January 14, 2009
Spengler speculates on how Obama's background may guide his time in office.
It is technically correct, but misleading, to label president-elect Barack Obama an "African American". His father's Luo tribe in Kenya has less in common with the West African ancestors of American blacks than a medieval Laplander had with an Anatolian Turk.
Until the middle of the 20th century, no Luo had ever met a West African, much less visited West Africa. No road today connects Kenya with West Africa. There is no link of language or culture, in fact, nothing in common but a concentration of melanin.
This might benefit the United States in crises to come. Obama is close enough to the life of actual Africans to know what the pre-Christian tribes of primitive society always knew: that the life of every ethnicity is finite. In a world full of dying peoples, this knowledge is beyond price. It is something that Americans have
forgotten, as surely as if the River Lethe girded their continent, and it has become taboo to contemplate, much less pronounce.
Extinction of whole peoples is unthinkable to Americans, but routine in Obama Sr's part of the world. If you want someone to consign a whole people to the dustbin of history, ask an African. Of Africa's 2,000 spoken languages, 300 have fewer than 10,000 living speakers, and 140 have fewer than 500 speakers. There are 3 million Luos alive today, but they suffer from an HIV infection rate variously estimated at 18% to 26%, among the highest in East Africa. The president-elect lives with the knowledge that disease and deracination might erase his father's ethnicity from the Earth before his grandchildren grow up. ...
... Sentimental attachment to Third World cultures, though, is a Western phenomenon; in the Third World as it actually exists, one encounters other cultures, and kills them. It remains to be seen whether the president-elect is a Western sentimentalist, or a Third World anthropologist who has talked his way into the leadership of the United States. In the latter case, it is likely that he will deal with America's enemies with a harder hand than Bush ever would have employed. Governance in Africa is not about ideology, but about the raw
exercise of power. Confronted with multiple crises that threaten the power of the United States, this clever Luo from Hawaii by way of Indonesia may defend his prerogatives more ferociously than anyone expects.
Camille Paglia is here with her quarterly reader's column. Her answers sizzle.
...And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC's "Today" show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric's small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric's TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There's many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizzazz. ...
... The usual tranquil transition period between an election and inauguration has certainly been
overshadowed by the murky Blagojevich scandal, but I think most reasonable people would give Obama a pass on it. Any new president must learn crisis management the hard way. No evidence to date directly implicates Obama in Blagojevich's follies. But Obama's future chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, the arrogant Chicago scrapper who was reportedly a conduit to the governor, already seems like an albatross who should be thrown overboard as soon as possible. Nobody wants a dawning presidency addicted so soon to
stonewalling, casuistry and the Nixonian dark arts of the modified limited hangout. ...
... but Harry Reid is a cadaverous horse's ass of mammoth proportions. How in the world did that whiny, sniveling incompetent end up as Senate majority leader? Give him the hook! ...
... We should all be concerned about environmental despoliation and pollution, but the global warming crusade has become a hallucinatory cult. Until I see stronger evidence, I will continue to believe that climate change is primarily driven by solar phenomena and that it is normal for the earth to pass through major cooling and warming phases. ...
...We should all be concerned about environmental despoliation and pollution, but the global warming
crusade has become a hallucinatory cult. Until I see stronger evidence, I will continue to believe that climate change is primarily driven by solar phenomena and that it is normal for the earth to pass through major cooling and warming phases. ...
Abe Greenwald with a great example of media bias.
Contentions post tells us how things are going in the land Jimmy Carter wanted Robert
Mugabe to lead.
Anyone can become a billionaire . . . if they move to Zimbabwe. Yesterday, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the country’s central bank, unveiled a new $50 billion note, worth a little more than one
greenback. In August, Harare knocked ten zeros off its currency. After the maneuver, a newspaper cost $10. Now it takes a little more than $15 billion to buy one. Good luck trying to find someone willing to accept Zimbabwe’s money.
The currency is not the only thing disintegrating: Since Robert Mugabe won the election in June-he was the only candidate-the country itself has fallen apart. Famine, disease, government failure, societal collapse-Zimbabwe has got it all. Now citizens, due to various factors, are dying in large numbers. Douglas
Gwatidza, chief of Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights says, “The whole country is turning into some kind of giant mortuary.” ...
Jennifer Rubin comments on Geithner's tax problems.
... Is he toast? If he were a Republican the answer would surely be yes. We’ll have to see whether he and the Obama team can get away with it. (The blogspheric cheerleaders are already assuring us it is but a “hiccup.”) This, of course, brings us to the bigger issue: what the heck is wrong with the Obama vetting process?
One strike on Bill Richardson. Two strikes on this — the transition team found the housekeeper problem and the “error” for additional years of nonpayment and arranged for the tax repayment back on December 5. But they seemed not to have appreciated the impact tax nonpayment would have on the confirmation
prospects of a Treasury Secretary. (Actually this sounds strangely similar to the Richardson case, in which the problem really was or should have been known.) Why do we get to the eve of the hearing (now
canceled) without this fully surfacing? ...
Contentions post on Hillary's "smart power."
... So why was Clinton championing smart power as if it were a revolutionary concept? What I read between the lines is that she has nothing new to offer, but must assure her party’s base that the Obama
Left’s collective imagination, Clinton touts the word “smart” to distance the new administration from his policies.
