Is Ayers admitting he wrote “Dreams From My Father?”

The New Neo Posted on by

The short answer is: no, he’s making a joke.

Jack Cashill, whose book Deconstructing Obama has come out recently, believes that the joke (or, as he puts it, the final “retreat into irony”) hides the preceeding truthful admission:

With his final comment, the Ayers-friendly audience laughed in relief. The media will laugh nervously upon seeing the video as well. The White House will not.

Watch the clip yourself and see what you think of Ayers’ affect:

I think that at the very least the clip is interesting. Ayers is a highly intelligent and wily guy who likes to put things over on all of us. His statement about his legal status in an interview with David Horowitz in the early 80s, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird””America is a great country,” says a lot about his attitude towards guilt, innocence, admission of guilt and innocence, and joking.

Does his admission in the clip mean he really wrote Obama’s memoir? Of course not. But his behavior is certainly ambiguous. Note that the questioner does not bring up the topic of the questioned authorship—Ayers does, and we know the best defense is a good offense. Note also how quick Ayers is to praise Dreams—before the man finishes asking his question. And note how eager Ayers is to differentiate the supposedly excellent Dreams from Obama’s later hack work, The Audacity of Hope. Is he trying to disavow any connection with the latter?

Ayers’ delivery is deadpan. He smiles only at the end, after the audience has finally gotten that it’s a joke and laughed. Earlier, you can hear the original questioner’s surprised, “You wrote that?” in response to Ayers’ “joke,” which he doesn’t seem to get is a joke. That’s because Ayers’ deadpan demeanor is very convincing; he seems completely serious. Is that because he is, or is he just a comedian with great delivery?

And is Ayers’ smile at the end just a mockery of the silliness of those who would believe he wrote Obama’s book? Or a mockery of those who think he did not?

The Reagan assassination attempt

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been thirty years since President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, and this piece contains some interesting and previously unknown facts about the incident, including how very close Reagan came to dying. His Secret Service agent that day, Jerry Parr, appears to have made a number of quick decisions that probably saved Reagan’s life.

Selling the Libyan rebels the rope

The New Neo Posted on by

There is a famous quote from Lenin that shows a remarkable understanding of the West:

The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.

Lenin was talking about the urge to do business. And of course he was wrong about who would hang whom first—at least, so far. But he was correct about the West’s lack of instinct for shrewd self-preservation, particularly today.

Case in point: Libya. When the uprising first spread to that country, I wondered in my very first post on the subject about the answer to a simple question: who are the rebels? It seemed not tangential to the issue, but basic.

If we as a country are going to put blood and treasure behind a movement in a civil war, we’d best know what that movement represents. In Libya, the fact that our government does not seem to know, and that pundits are answering the question with facts that are very, very troubling, is shocking (even though I thought my capacity to be shocked by what Obama does had been worn out).

In the Telegraph, one can find this description of al Qaeda influence in the movement. Andrew McCarthy takes up the topic in greater detail in National Review (please read the whole thing):

…[T]he rebels are a mixed bag. The strongest faction, particularly in ideological influence, is the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been in Libya for 70 years. There are also militant groups, such as Hasadi’s LIFG, that have ties to al-Qaeda, though they do not necessarily agree with bin Laden’s decision in the 1990s to take the violence global. In addition, there are Islamist organizations (such as the National Front for the Salvation of Libya) that claim to be non-violent and that oppose Qaddafi because they have come to regard him as non-Muslim, an apostate whose eccentric brand of Islam is seen as heterodox, and who persecutes his Muslim people. Moreover, there are undoubtedly al-Qaeda operatives in the mix, because al-Qaeda goes wherever the action is.

To describe these factions is not to discount the existence of some secular opposition to Qaddafi: some leftists who see an opportunity, and even some Western-influenced freedom fighters. Interventionists delude themselves, though, when they portray the latter as predominant, as the face of the rebels…

We’ve seen this show before. The rebels are not rebels ”” they are the Libyan mujahideen. Like the Afghan mujahideen, including those that became al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Libyan mujahideen comprise different groups. What overwhelmingly unites them, besides opposition to Qaddafi, is sharia. The Libyan mujahideen will exploit us but never befriend us. If they succeed, so be it. But we have no vital interest in orchestrating that success, even if it would mean a thug like Qaddafi finally gets his just deserts. If we empower them, we will eventually rue the day.

