Kissing Wide-eyed Justice

The problems of the equality (to men) and nature of women have been addressed here several times, particularly in two essays regarding Lawrence Summers' maligned comments at Harvard University four years ago this month (see this essay, and this).

Recall that it was asserted at Contratimes in the wake of Mr. Summers' embarrassment that men and women must be really quite different. One bit of evidence cited in defense of this assertion was the 2004 presidential candidacy of Carol Mosley Brown; Ms. Brown's campaign included the demand that it was time to "take the 'Men Only' sign" off the White House door. Surely Ms. Brown's supporters instantly knew what she meant: women bring very different qualities to governance and legislation than those qualities brought by men.

There is a real problem with Ms. Brown's demand, but it will be overlooked for now, especially since it was addressed in the two essays noted above. Indeed, there is a real problem even with the idea that men and women are basically interchangeable; if you are interested in some of my thoughts on that matter specifically, you can join the discussion at Political Cartel that began some weeks ago (see "The Problem without a Name"; my comments begin here).

But there is one thing very current about Ms. Brown's call to clear the White House of its "Men Only" tree-fort mentality, and it is its seeming similarity (at least its shared premise) to a comment from Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Apparently Ms. Sotomayor also believes men and women are really rather different. How else to explain her comment? But if men and women are really rather different; if a woman will reach better conclusions than a male, then how are men and women at all equal?

Surely feminists can work that one out. And no doubt they will also work out what Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor were thinking when, as the resident of the "Men Only" White House was introducing her as his "inspiring" pick for the Supreme Court, she gushed like a school-girl as he -- the Commander-in-Chief -- kissed her without flinching.

Maybe if Mr. Obama gets to choose another Supreme Court justice, he'll choose a man he can whisper to as he hugs and kisses him before the whole world.

By the way, compare Mr. Obama's introduction of Ms. Sotomayor to George W. Bush's introduction of Harriet E. Miers. Fascinating stuff. (Just listen to the sort of qualities President Bush valued. The similarities and the differences between the two nominees and administrations are worth the 30 or so minutes of watching both videos. Plus, note the manner and setting of both announcements; notice how one uses spectacle.)

©2009/Contratimes. All rights reserved.

It's SO Bad, It's Charitable!

In a courageous demonstration of moral clarity, a Rhode Island Democratic state legislator has promised to donate $100 to charity for each second George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (et al) endure waterboarding.

Hurray for speaking "truth to power"!

Recall what was written here not too long ago regarding Barack Obama's infatuation with America's "ideals":

Remember, waterboarding is so torturous, so utterly evil, those who oppose its use waterboard themselves in protest. It is also so horrific, so damaging, that journalists get paid to endure it so they can report about its dreadfulness. Clearly you can see how such a thing compromises America's loftiest ideals.

It seems evident that the Rhode Island Democrat behind this charitable charade is guilty of a logical fallacy:

If p then q.
q.
Therefore p.

It is never a bad thing to always mind one's p's and q's, unless, of course, one happens to be a morally upright Democrat. Then, well, "To Cheney's bunker!" No one really cares about the fallacy of affirming the consequent:

A. If waterboarding is truly torture, George W. Bush will not submit to it for charity.
B. George W. Bush will not submit to it for charity.
_______________
Therefore, waterboarding is truly torture.

Yes, yes. We're playing games here. Anyone paying attention can see it is all about games.

It might not be a mad world, but it sure is a stupid one. Of course one mustn't be too critical of a stupidity that will so generously benefit "charity."

Here's hoping that Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove can handle a little water for about 120 seconds each. The New York Times could sure use their gifts.

PEACE.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Throwing Stone

I spent the better part of the day trying to photographically capture the last of the fall foliage. With cameras and lenses tossed onto the seats of my car, I zipped down back roads hoping to find something different, something new. And I did find something new, though it had nothing to do with fall foliage. It was a radio promo I heard for Oliver Stone's newest film, W. You know, the exploitation film -- its release so timed to maximize earnings and influence an election -- about George W. Bush.

The announcer said that I should come see "the incredibly true story" about George W. Bush. It's truly an ironic turn of phrase.

Incredible, indeed. Sort of like that incredibly true story of a second gunman in Dallas.

But I am opining prematurely; I am merely falling prey to my prejudices.

Thank God for such prejudices.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.