There was never a president, including Bush, who didn’t want to be smart about using power and who repudiated feasible diplomatic solutions in order to pursue foreign-policy goals militaristically instead.
Everyone is for smart power. The open-ended issue concerns finding the ratio of soft to hard power needed to yield optimal results.
The Obama-Clinton team — believing, in Clinton’s own words, in “principle and practicality” and not “rigid ideology” — can talk about smart power as the magic wand that will “persuade both Iran and Syria to abandon their dangerous behavior.” The question is whether this new combination they propose — specifically relying more on soft and less on hard power — can achieve the practical goal of persuading these countries to curb their destructive ambitions. Or maybe Tehran actually understands American smart power — as used by the new administration — as less power, and thus finds no reason to even consider concessions or behavioral changes.
NFL Nation at ESPN with a story about retiring Indianapolis Colts' coach Tony Dungy.
TAMPA, Fla. -- Forget for a second the Super Bowl victory and all the great players he coached. If you want to know what truly set Tony Dungy apart from other football coaches -- really, apart from a lot of human beings -- there is a story you need to read.
It sums up Dungy, who is retiring from the Indianapolis Colts and the National Football League today, as a person and a coach. It's the story of a man with a vision and the courage to stick to it quietly, no matter how much the world outside was banging on the windows.
The year was 1997. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in Dungy's second year as head coach, were showing some signs the lowly franchise might be ready to escape the so-called Curse of Doug Williams. With a young cast that featured Derrick Brooks, Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Warrick Dunn, Mike Alstott and Trent Dilfer, the Bucs got hopes up with a 5-0 start.
Then, it all seemed as if the season was about to fall apart because of one man. Well, make that two men because Dungy could see the problem as clear as the rest of Tampa Bay. But that stubborn streak that would become a part of his legacy was keeping him from, outwardly, doing anything about it.
The Bucs had a talented young kicker named Michael Husted who all of sudden started missing kicks. Not only was Husted missing field goals, but even extra-point attempts were flying badly off target.
The fans and the media were up in arms. It seemed Husted had to go or else the whole season would spin out of control. It was obvious to everyone, it seemed, except Dungy. ...
Asia Times
What Obama knows, America forgot
by Spengler
It is technically correct, but misleading, to label president-elect Barack Obama an "African American". His father's Luo tribe in Kenya has less in common with the West African ancestors of American blacks than a medieval Laplander had with an Anatolian Turk.
Until the middle of the 20th century, no Luo had ever met a West African, much less visited West Africa. No road today connects Kenya with West Africa. There is no link of language or culture, in fact, nothing in common but a concentration of melanin.
This might benefit the United States in crises to come. Obama is close enough to the life of actual Africans to know what the pre-Christian tribes of primitive society always knew: that the life of every ethnicity is finite. In a world full of dying peoples, this knowledge is beyond price. It is something that Americans have
forgotten, as surely as if the River Lethe girded their continent, and it has become taboo to contemplate, much less pronounce.
Extinction of whole peoples is unthinkable to Americans, but routine in Obama Sr's part of the world. If you want someone to consign a whole people to the dustbin of history, ask an African. Of Africa's 2,000 spoken languages, 300 have fewer than 10,000 living speakers, and 140 have fewer than 500 speakers. There are 3 million Luos alive today, but they suffer from an HIV infection rate variously estimated at 18% to 26%, among the highest in East Africa. The president-elect lives with the knowledge that disease and deracination might erase his father's ethnicity from the Earth before his grandchildren grow up.
How the president-elect will deal with the disaster he inherits from the Bush administration is beyond the capacity of any second person to guess. Obama, I argued before the election, acted like an African
anthropologist profiling the quaint and curious tribe of Americans. (Please see Obama's women reveal his secret, February 26, 2008.) He read Americans so well and played so cannily on their hopes and dreams as to persuade a large number of mutually incompatible constituencies that he shared their concerns.
All manipulation and no character was my verdict on Obama, but that might not be the worst outcome. Like Goethe's Mephistopheles, he may turn out to be "the spirit that always wants the bad, but always does the good".
Whatever the president-elect's predilection, what he will encounter on January 20 is:
1. Hamas, the supposed victim of Israeli attack, demands the opportunity to fight to the death, rejecting an Egyptian ceasefire plan and threatening to kill foreign observers if they are sent to Gaza, while the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority remains an empty shell.
2. Pakistan, as Syed Saleem Shahzad reported in this publication on January 9 (Washington loses a vital link), not only has rejected American demands for a crackdown against the jihadi organizations behind last month's massacre in Mumbai, but has dismissed pro-American National Security Advisor General Mahmood Durrani.
3. Iran will give no ground whatever over its nuclear program, which many suspect aims to develop nuclear weapons, and threatens to draw America's 140,000 troops stationed in Iraq into further violence if any action is taken to repress its nuclear program.
Obama on January 11 told ABC News that "engagement" remains his starting point for dealing with Iran. Despite the president-elect's talk of a new sort of policy, what he proposes is precisely what the outgoing George W Bush administration has done under Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
David Sanger's report [1] in the January 10 New York Times rings true that Bush last year refused an Israeli request to overfly Iraq in a bombing raid against Iran's nuclear development facilities.
nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country's only known uranium enrichment plant is located," Sanger wrote, in part because "the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America's 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved".
