Clarification: my opinion about Obama’s Tucson speech

The New Neo Posted on by

From the evidence of certain comments and a couple of emails I’ve received, it seems I didn’t make myself clear enough when I first discussed Obama’s Tucson speech—even when I expanded on my position here and here in the comments section.

I pretty much agree with Byron York here, and I have from the start. And when I state than I also agree with Rich Lowry that it was “a magnificent performance,” I mean to especially accent that last word: performance.

When I wrote that Obama’s speech was “pitch-perfect,” that’s what I was talking about. Like so many of Obama’s great conciliator orations—I am thinking especially of his “let us all reason together about race while I’m making excuses for my mentor the racist demagogue Rev. Wright and calling my own grandmother a racist” speech, for example, which was extraordinarily effective with many of the people he needed to reach at the time in order to continue to be viable as a candidate—it accomplished the task. Obama did just what he needed to do in Tuscon (accent on the “he”), and he performed the job very, very well.

It takes a bit of thinking, though, to realize that, if he had really wanted to damp down the inflammatory rhetoric, he could have and should have done so earlier, before it hit its marks. He had plenty of time.

But no. As I wrote here:

[This] is Obama’s m.o. He likes to play bad cop good cop, and he’s the good cop.

As far as wishing, as I wrote at the end of the original post, that government could live up to the expectations of an idealistic child such as Cristina Green, I’m giving her credit for being a great deal more thoughtful than a two-year old yelling “gimmee, gimmee!” in a candy store. I’m not talking about giving people whatever they want, whether it’s possible or not. Nor am I talking about mere civility, and certainly not about the absence of strong argument.

I’m talking about the sort of hope that an intelligent nine-year-old can have that people in government will be trying to do what’s right: to tell the truth, to be thoughtful and logical, to listen to their constituents and be responsive, and to work together to figure out what’s best for the country rather than what will solidify their own power. Things like that—things that the cynical non-nine-year-old in me realizes are highly unlikely to occur.

If you’re going to commit adultery…

The New Neo Posted on by

…don’t do it in the marital bed. It tends to make the deceived spouse very very angry.

There aren’t too many betrayals that cause as much rage as infidelity, nor as deep a rage. But apparently the worst way to do the dirty deed is in the marital bed. This makes sense; there’s a sort of innate horror at such an affront, something like the revulsion a dog might feel at soiling his own den, only in this case it’s the spouse committing the desecration.

The comments to the article are unusually personal, but this one just might be my favorite, a good example of someone making his own bed and then having to lie in it, with a little help from the ex-wife:

my husband was the cheater and probably not in the marital bed (he rented a second apartment for that purpose). during the denouement i couldn’t bring myself to sleep in it anymore – slept on the floor in the living room instead. so it astonished me during the division of stuff phase that the ex insisted on taking the marital bed. we had picked it out together in europe, it had a history. not hers! there should have been some reverence, but he saw it as something he paid for once. i didn’t want it, and i didn’t want him, but it felt sad and wierd and creepy that he would actually want to own it again, and use it with his co-cheater.

on my eventual expedition to buy my new mattress, the salesman – bit of a george carlin type – got going on a riff. the frame was european and it would cost an arm and a leg for the ex to have a new custom mattress made. salesman figured if my ex was too cheap to buy his (third) wife a new bed he’d probably go with the existing mattress as well. “so draw on it” he said. “circle the stains! you know, like george washington slept here, only write things like… first baby vomited here. second child conceived here. third child miscarried here. puppy had accidents here, here and here. 59-year-old-husband-dating-28-year-old-immigrant-seeking-green-card drools here a LOT when he snores…” it was hilarious. and cathartic.

i didn’t have the cold-bloodedness required to do it. but i did write the word “sucker” in her language in permanent marker on the back. and off the time-honored marital bed went to their new house! true story.