Mark Steyn has a more colorful way of putting it:

Now suddenly [Qaddafi’s] got to go ”“ in favor of “freedom-loving” “democrats” from Benghazi. That would be in eastern Libya ”“ which, according to West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center, has sent per capita the highest number of foreign jihadists to Iraq. Perhaps now that so many Libyan jihadists are in Iraq, the Libyans left in Libya are all Swedes in waiting. But perhaps not. If we lack, as we do in Afghanistan, the cultural confidence to wean those we liberate from their less-attractive pathologies, we might at least think twice before actively facilitating them.

Steyn also has some more general observations on the new American way of war. I happen to be in agreement; I believe that limited involvement and commitment are inherently problematic:

There are arguments to be made for being on the other side of the world for decades on end if you’re claiming it as sovereign territory and rebuilding it in your image, as the British did in India, Belize, Mauritius, the Solomon Islands, you name it. Likewise, there are arguments to be made for saying, sorry, we’re a constitutional republic, we don’t do empire. But there’s not a lot to be said for forswearing imperialism and even modest cultural assertiveness, and still spending 10 years getting shot up in Afghanistan helping to create, bankroll and protect a so-called justice system that puts a man on death row for converting to Christianity.

Libya, in that sense, is a classic post-nationalist, post-modern military intervention: As in Kosovo, we’re do-gooders in a land with no good guys.

I have never believed that the rebels in Libya (or for that matter, even the protesters in Egypt) are controlled or led by “good guys.” Oh, there may be some in that crowd, but they are probably in the minority (perhaps even the vast minority, for all I know). What’s more, however many they are, they are very likely to be overpowered in the chaos to come by the bad guys. Iran is the template, although the winners in Egypt and Libya will not look exactly like the ayatollahs of Iran.

But we will have sold them the rope with which they will attempt to hang us.

Watch out for Georgians with knives

The New Neo Posted on by

This kind of Georgian, and this sort of knife:

I don’t know which seems more dangerous, the leaping up and crashing down on the knees, or the throwing of the daggers. I do know, however, that I agree wholeheartedly with one of the commenters at YouTube: “Kinda makes your blood tingle.”

Dancers and photos: they knew how to project magic

The New Neo Posted on by

isadora.gif

Take a look at this photo of dancer Isadora Duncan and see how powerful it is. I challenge you to find anything remotely like it in a contemporary dancer. But then, Duncan was sui generis even in her time, or probably in any time.

Dance is among the most ephemeral of arts, and that was especially true before the advent of the camera. Prior to that, we had verbal descriptions, painting, and lithographs. But those only tell us what the viewer perceived, not the dancer’s corporeal form in space:

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The advent of the photo was a great advance, although it still did not involve movement, and movement is the heart of dance. That’s why as a child, although I was fascinated with tales of Isadora Duncan—her pioneering, scandalous, and tragic life, and most of all her revolutionary way of choreographing and dancing that left viewers transfixed and spellbound—she would always remain a mystery, impossible to comprehend and know, because although there are still photos there are virtually no films (except a grainy couple of seconds that are hardly helpful).

The still photos say a surprising amount, though. In all of them, Duncan is timeless and monumental, weighted and yet graceful and reminiscent of classical sculpture, which she used as inspiration. Take a look:

A contemporary of Duncan was another very different dancer of legend, Anna Pavlova. She was before my time, and yet tantalizingly recent enough that my mother when a tiny child had seen her dance, an experience my mother remembered and described to me in glowing terms. With Pavlova we do have a number of short films, but there we encounter the enormous and surprising limitations of dance on film, in which is a three-dimensional art usually suffers greatly from its translation to two dimensions, even now.

With Pavlova there are extra difficulties. The first is the sometimes herky-jerky quality of the old film itself, the second is her terribly old-fashioned choreography and technique, and the third are what Sir Frederick Ashton (in the following clip) describes as Pavlova’s physical limitations, which she managed to transcend. Watch, and listen, and you might see a small glimmer of why she was considered one of the greatest dancers of all time:

When I was growing up and as a young woman, I had the great good fortune to be in or near New York City and able to view many of the greats of the 50s, 60s, and 70s in person. There is nothing like the experience of the living, breathing dancer on a stage. The physical dimensions may number three, but the spiritual and emotional ones can seem almost infinite.

[NOTE: The title of this post comes from a remark by Ashton in the clip.]