Denigrating Mediocrity Denigrates Democracy? Dismissing The Palin Candidacy

In 2004, on the eve of the general election, I wrote a letter to my local newspaper in which I explored a brilliant comment by the well-known Republican satirist, P. J. O'Rourke. I had heard Mr. O'Rourke, who lives nearby in this part of New Hampshire, speaking earlier in the year on New Hampshire Public Radio. Concerning what he said during that broadcast, I wrote, in part:

‘Let us stipulate that George Bush is a mediocrity, that he’s not particularly bright,’ said Mr. O’Rourke (and I paraphrase). ‘OK, fine. But to say that a mediocrity is unfit for the Oval Office is essentially antidemocratic, going against the very ideals of the American Dream. For if Mr. Bush is unfit for office because he isn’t brilliant, then the alternative is that only smart people can hold that office. If that’s the case, we’ve become a meritocracy, even an aristocracy of the mind.’

I would like readers for a moment to simply insert any name into Mr. O'Rourke's unarguably astute observation. Just add Barack Obama's name, or Joe Biden's. But maybe you should put Sarah Palin's name in the whole of O'Rourke's equation -- in bold letters.

Let us indeed concede, at least for the sake of argument, that Sarah Palin is the most mediocre person in the world, at least the Republican world. Considered it so conceded.

But are we not at worst conceited if we insist that a mediocre person -- and surely none of us here is one whit tepid, bland, or insipid -- is unfit for the vice presidency of the United States?

I recall arguing with a liberal Democrat friend during the 2000 election cycle. He had worked himself into quite a fury; I swear there were flecks of foam gathered in the corners of his mouth. You see, he could not comprehend that anyone could consider George W. Bush a viable candidate; my friend denounced the man as an idiot, a dolt, a veritable ingrate.

As you should all know by now, I've never been a big fan of Mr. Bush's. And I can assure you that in 2000, the man was nowhere to be found on my political radar screen. But I was at the very least somewhat taken aback that my friend would call George W. Bush stupid and incompetent. To counter this, I recall making this foolish statement:

"I don't quite know how you can call him 'stupid.' That man can't be all that stupid who earn degrees from two Ivy League schools (Yale and Harvard's Business School)."

I cannot tell you how counter-effective my statement instantly became. My friend became even more irate, denouncing me as stupid for not realizing that Bush was a "mere legacy" child of Yale and Harvard, that he was an "affirmative action" placement for the stupid but obscenely rich.

It struck me as odd how quickly my liberal friend had turned against such an esteemed credential as an Ivy League diploma; I noted a paradox. For only years earlier, America had been told that the "men of the people," the good old southern boy Bill Clinton and his sidekick Al Gore, were proud holders of Ivy League degrees (Clinton, a Georgetown undergrad, earned his JD at Yale). These added to their bona fides; they could not possibly be typical dopes. But amazingly, George W. Bush in 2000 was dismissed for being nothing but a privileged white kid whose daddy bribed Yale to serve as his son's reform school.

And then, of course, 2008 came along and we find ourselves constantly reminded that Barack Obama is qualified to be president because he holds degrees from two Ivy League schools.

(Did you know that George W. Bush actually performed better at Yale than his contemporary, Sen. John Kerry? You probably didn't, but, oh, how we heard about that C-student in the White House!)

Now comes Sarah Palin. Note that the Democrats, the leftist media, and even some of her own Republican colleagues have turned the American Dream upside down: Not everyone can be what they want to become, Sarah, and you should just cease aspiring to America's highest echelons. As I wrote in 2004 in my letter, such language does destroy the American Dream:

[Mr.] O’Rourke’s comments are quasi-revolutionary. For he affirms nearly every high school and university commencement address given over the last 30 years (‘Believe in yourself and you can be anything’), and yet subverts the popular paradigm. To oppose Bush or any president on grounds of intellectual inferiority is tantamount to declaring that some people - the mediocre - should not be allowed to fulfill their dreams. Only the brilliant should be in high places.

In other words, a democracy such as ours is only open up to a certain point. There are some places the mediocre cannot go, at least when it comes to participating in the governance of what is, or so it is said in theory, a nation governed by its own people.

I've already spotted, like you have, extremely damning commentary about Sarah Palin's lack of academic credentials. Writers have mocked her for attending the obscure North Idaho College and less-obscure University of Idaho. Curiously, nary a word is said about Joe Biden's self-described profoundly mediocre academic ventures at both Delaware and Syracuse (and we all know that neither school can ever pretend to be Ivy League). Sen. Biden's Wikipedia is rather telling (if true):

Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont, where he was athletically, not academically, oriented and a natural leader among the students. He graduated in 1961.

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, where by his own later description he was a lazy student. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and political science in 1965, ranked 506th of 688 in his class.