A Blow for civility on the left

The New Neo Posted on by

Charles Blow pushes the civility program and chides the left for blaming the right for the Tucson slayings. His column is fairly hard-hitting, especially considering that his sympathies are clearly with the left. He nevertheless calls its campaign at linkage “a full-fledged witch hunt,” words the left usually reserves for either Joe McCarthy or other people on the right, or—well, the actual witch hunts in Salem:

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting.

The thrust of the rest of Blow’s column is a lot more predictable. His point is that such witch-hunting rhetoric against the right is not a good idea because, although the charges were plausible, they were still bad because the American people won’t buy them if they are not supported by the evidence, and therefore they backfire on those who make them [emphasis mine]:

…[This rhetoric from the left] only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

[NOTE: In this past column by Blow, he goes on and on about invective from the right, but does not mention that of the left at all. The comic high point of the piece is a quote by Bill Maher which—if you’re familiar with Maher and his own “strong language”—drips with irony: “As the comedian Bill Maher pointed out, strong language can poison weak minds, as it did in the case of Timothy McVeigh.”]

We seem to have a populist revolt on our hands—in Tunisia

The New Neo Posted on by

This is stunning news:

After 23 years of iron-fisted rule, the president of Tunisia was driven from power Friday by violent protests over soaring unemployment and corruption. Virtually unprecedented in modern Arab history, the populist uprising sent an ominous message to authoritarian governments that dominate the region…

Ben Ali’s downfall sent a potentially frightening message to autocratic leaders across the Arab world, especially because he did not seem especially vulnerable until very recently.

He managed the economy of his small country of 10 million better than many other Middle Eastern nations grappling with calcified economies and booming young populations. He turned Tunisia into a beach haven for tourists, helping create an area of stability in volatile North Africa. There was a lack of civil rights and little or no freedom of speech, but a better quality of life for many than in neighboring countries such as Algeria and Libya.

Nobody seems to know what will happen next in Tunisia. The sense is of chaos, which can provide an opportunity for even more sinister and repressive forces to enter the scene. Let’s hope not—but think Iran when the Shah fell.

As in many recent populist movements in the Arab world, modern communications media seem to have played a large role [emphasis mine]:

The ouster followed the country’s largest protests in generations and weeks of escalating unrest, sparked by one man’s suicide and fueled by social media, cell phones and young people who have seen relatively little benefit from Tunisia’s recent economic growth. Thousands of demonstrators from all walks of life rejected Ben Ali’s promises of change and mobbed Tunis, the capital, to demand that he leave.

Tunisia is an Arab country, as well as a Muslim one–although, curiously, it is the only Arab country that bans polygamy.

And what a history! I didn’t know it until today, but Tunisia was the site of Carthage. Later it (or sections of it) was conquered by the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines, some Normans, the Almohad caliphs, the Berber Hafsids, pirates (remember the Barbary Coast?—it was in Tunisia), Spain, the Ottomons (are you still with me?), and the French. Tunisia became independent in 1956, and Ben Ali’s been in charge since 1987.

Until now.

Meanwhile…

The New Neo Posted on by

…back in the real world, Hezbollah marches on.

Here’s another article on the subject. And since we can’t seem to get away from the phrase “blood libel,” it would seem to be an exceedingly appropriate term to describe this accusation towards Israel made by Hezbollah leader Nasrallah:

In a speech that was broadcast in full by Al-Jazeera, [Nasrallah] set out to argue that Israel was behind the [2005] Rafik Hariri assassination. He presented video footage and apparently intercepted Israeli military communications, all of which captured wide Arab audiences. His starting point was something that many, maybe even most Arabs believe: that Israel is behind many of the events that intensify conflict and sectarianism in Arab and Muslim countries. Arabs are nothing if not open to this interpretation. His challenge was to present evidence that Israel was specifically behind the Hariri assassination. And while he presented little that can stand up in a court of law, he managed to convey enough doubt that, coupled with the Arab instinct to see Israel’s hand in every Arab problem, gives him some protection and a basis for argument when the tribunal releases its findings.

The UN tribunal investigating the assassination will probably end up implicating Hezbollah, but Nasrallah knows that won’t sit well with what used to be called the Arab Street. What to do? When in doubt, blame the Israelis.