Nation-building in Iraq turns out to be Tehran's equivalent of B'rer Rabbit's tar baby. To my knowledge, I was the first analyst to warn of a quid pro quo between Washington and Tehran, in which Tehran would rein in Shi'ite terrorists in return for Washington's inaction on its nuclear program. I wrote on October 25, 2005, in A Syriajevo in the making?:
President George W Bush is struggling to persuade the American public of the wisdom of his nation-building scheme in Iraq, and badly wants the Iranians to keep their hands in their pockets. Iran is prepared to do so as long as America keeps its opposition to its nuclear program within the confines of the diplomatic cul-de-sac defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In this exchange, Iran gives up nothing of importance, for the rage of the Iraqi Shi'ites will only wax over time. Tehran retains the option to stir things up in Iraq whenever it chooses to do so. Its capacity to do so will increase with time as Iraq grows less stable. Time is on the side of Tehran. Only with great difficulty could the US employ military means to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; once Iran has acquired them, the military balance will shift decisively in favor of the Iranians.
Bush is the opposite of Goethe's Devil, a well-meaning fellow who always wants the good but inevitably creates a disaster. Americans live in the world's only non-ethnic nation, built by selecting out of the nations individuals who desired to leave their national tragedy behind them on the further shore. Precisely because ethnicity has no edge in America, Americans assume that the tragic destinies of other peoples are a
treatable malady. Bush believes in his heart of hearts that democracy will cure the ancient hatreds of the Middle East, because he comes from a new people called out of the nations. Western Asia is full of peoples who have nothing to lose because they have no future and know it.
It is unfair to ask anyone to view anything except through the lens of his own experience. Former US president Jimmy Carter framed the Middle East in terms of America's struggle for civil rights, and identified the Palestinian Arabs with disenfranchised African Americans in America's South before the success of the civil rights movement. Outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used a similar formulation on October 11, 2005:
I know that sometimes a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace with Israel must seem like a very distant dream. But I know too, as a student of international history, that there are so many things that once seemed impossible that, after they happened, simply seemed inevitable. I've read over the last summer the biographies of America's Founding Fathers. By all rights, America, the United States of America, should never have come into being. We should never have survived our civil war. I should never have grown up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to become the secretary of state of the United States of America.
That is an African-American view of the matter. Of what, though, does African-American identity consist? The descendants of West African slaves have no idea from what tribe they came, what language they spoke, or what culture they left behind. The search for African-American roots was a Romantic exercise in invention. It helps to be a Luo, that is, not a generic African American from a long-muddled group of West African victims of the slave trade, but an East African from a specific tribe with a specific history and slender hopes of surviving the crosswinds of modernity.
Obama's personal sympathies - if he has any at all - lie with the Third World threatened by globalization. One might also expect that his troop of Muslim half-siblings might elicit some sympathy for Islam. He has expressed his admiration for the traditional life of the Third World against the miseries of urban life in the United States, as in this passage from his book Dreams of My Father: "And yet for all that poverty [in the Indonesian marketplace], there remained in their lives a discernible order, a tapestry of trading routes and middlemen, bribes to pay and customs to observe, the habits of a generation played out every day beneath the bargaining and the noise and the swirling dust. It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like [the Chicago housing projects] so desperate."
Sentimental attachment to Third World cultures, though, is a Western phenomenon; in the Third World as it actually exists, one encounters other cultures, and kills them. It remains to be seen whether the
president-elect is a Western sentimentalist, or a Third World anthropologist who has talked his way into the leadership of the United States. In the latter case, it is likely that he will deal with America's enemies with a harder hand than Bush ever would have employed. Governance in Africa is not about ideology, but about the raw
exercise of power. Confronted with multiple crises that threaten the power of the United States, this clever Luo from Hawaii by way of Indonesia may defend his prerogatives more ferociously than anyone expects.
Salon.com
Obama's early stumbles
Readers ask, Camille dishes: On Democratic woes, the Weather Underground, Kanye West, Freud, alleged gay genes and "the long sleep."
By Camille Paglia
Dear Camille,
When Obama is reading off a teleprompter or in a scripted environment like a debate (where the game is to plug in your prepared sound bites regardless of the question), he comes across as a magnificent and inspiring speaker. But there were several times during the campaign where he appeared to trip all over himself when off script.
Now in his comments about the Blagojevich mess, he comes across badly and makes it look like we are in for another four (or eight) years of people having to carefully parse every word. Do you get that same impression to any extent, and if so, does it cause you concern?
Blake Krass
Pflugerville, Texas
Because my support for Obama was based on his steady, tempered performance in the debates rather than on his soaring but rather vague speeches, I have never been troubled by any gap
between his mundane and rhetorical selves. The widespread notion that Obama is inarticulate came from stunt tapes broadcast on conservative talk radio where his occasional hesitations on the road were stitched together to make him sound like a stuttering Bugs Bunny.
Who wouldn't misspeak from fatigue on the long, brutal national campaign trail? Only candidates popping pep pills or relying on a Versailles-like staff of flunkies to feed them talking points and buzzwords. Considering what a relative newcomer he is, Obama endured that punishing trial by fire amazingly well. Since the election, he has also projected a cordial dignity and thoughtful reserve that seem to have impressed and reassured observers across the political spectrum.
