CNN
In his weekly column written
exclusively for CNN, David Frum(p) makes another attempt at being
Barack Obama’s new best friend:
So much to say about the long-awaited visiting of justice upon
Osama bin Laden.
But there’s one effect on U.S. domestic politics that deserves a
thought:
Here’s hoping that we have at last seen the end of this ugly
insinuation that there is something less than fully American about
the black president with the exotic name….
Those of us who oppose this administration’s economic and
foreign policies have had so many valid points to make.
Yet some have insisted on travelling beyond those valid points.
They have called the president “post American.” A “Third-world
dictator.” An individual whose behavior could only be interpreted
as “Kenyan post-colonial.” A “thug in chief.”
They have tried to present U.S. politics not as a choice between
liberal and conservative but as a choice between American and
non-American, between real Americans and between a dangerous
dark-skinned intruder.
(May 2, 2011)
Washington Post
And here in his
syndicated column is E. J. Dionne, presenting the “dangerous
dark-skinned intruder” interpretation of Barack Obama?
Barack Obama is not the man many Americans thought he was.…Obama
is hard to understand because he is many things and not just one
thing. He has now proved that he can be bold at an operational
level, even as he remains cautious at a philosophical level.
His proclivity to gather facts and weigh alternatives does not
lead automatically…
(May 4, 2011)
In These Times
One tremendously sonorous belch for Art from someone
called Lisa Yun Lee, an obvious vegan:
Poets, artists, writers and other cultural workers create the
engines for our imaginations and build the framework for our
dissent. They provide new ways for us to communicate across lines
of difference. They help us find creative ways to imagine
solidarity and to remake the world.
Progressives today should learn from the progressives of
yesterday. More art! More poetry!
(March 2011)
The Nation
So
ends yet another effort by the comrades at the Nation to prove that the United States of
America prospered from socialism much as Bulgaria prospered from
socialism and, of course, the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics:
Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight
Eisenhower and John Kennedy were not socialists. But the nation
benefited from their borrowing of socialist and social democratic
ideas. Barack Obama is certainly not a socialist. But he, and the
nation he leads, would be well served by a similar borrowing from
the people who once imagined Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid
and the War on Poverty.
(May 2, 2011)
Rolling Stone
In an interview with one of America’s great intellectual
reviews, Bill Maher, comic genius, begins the long dissent into the
realm of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Cleaning ladies give this man a
wide berth:
You came under fire last week for calling
Sarah Palin a “cunt” in your stand-up:
Fox News ginned up this so-called controversy. I don’t just walk
out there and say, ‘Sarah Palin’s a cunt! Good night!’ It’s a
carefully crafted routine that has been in my act for over a year.
This is not a word that we can get along without, because it’s a
word that talks about a specific type of person—and it can be a man
or a woman.
I said I’d take it out of my act because of HBO—we’re a good fit
for each other. Every once in a while you just have to say, ‘I’m
going to pick my battles.’ I don’t need to be a martyr for Sarah
Palin’s cunt…whoops, I did it again.
(April 28, 2011)
The Progressive
The sporting life as
reported by outdoors writer Dave Zirin on the literary pages
of The
Prog:
I don’t know where you were raised, but I lived with rats. I
used to kill rats. We had a .22 rifle, and we would lay [sic] in
the kitchen and shoot them on the floor. One thing my grandmother
taught me was that if you got a rat trapped, you’ve got to give his
ass a way out because he will fight you if he has to.
(May 2011)
New York Times
More lewd thoughts from the scantily clad Maureen
Dowd:
Oh, she wanted it.
She wanted it bad.
That’s what every hard-working, God-fearing, young widow who
breaks her back doing menial labor at a Times Square hotel to
support her teenage daughter, justify her immigration status and
take advantage of the opportunities in America wants—a crazed,
rutting, wrinkly old satyr charging naked out of a bathroom,
lunging at her and dragging her around the room, caveman-style.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s reputation as a thrice-married French
seducer loses something in the translation.
(May 18, 2011)
New York Review of
Books
Professor Ronald Dworkin,
suffering bladder impairment, thus begins another tiresome
diatribe:
Five conservative justices now dominate our Supreme Court—Chief
Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia,
Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. They continue to revise our
historical Constitution and two new cases show that the arguments
they offer continue to be embarrassingly bad. One concerns
contributions to religious schools; the other, public financing of
elections. I will describe those cases and defend that criticism,
but it might be well to notice, first, why the justices have had to
resort to arguments of such poor quality.
(May 26, 2011)
From the Archives
Timeless Tosh from Current Wisdoms Past
(July 1991)
University of California Press
In the
fall catalogue of the University of California Press, a sprightly
notice for a study of a precursor of the National Organization for
Women:
Women of the
Klan
Racism and Gender in the 1920s
Kathleen M. Blee
Ignorant. Brutal. Male. These stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan
offer a misleading picture. In Women of the
Klan, sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait
of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout
the country. In so doing she dismantles the popular notion that
politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism,
equality and justice.
“All the better people,” a former Klanswoman assures us, were in
the Klan. During the 1920s, when the Klan was at its largest (about
5 million), perhaps half a million white native-born Protestant
women joined the Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Like their male
counterparts, Klanswomen held reactionary views on race,
nationality, and religion. But their perspectives on gender roles
were often progressive.
(Fall 1991)
Boston Herald
In
Boston’s greatest daily, ace reporter Howie Carr traps Sen. Edward
M. Kennedy on the record just after the avuncular senator’s
three-martini breakfast:
“There’s some additional something going on here, vaguely, and
it’s going to involve some kind of, uh, sexual harassment on Willie
that because I was not told, I was not told ever, ever was told
that the Palm Beach Police wanted to speak to me about an alleged
incident of Willie Smith raping some girl.
“I was never told that. And the record when you see it and when
it comes out will never, will not suggest that I was, and since
that time that, uh, I found out that was the allegation, I have
been available, uh, to the police and responded to all those
questions and I certainly would have if I knew that the charge had
been rape, would have done it.
“But that was never, that was never. I was never told that. If I
had been told that, if I had been told that I certainly would have.
But I was never told that and you’re gonna have to look at the
records of who told what to who.”
(May 11, 1991)
