The New Neo

Estrich has another moment of non-partisan good sense

Posted on October 22, 2009 by neoOctober 22, 2009

Susan Estrich is a Democratic operative who sometimes shows the rare ability to criticize her own, and in the past she’s borne some of the consequences. Last night she spoke out again, this time in an interview with Greta Van Susteren, on the topic of the Obama administration war on Fox News. Estrich said:

The other thing I don’t get is why the mainstream media, which, frankly, would go absolutely nuts if George Bush had singled out MSNBC and said, you know, Nobody follow them, they’re not really a news organization, and we’re going to boycott — I mean, all my friends in the 1st Amendment crowd would be up in arms, saying, you know, the government shouldn’t be dictating to news organizations. And I’ve been a little stunned, frankly, by the silence from the press.

I think that if some of those friends caught these remarks of Estrich’s, they might be more than a little stunned that she’s breaking ranks to defend Fox News. She went on to add:

…[W]hat troubled me the most, when a couple of people were on the Sunday shows, and they basically said, Look, we don’t want these other networks following Fox, so if Fox breaks a news story like ACORN or Van Jones or something like that, we want the message to go out that if you follow Fox News, presumably, you’re going to be off our favorites list.

Now, what I would have expected is for the press in that kind of frontal attack to say, Hey, wait a minute. In a free society, the government doesn’t tell us what stories we can cover and what news we can broadcast. And I just think, in the short run, all these reporters may be worried that, you know, they want to be inside and they want to get the good sources.

Brava, Estrich! She goes on to add an appeal to the practical side of her party: a lot of swing voters enjoy watching Fox News, and it’s not nice to alienate and insult them. But her outrage at the non-response of other Democratic pundits to the anti-Fox vendetta of the Obama administration seems genuinely motivated by more than practical considerations. In this case, she actually seems devoted to a non-partisan higher principle.

Too bad there aren’t more people doing that, on both sides, as well as in the press. If there were, we wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in.

[ADDEMDUM: Here’s some good news. The second part, that is, not the first (emphasis added):

Fox is reporting on Special Report that the White House wanted to exclude Fox from the 5 member White House Pool who were going to be given access to Kenneth Feinberg.

The White House Pool, of which Fox has been a member since 1997, is a consortium of the five networks which fund its operations.

After the White House attempted to exclude Fox, the Washington bureau chiefs of the 5 networks met and announced none of them would participate if Fox were excluded.

First they came for Fox News….]

In the interests of fairness…

Posted on October 22, 2009 by neoOctober 22, 2009

…I’d like to show you another ad featuring children.

Yesterday I criticized this one about man-made global warming. It features a child actress, and is designed to appeal to children especially, and to frighten them into pressuring their parents to do something before all those little kitties and weeping bunnies drown in the CO2-induced floods.

Then a little later that evening I saw the following ad (I think it was on the verboten channel, Fox News). Although I’m quite keen on the message, I noticed that it uses children as well:

Because of having just seen the first ad, I probably found the second one more troubling than I otherwise might have. Even though I think it’s very effective, and even though the message is pitched somewhat more to adults than the anti-global warming ad was, at this point I would prefer to see ads that don’t involve children at all.

Of course, there’s a history to this sort of thing:

That ad wasn’t really aimed primarily at kids either, although most of us heard about it. Of course, in 1964, kids were already well aware of the threat of nuclear holocaust; it had been drummed into them since the 50s, through recurrent drills in school as well as a general focus in the culture.

Johnson’s ad was only shown once and then pulled as too controversial. But it was talked about so much that it became a cause celebre.

One thing I noticed on watching it this time was that in the excerpt from a speech towards the end, Johnson paraphrased the Auden poem “September 1, 1939,” in which Auden wrote “We must love one another or die.” If you think about it, of course, we will all die some day whether or not we love one another, and universal love for all mankind is not a requirement for avoiding nuclear holocaust (fortunately, because I doubt we’ll ever achieve it on this earth).

But still, it’s nice to hear a reference to a poem (and without attribution, too; could Johnson have assumed that most of his audience was already familiar with the Auden work?) in a political speech; I don’t think one hears too much of that nowadays (please feel free, though, to enlighten me and find poetic quotes in recent political addresses).

Ah, but look at the entire poem. If you do, you’ll also see this:

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:

Could it be that this poem also inspired George Bush I’s famous “thousand points of light” in his 1988 nomination acceptance speech? When he used that phrase, Bush was referring to non-government volunteers across America, doing good works. I’m not sure about my theory of its origins, though; Peggy Noonan, who wrote the speech, doesn’t seem to know where she might have gotten the phrase.

When I read that stanza again, the passage suggested still another image: the internet and even the blogosphere. Take a look: dotted everywhere/Ironic points of light/Flash out wherever the Just/Exchange their messages.