However, you are quite right to call the controversy over the indictment of buffoonishly sly Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich a "mess." That the normally deft Obama team mishandled its rapid response to it was obvious from the get-go. Obama's first statements about his and his staff's
communications with Blagojevich were inadequate at best and misleading at worst. Then there was a second stage of needless blunders when Obama opposed the tarnished Blagojevich's perfectly legal appointment of Roland Burris to fill Obama's vacated Senate seat -- a foolishly hard line that the president-elect inevitably had to reverse.
The usual tranquil transition period between an election and inauguration has certainly been overshadowed by the murky Blagojevich scandal, but I think most reasonable people would give Obama a pass on it. Any new president must learn crisis management the hard way. No evidence to date directly implicates Obama in Blagojevich's follies. But Obama's future chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, the arrogant Chicago scrapper who was reportedly a conduit to the governor, already
seems like an albatross who should be thrown overboard as soon as possible. Nobody wants a dawning presidency addicted so soon to stonewalling, casuistry and the Nixonian dark arts of the modified limited hangout.
Dear Camille,
I wish to present an observation, of sorts, from an evil conservative view.
I am not in the least bit surprised that the Obama crew is shaping up to look like a Clinton retread crew because it seems to me that the Clinton years are the only real benchmark of accomplishment that Democrats today can look to. Sure, they wiped up the Republicans in '06 and '08, but they haven't done much of anything of substance except torpedo Congress's already historically abysmal approval ratings and piss off their own Capitol Hill staffers. If anyone ought to be allowed (or encouraged) to smoke, it would be these D.C. staffers, and are you really willing to screw with that?
It is going to be interesting to see how the Democrat Party is able to hold up in this first year or so internally. In my humble opinion, Obama is not the leader of this party -- Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are -- and to see how Obama grabs hold of Dem leadership responsibilities, if at all, will be interesting. I think that the party is at a crossroads, with political posturing at the top (Obama's rapidly backpedaling policy plans), power and ego struggles (Hillary, Harry, Nancy, etc.) and a voter base that is starting to look and sound more like British Labour and that grows less tolerant of electoral posturing and only more restless in its pursuit of what I can only describe as radical change.
Obama will certainly have his hands full with his band of bozos, and because they control Congress and the White House, whichever way they pull themselves, so go the rest of us. Oh well, in God I trust, and in his faithful servant, John Browning.
Daine Zaccheo
469th FMC Info Sys Support Spc Palm Bay, Fla., by way of Balad, Iraq
Thank you for your tart perspective on the travails of my party! In invoking God's "faithful servant" John Browning, I assume you are referring to the innovative Mormon gunsmith (1855-1926) who invented a staggering number of weapons and who is considered the godfather of today's automatic and semiautomatic firearms.
Surely both parties should be rooting for Congress to dig in its heels and assert its constitutional authority vis-à-vis the White House. The U.S. was meant to have a vigorous tripartite government, which has been weakened by the post-Nixon slide toward an ad hoc imperial presidency. The legislative branch shouldn't roll over and play dead like a cutesy pound puppy.
On the other hand, I agree with you that Congress has come across lately like a clumsy, flea-bitten bunch of "bozos." Its poll ratings are lower than stinking swamp mud. I have a soft spot for the nimble Nancy Pelosi, a master of the ladylike stiletto thrust, but Harry Reid is a cadaverous horse's ass of mammoth proportions. How in the world did that whiny, sniveling incompetent end up as Senate majority leader? Give him the hook! As for the "radical change" that you fear, it's hard to imagine (short of a crisis-driven imposition of martial law) how that will ever happen in our sluggish, consensus-driven political system.
Dear Camille,
Dick Cavett is someone whose column I almost always enjoy very much. But I agree that he put down Sarah Palin's use of language for no good reason. The example he cited (she was discussing Darfur and what Alaska had done in view of events there) was an almost perfect example of coherent thought on her part if you recognize that a longish sentence includes a parenthetical aside.
Here is the bit he cites in his column: "My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the
relevance was Alaska's investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."
Here is my own very minor rework of her sentence (rework in italics): "My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue (as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there where we see the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed
governments on the continent), the relevance was Alaska's investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."
When she spoke, the sense of what she meant was clear, and a minor edit makes the sentence good enough for a print medium.
No doubt she can be attacked in several areas on substance, but it is interesting and strange that instead people engage in elitist attacks on her for being a hunter or for the way she talks. In point of fact, she is a very able communicator, as time will bear out, I am sure, and yet the number of people on the left who recognize her political gifts is very small.
Cavett will come back and entertain me again soon, I am sure, but this is one case where he's just lost his objectivity and comes off sounding like a prig.
Blaine Walgren
Excellent analysis! You have cut the entire ground out from beneath Dick Cavett's lofty claim of grammatical superiority to Sarah Palin by exposing his inability to sense a simple parenthesis in a spoken passage. I laughed heartily at your e-mail, for which I am most appreciative.
As I have repeatedly said in this column, I have never had the slightest problem in understanding Sarah Palin's meaning at any time. On the contrary, I have positively enjoyed her fresh, natural, rapid delivery with its syncopated stops and slides -- a fabulous example of which was the way (in her recent interview with John Ziegler) that she used a soft, swooping satiric undertone to zing Katie Couric's dippy narcissism and to assert her own outrage as a "mama grizzly" at libels against her family.