Palin and the blood libel revisited

The New Neo Posted on by

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach thinks that Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” was both appropriate and justified.

I said it was, from the start. I also have made it clear that I believe she knew full well what the term meant.

But why would so many people—even some who supported her—think her unaware of the meaning of the phrase when she used it so pointedly (and accurately, I might add) in a major statement? It may be just another example of what George Bush might have called the misunderestimation of Sarah Palin’s intelligence; they really do think she’s stupid. But as a devout Christian and a friend of Israel and Jews, she just might be one of the very people most likely to know the history of the term she used, perhaps even better than those who Googled it hurriedly in order to excoriate her for saying it.

Ah, but that’s the problem, say others, the ones who credit her for at least knowing what she was talking about, but who criticize her for using the phrase as a “dog whistle” signal to evangelical Christians, who feel themselves to be a persecuted minority like the Jews.

It’s a wonder Palin’s critics don’t get whiplash when they talk about her.

Right now, looking at the categories on the right sidebar of my blog, I notice that when this one is published I will have written 58 posts about Palin since she burst on the national scene two and half years ago. That an awful lot about a person who hasn’t even held elective office for quite some time. I would wager that, if I were to go back and glance at them all, the vast majority would be concerned not with Palin herself, but with analyzing the depth of the hatred so many people harbor for her, and what gives it such remarkably vitriolic force.

[NOTE: Barry Rubin has some good commentary and historical background on blood libel (hat tip: Bob from Virginia).

What is the modern incident that comes to my mind on hearing the phrase “blood libel?” Why, Mohammed al Durah, of course. Richard Landes has used the phrase many times in connection with the allegation that al Durah was killed by Israeli soldiers (for example, here), and quite correctly at that (Landes is a historian, by the way).

Another occasion of blood libel that comes to mind (although I haven’t heard the phrase used in connection with it) is something I read many years ago, as I was just beginning on the long road toward my “change.” I initially believed it and was horrified by it. It’s the well-known piece “A Gaza Diary” that appeared in the October 2001 Harper’s, written by Chris Hedges and alleging that Israeli soldiers—well, you read the passage for yourself:

Hedges, in one passage in the 11-page article in Harper’s, said that he was at the refugee camp on Sunday afternoon, June 17, when a voice came over the Israeli loudspeaker saying, “Come on, dogs, where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!”

Boys, most no more than 10 or 11 years old, according to Hedges, responded to the taunts by throwing rocks over an electric fence at two armored Israeli jeeps.

The fence separates the camp from a Jewish settlement where the “whitewashed villas and manicured lawns and gardens look as if they have been lifted out of a southern California suburb.” A percussion grenade scattered one group of boys, writes Hedges.

The soldiers, shooting with M-16 rifles equipped with silencers, sent bullets that “tumble end-over-end through the children’s slight bodies,” killing 11-year-old Ali Murad and seriously wounding four more, three of them under 18, according to Hedges. On the previous day, he writes, eight were shot under similar circumstances, six of them under 18.

Hedges writes he has seen children shot in El Salvador, Guatemala and Sarajevo, and mothers with infants lined up and massacred in Algeria, “but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.”

Here’s a lengthy refutation of many of the “facts” in Hedges article. But the blood libel had worked its magic and the damage had been done, as Hedges well knew; many more people read Harper’s—and believe it—than read CAMERA.]

The hard left in action: the ends justifies the means

The New Neo Posted on by

The hard core left is pragmatic about truth, but you don’t often see that fact revealed as honestly as it was in a comment I found at TNR, made by “Virginia Centrist” at 10:17 AM on 01/12/2011, in response to Jonathan Chait’s surprising defense of Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” to describe the attacks on her after the Tucson shooting:

Good lord, Jon! Who cares if it’s intellectually dishonest to attack her and pin this on her. I admire your honestly and lack of cynicism here, but the teaparty has crossed the line of good taste in their vile and violence-laced attacks and rhetoric aimed towards politicians in BOTH PARTIES. I should think that all elites would agree that they deserve this and that this will calm them down and reinforce the temporarily forgotten social norm that over the top rhetoric is inappropriate.