He went on to receive his JD from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968, where by his own description he again underperformed and ranked 76th of 85 students.

____________________

Thursday night is the "big debate" between Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden. It is a one-shot deal for both of them. Here's hoping they both do well. But we can expect a billion words printed, published and voiced about "mediocrity" in the coming days. In anticipation of those words, I would like to conclude here the same way I concluded my letter in 2004 (with slight modifications):

One must consider carefully: We’ve all known smooth talkers who chat themselves into great jobs, only to drive co-workers and employers batty. Often the less stellar interviewee for a job turns out to be a winner. No doubt Bush has milked the diamond-in-the-rough image effectively, while oleaginous Kerry has become all-things-to-all-men so completely, he is nearly no one. All to say that – and please forgive the doggerel – a master of oration may be a disaster for a nation.

If we are truly committed to diversity and tolerance, if we are to dance about celebrating our grand differences, then ousting [or rejecting] a president [or candidate] because he [or she] is intellectually mediocre is philosophically repugnant.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.

There Is No Bias:saiB oN sI erehT

George W. Bush is your worst enemy; we all know that W stands for Warmonger, and that hidden in his first name is a slightly twisted ogre. Bush the Menace.

Or so says Newsweek.

Shake your head to clear your eyes, if you must, as you look at Newsweek's newest cover: that is Bush the Bellicose glaring Middle-Eastward, eyes like warheads aimed at the Persian Prince of Peace.

One thing I am certain of is this: that in Iran, Newsweek's headline is not "The Hidden War with Iran." Instead, the Tehran edition is headlined thusly: "The Hidden -- and not so Hidden -- War with America." Wait. No. Scratch that. How foolish of me. Newsweek has it right: 'Tis Bush who has been boasting about his nation's great fate; about the absurdity of the Holocaust and the porcine Jews† who hold the earth enslaved by a mythology that fuels Zionism's many fires. 'Tis Bush who wants to usher in the New Age of the 12th Imam, a caliphate and an Eden somewhere between the Tigris-Euphrates and the edges of the earth. The four angels guarding the ancient gates of Eden are relieved of their weary duty; all through Persia run rivers of gold rhetoric, and there waters are Mahdi: peace is indeed rolling, like the thunder of nuclear detonation. And Bush shall lead us home: he is the Bush that burns with war and never leaves.

Alas, again, I am mistaken, even delirious. My first response to the Newsweek cover was utterly errant. It is not the crazed man to the left who is warring against you, me, the very foundations of Western thought. No, it is Bush. The man on the right. You know, the wrong man on the Right; the Christian Right, all broken and jumbled up, full of petty menace, and all very wrong.

Newsweek and MSNBC, allies under the same Great Peacock, can't expect us to divine -- without their journalistic help -- that Mr. Ahmadinejad, ever speaking in gracious and dulcet tones, is a man of peace with sober eyes and waiting smile.

Perhaps the 12th Imam is that man from Illinois, who has fallen from the sky. His name means "blessed."

Peace.

BG

†This is not to be construed as an anti-Semitic slur on my part. I aim to faithfully and sardonically report Mr. Ahmadinejad's attitude.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

More Awards; The Empty Keg Award For Story Of The Year, 2006

In keeping with my promise that I shall list my awards for best and worst of 2006 (categories determined on a whim), I would like to announce the winner of the monumental -- and very first -- 2006 Empty Keg Award for Story of the Year. It is a simple award, and it is thoroughly a disappointing one. After all, what could be more disappointing than an empty keg?

Sadly, I have no idea to whom I should give this fine honor. For it has two distinct winners, and yet both stand at opposite ends of the story. On the one end is the main stream media in America (and its European counterpart), while on the other is the Bush Administration. The former deserves accolades for wresting away and gaining control of the most important story of our time; and the latter deserves the award for letting the media get away with it. The story? Well, that is simple: The story is the genesis of the Iraq Conflict. And the Empty Keg goes to all those who repackaged history, who accepted that history, and permitted that history to become normative. Just read this clip from a recent CBS News/60 Minutes interview with President George W. Bush (the president was interviewed by reporter Scott Pelley at Camp David):

PELLEY: You know better than I do that many Americans feel that your administration has not been straight with the country, has not been honest. To those people you say what?

BUSH: On what issue?

PELLEY: Well, sir . . .

BUSH: Like the weapons of mass destruction?

PELLEY: No weapons of mass destruction.

BUSH: Yeah.

PELLEY: No credible connection between 9/11 and Iraq.