Ideology-driven attacks on Palin became clotted liberal clichés within 24 hours of her introduction as John McCain's running mate. What a bunch of tittering lemmings the urban elite have become in this country. From Couric's vicious manipulations of video clips to Cavett's bourgeois platitudes, the preemptive strike on Palin as a potential presidential candidate has grossly misfired. Whatever legitimate objections may be raised to Palin on political grounds (explored, for example, by David Talbot in Salon) have been lost in the amoral overkill that has defamed a self-made woman of concrete achievement in the public realm.
And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC's "Today" show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric's small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric's TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight,
cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There's many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz.
Dear Camille,
I am a conservative lesbian living in New York. I would love you to address how the Fairness Doctrine has become a viable possibility for the liberal agenda, given that it is simply modern-day censorship, and also taking into account the undeniably left-leaning media. How can the left not see its hypocrisy?
Kara McGee
If there's anything that demonstrates the straying of the Democratic Party leadership from basic liberal principles, it's this blasted Fairness Doctrine -- which should be fiercely opposed by all defenders of free speech. Except when national security is at risk, government should never be involved in the surveillance of speech or in measuring the ideological content of books, movies or radio and TV programs.
Broadcasters must adhere to reasonable FCC regulations restricting obscenity, but despite the outlandish claims of Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer, there is no analogy whatever between pornography and political opinion. Nor do privately owned radio stations have any obligation to be politically "balanced." They are commercial enterprises that follow the market and directly respond to audience demand. The Fairness Doctrine is bullying Big Brother tyranny, full of contempt for the very public it pretends to protect.
As a fan of AM radio since childhood, I adore the proliferation of political talk shows spurred by Rush Limbaugh's pioneering rise to national syndication in the late 1980s. It represented a
maturation of the late-night coast-to-coast radio programs that I had been listening to in the 1970s, such as Herb Jepko (broadcasting from Salt Lake City), Long John Nebel (from New York) and Larry King (from Miami).
However, I do lament the gradual disappearance of small, quirky local shows due to the trend toward national syndication. And I often get bored and impatient with the same arch-conservative message being drummed out 24/7. But let's get real: Liberals have been pathetic flops on national radio -- for reasons that have yet to be identified. Air America, for example, despite retchingly sycophantic major media coverage, never got traction and has dwindled to a humiliating handful of markets. The Democrats are the party of Hollywood, for heaven's sake -- so what's their problem in mastering radio?
Instead of bleating for paternalistic government intervention, liberals should get their own act
together. Radio is a populist medium where liberals come across as snide, superior scolds. One can instantly recognize a liberal caller to a conservative show by his or her catty, obnoxious tone. The leading talk radio hosts are personalities and entertainers with huge rhetorical energy and a bluff, engaging manner. Even the seething ranters can be extremely funny. Last summer, for example, I laughed uproariously in my car when WABC's Mark Levin said furiously about Katie Couric, "What do these people do? Open fortune cookies and read them on air?"
The best hosts combine a welcoming master of ceremonies manner with a vaudevillian brashness. Liberal imitators haven't made a dent on talk radio because they think it's all about politics, when it isn't. Top hosts are life questers and individualists who explore a wide range of thought and emotion and who skillfully work the mike like jazz vocalists. Talk radio is a major genre of popular culture that deserves the protection accorded to other branches of the performing and fine arts. Liberals, who go all hushed and pious at Hays Code censorship in classic Hollywood, should lay off the lynch-mob mentality. Keep the feds out of radio!
Dear Camille,
Have you noticed how much the call for combating global warming crusade has in common with how we got into the Iraq war?
In both cases, there are "experts" who tell us that evidence justifying action is undeniable. They say, "The risk of doing nothing is too great for us to do nothing." And as a fallback position they say, "Even if we're wrong, we'll still be doing some good in the world."
Kind of makes me think man-made CO2 emissions will turn out to be the biggest case of nonexistent WMD since Saddam Hussein's nukes. (Or maybe even bigger!) What do you think?
Jim Carroll
Wonderful letter! I became a vocal opponent of the onrushing Iraq incursion when I was shocked by the flimsiness of evidence presented by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in 2003. Similarly, I have been highly skeptical about the claims for global warming because of their overreliance on speculative computer modeling and because of the woeful patchiness of records for world temperatures before the 20th century.
In the 1980s, I was similarly skeptical about media-trumpeted predictions about a world epidemic of heterosexual AIDS. And I remain skeptical about the media's carelessly undifferentiated use of the term "AIDS" for what is often a complex of wasting diseases in Africa. We should all be concerned about environmental despoliation and pollution, but the global warming crusade has become a hallucinatory cult. Until I see stronger evidence, I will continue to believe that climate change is primarily driven by solar phenomena and that it is normal for the earth to pass through major cooling and warming phases.
...
Dear Camille,
"Revalorization of the trades": You've perfectly articulated what I've thought for years. Time to remove the stigma and recognize trades for the skilled and professional work they are (and to bring that level of professionalism to them).
As a college writing professor, I see many students who clearly don't want to be on the university path but are there because their parents want them to be and are willing to foot the bill. It's all so misdirected. Wouldn't our society and citizens be better served if we quit thinking of vo-tech types as "flunkies" and second-stringers?