If you’re trying to argue that this won’t work, then you’re wrong. John Boehner has every incentive in the world to quiet these nuts down before a presidential election. Their usefulness is limited to base turnout elections (midterms).

Most Americans will buy these attacks on Palin, by the way, regardless of the facts. Why? Because they don’t like her.

Not everyone on the left acts this way; Chait, for example, certainly didn’t. But many do. I’m just surprised to see someone—even an anonymous commenter—admit it so openly.

Why has the left’s mask slipped recently?

The New Neo Posted on by

In the wake of the Tucson shooting, commenter Occam’s Beard made these remarks:

The question is why they’re letting the mask slip now, instead of doing the Walter Cronkite and continuing to hide their true views. Perhaps [they] are doing so because they think they’re on the verge of winning, and are overplaying their hand, Luxemburg/Liebknecht style. Or perhaps they are doing so because they see their historic chance slipping away, thanks to their assorted betes noire (sp?) ”“ Limbaugh, Beck, Fox News, and most especially, Palin ”“ publicly disputing what leftists try to portray as received wisdom, undaunted by the vituperation of the left, and striking a resonant chord with many people.

Good question: why now? I think it’s that, with the 2008 election of Obama and the heavily Democratic composition of both House and Senate, they thought they had it made. They truly believed that they had defeated the conservative monster forever and could do a permanent victory dance in the end zone.

It turned out to be otherwise, and rather quickly at that. And on some deep and perhaps still-unacknowledged level, they know it’s they themselves who blew the golden opportunity, by trying to go too far too fast.

If only they had been more careful and more incremental, they could have had it all. But somewhere between the election of 2008 and that of 2010—probably around the time of the long hard drive to ram through HCR—the mask slipped as to their intentions, and now they don’t care if it slips a bit more if it can get ultimately them where they want to go, and where they fully thought they should have succeeded in going by this time.

After all, demonizing their opponents through the use of Orwellian accusations worked in the past, didn’t it? It can work again, right? The Two Minutes Hate has a venerable function, doesn’t it?

But they may be underestimating the intelligence of the American people once again (at least, I think and hope they are). Fifty-seven percent of Americans polled are not buying the idea that political rhetoric had anything to do with the Tucson shootings. As Democrats lose more and more Americans, they become more and more frantic to win them back.

Last night the president avoided this trap. It is no accident; he reads the polls, too. He knew what he had to do, and he did it. But notice that he waited from Saturday till Wednesday evening to make his statement, allowing the vicious dogs to bark all that time and to deeply plant the accusations that have increased the ire on all the left-wing blogs and discussion boards.

The Anchoress Elizabeth Scalia, insightful as always, has an explanation for the particular form the left’s post-Tucson accusations have taken. She believes the left is desperately racing to its end-game of “putting into place…their long-desired restrictions on speech, gun-control measures…[and] the so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine.'”

In their minds, a massacre such as the one on Saturday in Tucson represented a golden opportunity to promote those goals. But in order to do so, the link between the right and the shooting needed to be made. Jared Loughner didn’t oblige by being an actual Tea Party member, as they’d originally hoped. Nor was he even sympathetic to the right—or, as it turns out, especially politically interested at all. That did not stop them, but it made the strategic and amoral nature of their charges more transparent. Let’s hope the American people remember this lesson in 2012.

[ADDENDUM: Jennifer Rubin thinks that one of the big mistakes the left made was jumping the gun, as it were, and making their accusations before they knew the facts about Loughner, which proved them wrong and made them look foolish.

I agree that’s the way it turned out for the majority of people. But I don’t think the left’s early response was an oversight at all. I think it was a gamble, one they thought worth taking. They were hoping facts would prove them right, and thinking they might. They also didn’t want the facts to get in the way of a good argument. That required an early response, and would fire up the base, always a good thing. They just didn’t count on most people in the country paying enough attention to discredit them.]