Krauthammer on Obama’s war by international committee

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not just a committee that’s “running” the Libyan excursion, it’s an international committee. Not only that, but Professor Obama is refusing the chairmanship, as Charles Krauthammer points out:

And as for the United States, who knows what American policy is. Administration officials insist we are not trying to bring down Gaddafi, even as the president insists that he must go. Although on Tuesday Obama did add “unless he changes his approach.” Approach, mind you. In any case, for Obama, military objectives take a back seat to diplomatic appearances. The president is obsessed with pretending that we are not running the operation — a dismaying expression of Obama’s view that his country is so tainted by its various sins that it lacks the moral legitimacy to … what? Save Third World people from massacre? Obama seems equally obsessed with handing off the lead role. Hand off to whom? NATO? Quarrelling amid Turkish resistance (see above), NATO still can’t agree on taking over command of the airstrike campaign, which is what has kept the Libyan rebels alive. This confusion is purely the result of Obama’s decision to get America into the war and then immediately relinquish American command. Never modest about himself, Obama is supremely modest about his country.

Please read the whole thing.

Obama the Rorschach president

The New Neo Posted on by

Brent Budowsky used to think highly of Obama. And he would like to think highly of him again.

But right now Budowsky’s tired of Obama’s disengaged style. Very very tired:

Obama’s governing style is to remain as distant as possible, for as long as possible, from the nasty details of major policy decisions as Congress and the nation face domestic and foreign challenges on multiple fronts in real time…

His political vision of himself, prior to November 2008, was a Rorschach candidate. He deliberately encouraged voters with widely differing views to simultaneously see themselves in him.

A Rorschach campaign for a little-known candidate might be brilliant. A Rorschach presidency when the nation faces multiple challenges delays decisions that are urgently needed, destroys the narrative of his own party and creates greater divisions within a Congress the president is triangulating himself against…

Budowsky seems to believe that Obama could change this if he wanted to, and that what’s more the change would be for the better and he would be doing something competent rather than destructive. But what struck me as I read the article is that Obama is only doing now what so many praised him for doing in his public life before he was elected: next to nothing effective, and very slowly at that. No wonder the comparisons to Hamlet are coming more often these days.

One telling incident occurred during the campaign, in September of 2008 when the financial crisis first hit. He was praised for his calm forbearance and coolness in contrast to McCain’s frenetic reaction.

I made some observations back then about Obama’s style, and I would take none of them back now (in fact, I’d probably express my judgments more harshly):

McCain is an action man who doesn’t like to dither…I think he believes his decision to return to the Senate is both the right thing to do and the politically smart thing to do in the end, because it is consistent with his political message.

Obama is not a decision-maker, nor does he really feel comfortable in the Senate, having spent very little time there. He likes to sit back and study all the angles, and even then would prefer to let things emerge rather than taking a leadership role. This is partly due to his naturally contemplative bent, and partly to being a personality type that shies away from commitment and being pinned down. This is a good thing if his role in life were to be a mediator, for example, but I don’t think it suits the Presidency. Although this stance of watchful waiting is natural to him, I believe he also calculates it to be politically useful right now because it conveys his message of cool judicious thoughtfulness.

So why should someone like Budowsky be the least bit surprised?

[NOTE: Alex Spillius, on the other hand, thinks Obama knows just what he’s doing in Libya. It’s just very very nuanced, and very very subtle. So subtle that apologists like Spillius have to bend over backwards and twist themselves into pretzels to see it.]

What about that Japanese water?

The New Neo Posted on by

We’ve been hearing a lot about radioactive water in Japan: dangerous for babies, thyroid cancer. What parent wouldn’t be panicked?

Almost nowhere do we read answers to the following rather mundane and obvious questions: how are the standards for levels of radiation in water set? What do the present levels actually mean in terms of health consequences and risk?

One place we can learn some relevant facts is in this WSJ piece. The environmental paranoia of many people is so high, however, that they wouldn’t believe the following even if they did manage to read it:

Tests Thursday showed a sharply lower level of radioactive material at one water-purifying plant of 79 becquerels per kilogram, less than the 100 becquerels per kilogram level considered acceptable for infants. Tests at the same plant Tuesday and Wednesday showed levels roughly twice those recommended for infants. Tokyo officials Thursday lifted the city’s warning about consumption by infants.

Tokyo’s air Thursday showed radiation lingered at nearly four times the normal level, though still less than a thousandth of what a patient receives in a typical chest X-ray.

Read that last sentence again, and ponder it.