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The Spectacle Blog
I have just read Mike Lupica’s snarky column in the New York Daily News with regard to Sarah Palin’s statements on the political situation in Egypt.
Lupica, who is best known as a baseball writer, lambasted Palin’s interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network which is set to air on the 700 Club today. He writes, “So Palin showed up on CBN to weigh in on Egypt, maybe because she thought all the real news outlets were taken.” Well, I guess this will earn Lupica a few more invitations from the limosuine liberal and champagne socialist set on the Upper West Side. But let’s consider this sentence:
She also questions the motives of the people in the street, the ones whose courage will make Egypt a better place when this is all over, whoever is in charge next month, or next fall.
Suffice it to say, I think Lupica swings and misses on this point. How can Lupica say with absolute certainty that Egypt will be a better place when this is all over? How can Lupica say with absolute certainty that this will be over in a month or in nine months? And how can he assume with absolute certainty that Mubarak’s successor will be an improvement? If anything Lupica reminds me of Andrew Young. When Young was our Ambassador to the United Nations he referred to the Ayatollah Khomeini as “some kind of saint.” And then his regime took U.S. embassy personnel in Tehran hostage.
So under the circumstances I think Sarah Palin is being absolutely prudent when she states, “We want to be able to trust those who are screaming for democracy there in Egypt, that it is a true sincere desire for freedoms.” Palin would like to hope that Egypt will be a better place than it is now but she cannot be certain it will turn out that way. Now there are certainly demonstrators who want a liberal, secular democracy in Egypt. But when you consider that the demonstrators are more apt to hold signs of Mubarak with a Star of David drawn on his forehead than build a replica of the Statue of Liberty it ought to make the Mike Lupicas of the world pause for thought.
View all comments (15) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Aaron Goldstein
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Sparky| 2.7.11 @ 10:40AM
Some of the best reporting on Islamists I've ever seen has been on CBN. (I suspect that having a fundamentalist faith in Christianity brings a deeper understanding of those who have a fundamentalist faith in a different religion.) I'll never forget a particularly chilling piece they ran in the wake of 9/11. They sent a reporter to talk to some of the leading Islamist clerics in and around London. The clerics spoke very frankly and their message was crystal clear: Submit to Allah or die.
Rob| 2.7.11 @ 10:53AM
Baloney. Palin is berating Obama for not being able to predict who will be in charge in Egypt after this is over, now you're defending her on exactly those grounds. You can't have it both ways.
ME| 2.7.11 @ 3:00PM
Actually, from what I could gather, she was criticizing the Obama administration for not being up front with the American people about what they think/know about the situation. We got some press releases suggesting Obama told Mubarak to stand down (amusingly timed right after Mubarak announced he would eventually stand down) and some conflicting advice about how soon that should happen. However, the President has avoided speaking about the issue in public and there is still some confusion about what the administration is willing to countenance in terms of a replacement government.
There's a big difference between an administration predicting who will take power and an administration telling us who they are willing to do business with. Some might argue that it's smart diplomacy to hedge your bets in case your favorites don't make it. However, with one of the players in Egypt the anti-Israel, anti-US Muslim Brotherhood, it might make for smart politics at home to point out that, at a minimum, they aren't suited to the task of instituting democratic reforms in a new government.
Wayne | 2.7.11 @ 11:45AM
I have noticed a pattern. I find some obnoxious whiner (Lupica was certainly that on the sports reporters) and look up their names and find that they donated to Obama's campaign. Never fails.
I even found 3 from our softball league. They are arrogant, nasty and way over the top with poorly thought out opinions. And of course they want to tell us how to live.
Grzmlyk| 2.7.11 @ 1:07PM
Lupica is a putz; he is a classic, off-the shelf, jejune liberal - absolutely nothing informed, original or useful emanates from whichever orifice of his produces this flatulence.
I note that it takes him 10 - TEN - paragraphs to say anything of substance whatsoever - the first nine are all just swipes at what a moron Palin is. The first two thirds of the column is little more than sophomoric piling on, and the last third is a pathetic attempt to appear as if he has gravitas.
Hey, the cool kids hate Palin, so this little, little sports writer will jump on and show everybody what a big man he is. Yeah, Mike. You go, girl.
He's also contradictory - in the paragraph cited above, he says, "She also questions the motives of the people in the street, the ones whose courage will make Egypt a better place when this is all over, whoever is in charge next month, or next fall."
Yet, later in the piece, he says this: "Nobody is saying that all of those in the streets are brave, or noble." Which is it Mike? Do you have a friggin clue what's going on over there? If only they wore uniforms, like baseball players, eh, Mike? Then you'd be able to sort them out without a scorecard.