Marna Krajeski
I agree with you completely! The American system of higher education has become an insane
assembly line -- bankrupting families to process hapless students through an incoherent, haphazard and mediocre liberal arts curriculum. In the '60s, there was a brief moment when middle-class young men were dropping out of college to become silversmiths or leather workers in San Francisco or Greenwich Village. As the product of an Italian-American immigrant family where the crafts were honored, I cheered that development and prayed that it would continue. But it sputtered out -- probably because the recession of the 1970s was a cold dose of reality.
Perhaps there's hope of change because of the tens of thousands of liberal arts graduates with expensive degrees who are finding themselves out of work and depressingly marginalized in a society where the manual trades offer guaranteed employment at relatively high wages. A dose of Buddhism might do people good: Sweeping garden sand into oceanic designs around ornamental rocks is considered a spiritual exercise in Asia. I say that landscaping, construction, carpentry, metalworking and all the other trades should be promoted by primary education as worthy careers for both men and women. The pre-college rat race is a sadomasochistic imposition on the young that robs them of free will and saps their vital energies. When will they rebel?
...
Camille Paglia's column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.
Contentions
At Least String Us Along a Little
by Abe GreenwaldI just spotted a headline from the Los Angeles Times’ blog that reads, “IRAQ: More Marines commit suicide.” I don’t even know how to feel about a lede that debunks its own sensationalism this economically:
More active-duty Marines committed suicide last year than any year since the beginning of the war in Iraq, although the rate of suicide remained virtually unchanged because the corps is increasing its size, according to a report issued Tuesday.
In other words, more active duty Marines probably did a lot of things this year. More fell in love; more
watched American Idol; more had indigestion; more learned how to cook with a wok, more joined Facebook, etc. But the kicker comes a few lines later.
The 2008 rate remains below that of the Army (18.1 in 2007) and the civilian population with similar demographics (19.5).
I guess “Marine Suicide Rate Stays Low” isn’t much of a headline.
Contentions
Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?
by Gordon G. ChangAnyone can become a billionaire . . . if they move to Zimbabwe. Yesterday, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the country’s central bank, unveiled a new $50 billion note, worth a little more than one
greenback. In August, Harare knocked ten zeros off its currency. After the maneuver, a newspaper cost $10. Now it takes a little more than $15 billion to buy one. Good luck trying to find someone willing to accept Zimbabwe’s money.
The currency is not the only thing disintegrating: Since Robert Mugabe won the election in June-he was the only candidate-the country itself has fallen apart. Famine, disease, government failure, societal collapse-Zimbabwe has got it all. Now citizens, due to various factors, are dying in large numbers. Douglas
Gwatidza, chief of Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights says, “The whole country is turning into some kind of giant mortuary.”
Analysts correctly point out that the multi-decade misrule of the above-mentioned Mr. Mugabe is responsible for his country’s plight. Yet this is not just the problem of one bad autocrat. Of course, the country’s form of government is the fundamental problem. It’s not that Zimbabwe needs a better dictator; it needs to have none of them.
Democracy seems to have been stagnating in recent years, as the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2008 Index of Democracy suggests. The EIU survey indicates that the global financial crisis could even threaten the very concept of representative governance in some parts of the world. Yet so far the general downturn is hitting the autocracies especially hard, potentially undermining the stability of hardline societies from Iran to Venezuela. Even the governments of the two largest authoritarian states, Russia and China, are now at risk. “The crisis in the West is purely economic,” says Li Qiang of China Labor Watch. “But in China it’s a huge political problem.” As it is in Putin’s increasingly repressive domain.
General prosperity, in the wake of the fall of Soviet communism, made all dictators appear strong. Now, however, we are seeing the inherent weaknesses of authoritarianism. “Until the tide goes out you don’t know who’s swimming naked,” said Warren Buffett in better times.
The tide is receding, and Mugabe is playing out his last days in power. Whether their problems are of longstanding nature-such as Zimbabwe’s-or of newer vintage, autocracies appear to be in jeopardy. We should be thinking at this time of how to get rid of them all.
Contentions
Here We Go Again
by Jennifer RubinTimothy Geithner, when at the Fed in New York, orchestrated hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout monies that have fallen into unknown nooks and crannies in our banking system. He presided over the demise of Lehman Brothers, which many now blame for the complete meltdown in our financial system. And he approved a bailout for AIG, which is regarded by Democrats and Republicans alike as a mistake. But if he fails to be confirmed as Treasury Secretary it won’t be because of any of that.
It will be because he has what has come to be generically called a “nanny problem,” but in his case is actually housekeeper problem. That is, he had a housekeeper whose work authorization expired. Oh, and he failed to pay self-employment taxes for himself for the time he worked at the IMF. In 2006 he was forced to pay back taxes for 2003 and 2004. In December 2008 when the Obama team discovered additional years ( 2001 and 2002) of non-payment, Geithner made further repayments (including interest) to the IRS. In total, he had to pay over $42,000 in back taxes and interest.
Is he toast? If he were a Republican the answer would surely be yes. We’ll have to see whether he and the Obama team can get away with it. (The blogspheric cheerleaders are already assuring us it is but a
“hiccup.”) This, of course, brings us to the bigger issue: what the heck is wrong with the Obama vetting process?