I’m sure a lot of people would laugh themselves silly at the idea that anything in the blogosphere represented “the Just;” au contraire, they might say. But it’s what we strive for, whether we achieve it or not. And we certainly are dotted everywhere, exchanging messages.

Like this one.

[NOTE: I’m sometimes astounded at how often I begin a post with one theme and one message, and then way leads on to way (another poetic reference) and I end up in a different place than I intended. It’s one of the pleasures of blogging, at least for me.]

That intrepid “real news” organization, MSNBC

Posted on October 21, 2009 by neoOctober 21, 2009

And no, this is not a Saturday Night Live skit:

Global warming child abuse in the UK

Posted on October 21, 2009 by neoOctober 21, 2009

Hey, anything for the Cause:

[ADDENDUM: But they’re making up for it through Humpty Dumpty revisionism. I kid you not (hat tip: Ann Althouse.)]

On the growing trend towards unisex bathrooms

Posted on October 21, 2009 by neoOctober 21, 2009

ACORN and Breitbart: the plot—and the videos—thicken

Posted on October 21, 2009 by neoOctober 21, 2009

There are lies, and then there are really stupid lies.

The following video would seem to represent the latter on the part of ACORN, for instance. It appears to contradict ACORN’s claim that they had turned the filmmakers away in Philadelphia:

“That’s our opinion” says Gibbs

Posted on October 21, 2009 by neoOctober 21, 2009

The stalwart Jake Tapper stands nearly alone among network news reporters in clinging to the apparently outworn idea of defending the press’s right to criticize a Democratic president.

In this interview he interviews Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, voicing some obvious questions that every person in the MSM, whether of the Right or Left, ought to be asking:

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one ”“

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say ”“

Gibbs: ABC –

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” — why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

Why does the Obama administration continue to say Fox isn’t a real news organization? Because, “Yes, they can.”

[NOTE: See this for more on the issue of Obama and Fox News.]

The war on Fox may be dumb…

Posted on October 20, 2009 by neoOctober 20, 2009

…but it’s Obama’s war. He may be Hamlet on Afghanistan, but in the domestic Fox War he’s called up the troops: Dunn, Axelrod, Emanuel.

In the WaPo, Ruth Marcus says the war on Fox is dumb, and she goes on to succinctly list a number of reasons why:

It makes the White House look weak, unable to take Harry Truman’s advice and just deal with the heat. It makes the White House look small, dragged down to the level of Glenn Beck. It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian — Agnewesque? — aroma at worst. It is a self-defeating trifecta: it distracts attention from the Obama administration’s substantive message; it serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings; and it deprives the White House, to the extent it refuses to provide administration officials to appear on the cable network, of access to an audience that is, in fact, broader than hard-core Obama haters.

Let’s see: weak, small, childish, self-defeating, distracting, helps Fox, and the White House loses an important audience—that’s seven, by my count. I would add, moreover, that the Fox War doesn’t just make the White House appear to be these things, it reveals the White House to actually be these things.

Marcus goes on to write:

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace replayed a quote from an Obama interview: “I don’t always get my most favorable coverage on Fox, but I think that’s part of how democracy is supposed to work. You know, we’re not supposed to all be in lock step here.”

Maybe he should tell the rest of the team.

Perhaps Marcus is being sarcastic there. Because, although I think her article makes some excellent points, if she actually believes that Dunn and Axelrod and Emanuel and all the rest are going rogue in their attack on Fox, that it is not approved of and probably coordinated by Obama himself, then she is guilty of the “if only Stalin knew” syndrome.

Trust me, Ruth: Obama has told the rest of the team. But he’s told them to attack Fox News.

Oh, and one more thing: yes, the attack on Fox is a distraction from the rest of Obama’s program. But in the eyes of the administration that’s a feature, not a bug.

Finally, some good news

Posted on October 20, 2009 by neoOctober 20, 2009

Those of us who are addicted to the internet—and most particularly to doing research online—should be of good cheer at reading this news. It turns out that surfing’s good for you.

Honduras update

Posted on October 20, 2009 by neoOctober 20, 2009

Here’s a discussion of the latest on Honduras.

FDR and the expansion of the executive branch

Posted on October 19, 2009 by neoOctober 19, 2009

There’s been a great deal of discussion on this recent thread about whether Obama is contemplating a tyrannical takeover of the statist type, and whether he can possibly succeed. I’m not going to address that topic again right now (perhaps later; see this and this for two of my previous attempts).

But I’d like to take a little step back in time. Virtually all of us have heard of FDR’s First Inaugural Address, the famous 1933 speech in which he addressed a distraught nation and said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That phrase is so well-known that it’s possible that few of us have gone on to read the rest of the speech, which contains some interesting things.