Palin's comments are pretty much obvious and axiomatic. The truth is, however non-incisive those comments are, they show a far greater understanding of what's going on over there than the pabulum Lupica can muster - his entire column contributes absolutely nothing adult to the the conversation about Egypt's fate and/or future.
Lupica came into this life of punditry as a bat boy, and he will, most assuredly, go out as a bat boy.
He wants so badly to rub shoulders with the big boys. The problem is, in the liberal dugout, they're all bat boys.
ImaLindatoo| 2.7.11 @ 1:25PM
What else is new. Lupica didn't discuss the facts of what Sarah Palin says, they just make claims and use their time under false pretense to AGAIN JUST LIE ACCUSE AND ATTACK SARAH. You know, rules for radicals. Like Obama, just keep repeating the problems everyone knows, to make them feel down and out, but not offer specifics or how to fix the obvous problems.
They are so obvious.
Jake| 2.7.11 @ 1:45PM
Lupica may generally be a weasel , but, he's not wrong about Palin's interview with David Brody.
Even with a friendly interviewer , she didn't say anything of substance ,
just repeated some vague and paranoid generalities picked up from Rush Limbaugh.
She spoke a lot of gathering information " there in Egypt " , but it is unclear from whom she will gather this information.
She claims the media ( apparently even Greg Palkot and FOX News ) is presenting a false picture
of the situation " there in Egypt."
I have no idea how she knows this.
She claims those " there in the White House " cannot be trusted.
Is she planning a fact finding trip herself ?
Because she demands that facts be gathered , but, distrusts everyone presently discussing the situation in Egypt.
" So now the information needs to be gathered
and understood as to who it will be that fills now the void in the government.
Is it going to be the Muslim Brotherhood?
We should not stand for that,
or with that or by that. "
She never said what we should do to stop the Muslim Brotherhood from assuming more power in Egypt .
Palin could have used the opportunity to dispel doubts
about her foreign policy credentials by having an in depth discussion of the Egyptian situation.
The transcript full of wordy postulations , paranoid assumptions and simplistic answers reinforces that Palin does not have the
same foreign policy expertise as the rest
of the 2012 Republican field.
It is typical Palin that she was poorly prepared for an interview that she knew would get a lot of attention .
ME| 2.7.11 @ 2:55PM
"wordy postulations , paranoid assumptions and simplistic answers"
You realize of course that this also describes the Democrats analysis of the electorate after the 2010 elections.
What Palin was guilty of was speaking with too many generalizations. However, Lupica's response was full of them too. Palin's point seemed to me to be that the Obama administration is not being very forthright about what they know or don't know and also about the outcome they want or don't want.
The administration didn't help themselves by sending mixed signals, at one point indicating that the Mubarak regime needed to go now, and then softening that to Mubarak needing to go later.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by paranoid assumptions, given that Palin's lack of confidence in the Obama administration's foreign policy chops is better supported than about 70% of her critics say about her.
But yeah, she could have been more precise and direct.
Patty| 2.7.11 @ 10:52PM
Who the heck is Lupica and why hould I care what the nobody says about Sarah Palin?
James| 2.7.11 @ 2:23PM
Mike Lupica is not really worth mentioning because, as was noted above, he is a tired NYC media liberal.
I would, however, like to point out some hypocrisy by this man of the people.
Lupica was a pretty good and semi-famous writer for the NY Daily News (NYDN). In the early 1990's the NYDN writers went on strike. There was a long lead-up to the strike and positions were hardened. If there was going to be a strike it was going to be a long and hard slog. Lupica was a member of the union and he wrote many articles about solidarity and all that other bs. Of course, shortly after the strike started, Lupica headed off to NY Newsday (NYN). NYN saw the strike as a way to really make inroads in the market and, perhaps, take out NYDN.
Typical story for guys like Lupica. It's all a lot of left-wing and anti-establishment crap and being for the little guy until it started to affect old Mikey and then he jumped ship and left the others to fend for themselves.
He is a creep.
Patty| 2.7.11 @ 10:53PM
Typical story for hypocritical liberals.
Banjo| 2.7.11 @ 3:01PM
You know we're minting experts on Egypt at a satisfactory rate when a baseball writer joins a former drama critic in giving us the benefit of their analysis on the crisis. Talk about the cup running over. In the interest of fairness, I think Foreign Affairs Magazine ought to give us its views on the Yankee rotation problem.
Ken (Old Texican)| 2.7.11 @ 5:09PM
I actually watched the interview. (It is up on the link that Aaron posted now...several clips.
If you folks go there, please scroll down and read the comments. The same old trolls saying the same tired things.
Andrew| 2.8.11 @ 9:58AM
Not that I'm one to defend Lupica, but "Sarah Palin" and "prudent" don't belong in the same sentence.
Jeb| 2.8.11 @ 10:02PM
But Andrew and asshole do.