One strike on Bill Richardson. Two strikes on this — the transition team found the housekeeper problem and the “error” for additional years of nonpayment and arranged for the tax repayment back on December 5. But they seemed not to have appreciated the impact tax nonpayment would have on the confirmation
prospects of a Treasury Secretary. (Actually this sounds strangely similar to the Richardson case, in which the problem really was or should have been known.) Why do we get to the eve of the hearing (now
canceled) without this fully surfacing?
And there’s a little troubling detail in all of this. Why didn’t Geithner pay all the back taxes when audited in 2006? The Wall Street Journal explains:
As to why Mr. Geithner didn’t pay all his back taxes after the 2006 audit, an Obama aide said the nominee was advised by his accountant that he had no further liability. Senate Finance Committee aides said they were concerned that either Mr. Geithner or his accountant had used the IRS’s statute of limitations to avoid further back-tax payments at the time of the audit. “Some might say it was a character moment,” said one Republican aide.
Even Maureen Dowd is miffed:
How does a guy on the fast track to be Treasury secretary fail to pay $43,200 worth of federal taxes, or forget to check on the immigration status of a house cleaner — the same sort of upstairs-downstairs slipup that has tripped up other top-drawer prospects on their way to top jobs here? Americans expect the man who’s in charge of the I.R.S. to pay his own taxes.
Geithner’s transgressions may seem petty given the kind of transgressions that have taken place in the Bush administration, and given the dire warnings of Obama’s choice for budget director, Peter Orszag, that the end may be nigh if the U.S. continues to spend beyond its means.
But Obama has proselytized about a shiny new kind of politics, and it’s déjà vu all over again with the smart being dumb, the rich being greedy, the powerful being sketchy.
And, as one Capitol Hill aide noted, it doesn’t look great for the Democrats to have both their Treasury Secretary and their Ways and Means Chairman seemingly unable to comply with routine tax laws.
More practically, it sets up every other Obama nominee to enter hearings with heightened awareness and concern by Senators that the vetters didn’t fully vet or weren’t entirely candid.
Bottom line: whether or not Geithner survives, the air of competence surrounding the new administration is a precious thing and shouldn’t be frittered away like this. Certainly this was one more unforced error the new team did not need. One wonders if this is indicative of a regrettable pattern or simply the final bobble as the Obama administration gets its sea legs. But, wait. The Eric Holder hearing — which may be the bloodiest of them all — is still ahead. So much for the honeymoon.
Contentions
Stupid Talk About “Smart Power”
by Shmuel RosnerLet me start by unequivocally declaring that I’m all for “smart power.” At least in principle, that is: If only someone would explain to me what it actually means!
Smart power — as many have noted during and after yesterday’s Clinton confirmation hearing — is the new Secretary of State’s pet slogan:
“I believe that American leadership has been wanting, but is still wanted,” she said. “We must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal — diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural… With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy.”
There is more:
We must also actively pursue a strategy of smart power. . . persuade both Iran and Syria to abandon their dangerous behavior and become constructive regional actors.
And more:
As we focus on Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we must also actively pursue a strategy of smart power in the Middle East that addresses the security needs of Israel and the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the Palestinians.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies has a “Commission on Smart Power,” headed by Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye. Their goal is summarized below:
America must revitalize its ability to inspire and persuade rather than merely rely upon its military might. Despite the predominance of U.S. hard power, there are limits to its effectiveness in addressing the main foreign policy challenges facing America today. America’s standing in the world is diminished, and although there have been discrete “soft power” successes - most notably the progress against HIV/AIDS and malaria, and the creation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation – many of the traditional instruments of soft power, such as public engagement and diplomacy, have been neglected and fallen into disrepair.
Although the formal definition of smart power centers on the synergetic integration of hard power with soft power, only the latter is emphasized in the above explanation. Clinton’s flavor of smart power is probably similar in placing diplomatic tools over military force and other coercive means. But has any American
administration ever opposed smart power? Do you know of any U.S. President or Secretary of State to have rejected available diplomatic solutions in favor of military aggression?
Of course not. In any debate about smart power, the point of contention has never been the need to be smart, but rather how to use power smartly. Consider this: Robert Gates, a Defense Secretary appointed by George W. Bush, is a fan of smart power:
He [Gates] also has advocated greater reliance on “soft power,” such as diplomacy and economic influence, over “hard” military power. On Monday, Gates said the United States remains the strongest military power on earth. “But not every outrage, every act of aggression, every crisis can or should elicit an American military response, and we should acknowledge such,” he said. “Be modest about what military force can accomplish, and what technology can accomplish,” he said.
The Obama administration is keeping Gates, whose stated fondness for soft power has likely endeared him to the President-elect. But Gates was never a renegade in the old administration or at odds with the Bush Doctrine. On the contrary, retaining Gates signals that there will likely be no great divide between Obama’s foreign policy and Bush’s — at least not as great as many had feared and many others had hoped. Gates will be the same Defense Secretary under Obama that he was under Bush, and the needs and challenges of using power effectively will also remain the same. Continuation is the new Change.