Towards the end of FDR’s address we have this, for example:

Action…to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis””broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

It never came to that, fortunately. And FDR’s efforts to pack the Supreme Court and therefore exercise stronger control over that branch of government failed, as well. But these efforts offer a guide to how a crisis in this country could be used by a president determined to expand the reach of the executive beyond previous peacetime measures, acquiring war powers in the absence of war.

Afghanistan: no decision is itself a decision

Posted on October 19, 2009 by neoOctober 19, 2009

I’ve written before about Obama’s Hamlet-like indecision on Afghanistan. Some call his approach thoughtful deliberation, and perhaps it is (although I don’t happen to think so).

But how long should pondering go on before it becomes procrastination? And never think that lack of a decision means no decision: failing to act, or postponing action, is a decision with consequences, too.

It is interesting that European leaders, who originally hailed Obama as a breath of intellect and fresh air after the cowboy Bush, are finding that there might be some pluses to dealing with cowboys after all. At least you know where they stand.

And you can expect them to stand firm where troops and military commitments are concerned. Don’t forget that during the campaign there was a lot of tough talk on Afghanistan from Obama, and back in March it appeared he’d done enough studying and had a strategic plan for that country. Why do I say that? Well, he said so himself; the following is from the speech he gave in March [emphasis mine]:

Good morning. Today, I am announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. This marks the conclusion of a careful policy review that I ordered as soon as I took office…

For three years, our commanders have been clear about the resources they need for training. Those resources have been denied because of the war in Iraq. Now, that will change….

Then in June, President Obama appointed a new commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal. The stage seemed set.

But as the musical King of Siam once said, “Very often find confusion/In conclusion I concluded long ago.” And the sort of confusion—or dithering, or stalling, or lengthy deliberation, or whatever you want to call it—that has gone on since in the Obama adiminstration regarding Afghanistan is not without consequences, especially when a war is going on.

There’s an old saying in family therapy, and it goes like this: “you can’t not communicate.” So a lack of decision in Afghanistan—or a lengthy postponement of a decision—communicates something.

It sends a message to the troops who are fighting there, and it’s not that there’s now a firm and knowledgeable hand on the tiller. It sends a message to the enemy; one of weakness. It sends a message of disarray and discord to our allies.

And yes, we do have allies in Afghanistan. Here’s what some of them are thinking and saying, now that it’s been 76 days since Obama’s hand-picked General McChrystal requested more troops:

“Everyone is waiting for what is going to be decided in the Oval Office, without having any chance to have our say,” moans a senior commander in one European army…

And while they wait, they will stew. In conversations with senior European officials visiting Washington, and at a transatlantic conference sponsored by Italy’s Magna Carta Foundation last weekend, I heard an earful of Euro-anxiety about the strategy review Obama is conducting. Some of the concern is simply about the spectacle of a young American president hesitating about going forward with a strategy that he committed himself to just months ago — and what effect that wavering might have on enemies both in Afghanistan and farther afield.

But a surprising amount of the worry, considering the continental source, is about whether Obama will be strong enough — whether he will, in the words of one ambassador, “walk away from a mission that we have all committed ourselves to.”

European governments bought in to Obama’s ambitious plan to pacify Afghanistan when he presented it in March. Unlike the U.S. president, they mostly haven’t had second thoughts. By and large they agree with the recommendations developed by the commander Obama appointed, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who says that unless the momentum of the Taliban is broken in the next year, the war may be lost.

This reminds me of French President Sarkozy’s perturbed reaction to Obama’s Iran policy and UN speech on disarmament in late September. It is alarming when Europe has more commitment to the Afghan campaign than President Obama (who after all made it a centerpiece of his own campaign) does, and are more willing to hang tough. True, their troop numbers are small compared to those of the US. But they are clearly worried that the man who just got the motivational Peace Prize is not capable of fighting even a war to which he’d been strongly (if only rhetorically) committed.

Europe is used to relying on the US militarily. They may not have realized how much they relied on it, till now. Caught in the throes of Obamalove, they should have heeded that old admonition: be careful what you wish for.

[NOTE: There’s a lot of information in this article about the differing opinions on Afghanistan within the Obama administration. I wonder how much of it is true, how much is disinformation, and how much is guesswork. The meme that’s being spread is that Joe Biden is against more troops, and that Obama is leaning in the opposite direction. However, I doubt that respect for Joe Biden’s opinion is what’s keeping Obama. I think his indecision reflects the fact that he is far more focused on his transformative Leftist domestic and economic agenda, with Afghanistan a very distant afterthought; as well as the political quandary he finds himself in. If he sends more troops, he riles his left flank. If he doesn’t, he risks another instance of going back on his word, and offending much of the American middle on whom his election originally depended. The Right? He never had them to lose in the first place.]