending over one of the little beds, listened attentively.

“Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let’s have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet.”

At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.

“…all wear green,” said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, “and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.”

There was a pause; then the voice began again.

“Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfuly glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able…”

The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows.

“They’ll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson.”

I’ve got…

The New Neo Posted on by

…some plans for another post, but I have a busy afternoon ahead of me. So I thought I’d give you an open thread in the meantime to discuss whatever you want. There’s so much happening (most of it upsetting), so here’s your chance to talk.

Here’s one piece you might want to take a look at (hat tip: Ace). It echoes some thoughts we’ve discussed here recently. And then take a look at this piece by Sarah Hoyt, who still thinks the American people are not that dumb.

I hope she’s right, but I have very serious doubts.

Leaving the GOP

The New Neo Posted on by

I often write about political change and changers. It’s almost axiomatic that most political change occurs in the direction of left to right rather than the other way around, with the caveat that in young adulthood there is quite a bit of change from right (or center) to left, and even from left to more left.

On that latter point, I remember in my own larger (non-nuclear) family, I had some distant relatives whose parents were pro-Soviet but whose young adult offspring became pro-Chinese Communist during the late 60s, and this created a remarkable amount of discord within the family.

But I digress.

Recently a reader alerted me to Jeremiah Goulka’s right-to-left change story. It’s hard to say whether his tale is representative of most right-to-left change, since I’ve read so few stories of that nature, but on reading it I think it’s fairly easy to see why he was susceptible to that particular transformation.

Goulka’s Republicanism was an inherited one, rather than having been arrived at through independent thinking. He was a Republican through osmosis, having absorbed his family ethos. A great deal of early political orientation is like that, so Goulka is hardly unique in that regard. But questioning one’s political inheritance often begins in college or even high school for many people; Goulka seems to have had a delayed political adolescence and rebellion.

Note the prevalence of the word “we” when Goulka describes what he thought back when he was a Republican. He’s talking about his family and himself as though they were a single entity. I’m not sure of his age when he had his political conversion from right to left, but he seems to have been a college student intern for Denny Hastert some time between 1995 and 1998, and then reports that Abu Graib (2004) was a special turning point for him, which would probably place him somewhere in his mid- to late-20s at the time. Also, he says he voted for Kerry that year “out of spite,” which indicates both immaturity and emotionality.

Goulka’s description of his family’s Republicanism reads like the left’s caricature of Republicanism (although he makes it clear they were not racists). It’s almost like it was designed to make the Salon audience feel good about themselves and have their stereotypes about Republicans validated. (Not that he’s lying about it; such people do exist in the GOP):

We believed in noblesse oblige, for we saw ourselves as part of a natural aristocracy, even if we hadn’t been born into it.

Another turning point for Goulka was Katrina. Note again the emotionalism with which he looks at the issue, plus the parroting of MSM reporting and liberal talking points (such as, for example, Bush’s callousness):

I had fallen in love with New Orleans during a post-law-school year spent in Louisiana clerking for a federal judge, and the Bush administration’s callous (non-)response to the storm broke my heart. I wanted to help out, but I didn’t fly helicopters or know how to do anything useful in a disaster, so just I sat glued to the coverage and fumed ”” until FEMA asked federal employees to volunteer to help. I jumped at the chance.

The piece goes on to describe more of Goulka’s previous naivete (“Not having experienced it, I had always assumed that government force was only used against guilty people.”—this is someone who’d gone to law school??) Whether this guy was a Republican or a Democrat, in each incarnation he was a lightweight as a thinker.

Goulka went on to spend three weeks in Iraq during the surge, and was shocked to discover the American war effort was imperfect! Naive doesn’t even begin to cover it. Now Goulka seems to assume that all Republicans are as naive as he was:

Today, I wonder if Mitt Romney drones on about not apologizing for America because he, like the former version of me, simply isn’t aware of the U.S. ever doing anything that might demand an apology.

Goulka describes himself in the following passage, but he assumes (naively; old habits die hard) that he’s describing Republicans in general:

My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality. To preserve that worldview, I had to believe that people had morally earned their “just” desserts, and I had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to point out that the world didn’t actually work that way.

The idea that the foundation of Republican thought is a belief the world is a perfect moral meritocracy is odd, to say the least. Goulka seems never to have heard of the idea that one can have compassion for a person’s plight and yet not think that throwing more and more money at that person, and encouraging more and more helplessness, dependency, and entitlement is the best way to be of assistance. In other words, he seems unfamiliar with the underpinnings of conservative thought.

And of course the commenters at Salon congratulate Goulka for finally seeing the light and entering the reality-based community.