BUSH: Yeah.

PELLEY: The Office of Management and Budget said this war would cost somewhere between $50 billion and $60 billion and now we're over 400.

BUSH: I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha.

The sentence in bold is highlighted as a perfect exemplar of the Great Revision. To which, incredibly, the president says, "Yeah."

For sheer fun, for the jolly folly of it all, let me remind readers that A) there was not one minute from 1991 to March 2003 that the United States was not in military conflict with Iraq; B) that President Bill Clinton received during his term in office news of a fatwa - drafted by Osama bin Laden in 1998 - which called for death to Americans everywhere; C) that the fatwa placed America's continued oppression -- directed by President Clinton -- of Iraq and the Iraqi people as the primary reason Americans should be killed; D) that in 1998 President Bill Clinton signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act calling for "regime change" in that tired country; E) and that the United States was attacked by Osama bin Laden in 2001 as a direct result of its bellicose posture towards Iraq (throughout the 1990's, the Clinton Administration bombed Iraq nearly every other day).

Thus, two things: The Iraq/September 11 connection is a causal one; and is so utterly credible it is incredible that anyone could be ignorant of this fact; and secondly, it is despicable that these historic facts have been permitted to drift into oblivion by the press and the president. And these are not the only facts in the case!

Nevertheless, because we at Contratimes have been wide-eyed and unblinking as we watched propaganda attain the status of absolute truth, we can with clarity of mind and soul pronounce that the 2006 Empty Keg Award for Story of the Year is well-deserved by many who walk this planet. I think the Empty Keg Award should be passed around like the Stanley Cup: first, it should go to the editorial offices of the New York Times, then to Keith Olbermann, and then to the White House. And I am sure Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean will want to share it with their many fellow revisionists.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

For some further commentary regarding Iraq, 9/11, and the 9/11 Commission Report, go here. Then there is my incomparable "Adam and Eve Must Have Been Neo-Cons."

Maureen Dowd On Parade

During this morning's Imus in the Morning show, simulcast on radio and MSNBC America-wide, Mr. Imus and his guest, Newsweek editor Howard Fineman, celebrated columnist Maureen Dowd and her illustrious work at the New York Times. Both men gushed about Ms. Dowd's prowess at titillating her audience, though Mr. Imus did suggest that she was–to put it in Imus' delicate way–"a crazy woman". And both men marveled at Ms. Dowd's ability to so quickly get to the point of a matter, even if in reaching that point she is deliciously blunt.

Imus particularly commended Ms. Dowd's success at being the first to point out that President George W. Bush was "haunting New Orleans" in search of another "bullhorn moment." That Ms. Dowd's remarks surely trivialize President Bush's bullhorn moment atop the rubble at Ground Zero is conspicuous, though any reference to her offense is conspicuously absent from either Imus' or Fineman's adulations. Also conspicuous is Ms. Dowd's equating a natural disaster with a decidedly unnatural one: 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina are somehow related in the incredible mind of Maureen Dowd.

But what is important in that mind of Ms. Dowd's is important in our minds as well, though for entirely different reasons. For Ms. Dowd's perceptions are largely shared as a sort of prostitute's offering, giving her readers exactly what they seek and pay for. She is to literacy what phone sex is to oratory. She is a phone sex fantasy spelled out in lurid letters inked by New York presses. That Ms. Dowd earns her wages dispensing gratuitous favors, working her deft hands so effectively as she massages one giant fallacy after another, is perfectly in keeping with the times. But our minds must be vigilantly occupied with her professions, if for no other reason than to avoid the mentally-transmitted disease her intellectual promiscuity breeds. Ms. Dowd's columns are after all among the most emailed columns published at the New York Times, which even further illustrates the salaciousness of her material. Such material is best read, I am afraid, while wearing latex gloves.

HER CRIPPLING POWER

Please recall that the other night President Bush spoke to the nation from New Orleans during TV's prime time. Those of us who watched any of his speech remember that the President spoke with two distinct objects serving as backdrop: the great St. Louis Cathedral and a statue of Andrew Jackson.

What none of us might have suspected was that Mr. Bush's speech was not merely critiqued on substance or style. It was criticized, particularly by Maureen Dowd, for its backdrop. Hear Ms. Dowd at her Martha Stewart-best:

"[The President's] gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail.

In a ruined city - still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers - isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?

The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage W.'s "High Noon" snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting ..."

Ah, yes, how terribly gauche.

Let me state the obvious: Ms. Dowd has not spent five percent of her time, or one percent of her literary energy, writing or writhing in pained concern for people who have indeed died, or been severely depressed, in the wake of Katrina. Her energy is directed at aesthetics; about fastidious attention to details that matter to her own urban sensibilities. She's hot not about the dead and dying. She's hot about where the President stands; about how he walks gladiatorally. It's all a big fashion show to her, as she sits and jots down notes to help her winnow winners from losers.

Of course, Dowd and her likeminded colleagues point out the President's floundering attempts at symbolism, decrying his efforts with ease, since their facility at denigration comes as a result of misunderstanding the symbols in the first place. Bush's critics are ignorant of the fact that he stood against a symbolic backdrop of religious might through charitable service; and secular service through military might.

In the words of one historian celebrating the august St. Louis Cathedral, a Catholic beacon to the bone-weary and sin-laden in the heart of the French Quarter, the symbolic church resonates with grace:

"Every quarter-hour, the thin peal of bells at St. Louis Cathedral calls saints and sinners, mostly the latter. They clang out a slightly off-key sound, as if they well know the offbeat rhythms of the neighborhood below them. The pulse of a circus atmosphere around the church pounds from hour to hour, as if to compete with the timbre of the sounds from the tower. The church stands sentinel, neither judging nor joining." [emphasis added]

Neither judging nor joining. How apt. How lovely. And what a symbol. A propos.

The historian continues:

"Today the church contains the remains of eight New Orleans bishops. Their lives reflect the story of the Church and the city. Renovated, decorated and restored over and again, repainted inside and out, waterproofed, strengthened with steel, buttresses added, foundations fixed, the church stands. Today the St. Louis Cathedral is a symbol of New Orleans and a tribute to the people and clergy who have struggled to preserve it. Most of all it is a haven of serenity from the soul-splitting life of the world outside." [emphasis added with alacrity]

Thus the symbol of the Cathedral transcends the very presidency (or kingship) not only of America, but of any country, in any age. For the faithful, for those who seek greatness and goodness beyond themselves, the role of faith and the fury of God's love pushes man and woman to achieve more than any Pulitzer Prize can contain.

Couple that with the devotion of a man and his ideals, ideals inherent in his country's dreams, and the union of Andrew Jackson with St. Louis–the fusion of secular and sacred–reduces the prating of Ms. Dowd and others of her ilk to so much nothing. Their very pride blinds them to the humility that is rightly theirs. They are chatterers; gossips. They cannot see the symbols from the sleaze.

For the symbols of Bush's New Orleans moment point to one thing: the need is greater than what any president can meet. Where lies the fault in that? Does not the fault lie with those who choose to be blind to the symbols that speak so elegantly?

But they are not blind to the symbols. They ignore them in disdain. They despise them.

What would the blind have preferred? Bush standing in front of dying men? Bush stepping over rotting corpses, or standing before destruction and defeat? How about him slitting his throat at the altar of their gods? Or would all of these have been dismissed as gratuitous, empty, self-aggrandizing, or mere distractions?

President Bush is a plain man, immoral, mortal, broken. He is like every person I've ever met. One wonders then what people expect from a president, particularly one they've never supported. What do they expect from a man they revile as dense, out-of-touch, stupid and traitorous?

Moreover, what are they looking for? Do they want someone before whom they may bow in worship and adoration? Do they want a savior, a god, to spare them the difficulties of living? Are they so many braying sheep lost without a shepherd? Is that what they are looking for in a president? Are they hoping for a Nelson Mandela who, in the words of U2's Bono, is the "world's president"?

This is the danger of Maureen Dowd. She implies that there is something greater, some one beyond Bush, some one that will quell her vicious prose, overwhelming her with great force of word and deed. She KNOWS what a bad president looks like because she knows what a great one should look like.

But Dowd's greatest danger is that she has succeeded in elevating her own mediocrity to great heights (perhaps she sees herself in Mr. Bush). To her, the symbols of St. Louis and Andrew Jackson are "hollow", which proves my point. That she has managed to draft a successful career on identifying her perceptions of reality as reality itself is more magic than anything Karl Rove could manage for George W. Bush. I believe Ms. Dowd has misunderstood everything she has ever written about, sort of like the way a prostitute misunderstands her body, irrespective of how deftly used.

Ms. Dowd is pretending. Her clients need her to do that.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Maureen Dowd, Bush, Katrina, New Orleans, St. Louis Cathedral

Ms. Dowd's comments are culled from her essay, Disney on Parade, September 17, 2005, New York Times. A related Contratimes essay can be read here.