So why was Clinton championing smart power as if it were a revolutionary concept? What I read between the lines is that she has nothing new to offer, but must assure her party’s base that the Obama
administration will overhaul foreign policy somehow. Since Bush is universally characterized as stupid in the Left’s collective imagination, Clinton touts the word “smart” to distance the new administration from his policies.
There was never a president, including Bush, who didn’t want to be smart about using power and who repudiated feasible diplomatic solutions in order to pursue foreign-policy goals militaristically instead.
Everyone is for smart power. The open-ended issue concerns finding the ratio of soft to hard power needed to yield optimal results.
The Obama-Clinton team — believing, in Clinton’s own words, in “principle and practicality” and not “rigid ideology” — can talk about smart power as the magic wand that will “persuade both Iran and Syria to abandon their dangerous behavior.” The question is whether this new combination they propose — specifically relying more on soft and less on hard power — can achieve the practical goal of persuading these countries to curb their destructive ambitions. Or maybe Tehran actually understands American smart power — as used by the new administration — as less power, and thus finds no reason to even consider concessions or behavioral changes.
NFL Nation - ESPN.com
A Dungy story you may not have heard
by Pat YasinskasTAMPA, Fla. -- Forget for a second the Super Bowl victory and all the great players he coached. If you want to know what truly set Tony Dungy apart from other football coaches -- really, apart from a lot of human beings -- there is a story you need to read.
It sums up Dungy, who is retiring from the Indianapolis Colts and the National Football League today, as a person and a coach. It's the story of a man with a vision and the courage to stick to it quietly, no matter how much the world outside was banging on the windows.
The year was 1997. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in Dungy's second year as head coach, were showing some signs the lowly franchise might be ready to escape the so-called Curse of Doug Williams. With a young cast that featured Derrick Brooks, Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Warrick Dunn, Mike Alstott and Trent Dilfer, the Bucs got hopes up with a 5-0 start.
Then, it all seemed as if the season was about to fall apart because of one man. Well, make that two men because Dungy could see the problem as clear as the rest of Tampa Bay. But that stubborn streak that would become a part of his legacy was keeping him from, outwardly, doing anything about it. The Bucs had a talented young kicker named Michael Husted who all of sudden started missing kicks. Not only was Husted missing field goals, but even extra-point attempts were flying badly off target.
The fans and the media were up in arms. It seemed Husted had to go or else
the whole season would spin out of control. It was obvious to everyone, it seemed, except Dungy.
Week after week, he stood there with his arms folded on the sidelines, never showing the slightest emotion when Husted missed a kick. The Bucs lost three games in a row.
Any other coach would have simply brought in another kicker. But Dungy had laid out a philosophy that would end up applying to every player he ever coached and he had to stick to it. He knew something the rest of the world didn't.
While media and fans were breaking down Husted's kicking technique, Dungy knew what was in the kicker's head and heart.
The real story here was Husted's mother, Ann, was dying of cancer up in Virginia.
"I always prided myself on being a pro and being able to separate off-the-field stuff from what I did on the field,'' Husted said Monday morning from his home in San Diego. "But it got to the point where my mom's situation was taking up all of my thoughts."
On the Monday after the third straight loss (to Minnesota), special-teams coach Joe Marciano sat down with Husted and said, "What would you do if you were in our shoes?'' Husted pretty much shrugged and braced himself for the inevitable.
The next morning, Dungy called and Husted was sure he was being cut. Dungy's words said something else.
Tony Dungy was more than just a football coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
"He just said, 'You're a Buccaneer. You're part of our family. You're our kicker,''' Husted said.
Mission accomplished. The next Sunday, the Bucs went up to Indianapolis. Husted made a game-winning field goal that broke his slump. The season was saved and the Bucs went on to make the playoffs for the first time in a generation. Ann Husted died after the season, but not before she came to several games and sat with Dungy's wife, Lauren, in a private box.
"What he did was relieve the pressure from me,'' Husted said. "A lot of other coaches would have just let me go. I'm forever grateful to Tony for how he handled that. It speaks a lot about the type of individual he is and how he's not going to let outside forces influence what he knows is right.''
Throughout his career, Dungy has been criticized for being too stubborn or too soft. But, deep down, wouldn't you rather have someone who cares about you and not someone who flies off the handle and listens to the whims of the world?
That should be as much a part of Dungy's legacy as all the games he won and as much as becoming the first African-American head coach to win a Super Bowl. Yes, he did things differently at times, but, in the end, you can't argue with the results.
The Super Bowl win still is fresh in the minds of many. But what Dungy did in Tampa Bay might have been even more remarkable. He took over a franchise that was in disarray, replacing Sam Wyche as the coach soon after owner Hugh Culverhouse had died and Malcolm Glazer purchased the team. In those days, the Bucs played in dreary Tampa Stadium and there was speculation about them moving anywhere from Los Angeles to Baltimore.
In 1996, a very quiet man took over a mess.
"The thing is Tony just brought this silent, commanding respect,'' Husted said. "We never felt like there was a clear road map. He came in and established what we wanted to do and how to go about it. People bought into it in the locker room and we started winning.''
The Bucs got their new stadium in 1998 and consistent winning followed. Dungy couldn't quite get the Bucs over the Super Bowl hump. Jon Gruden came in and did that. But Dungy's contributions in Tampa Bay are going to be evident for a long time. The franchise has been respectable since his arrival, and the stadium has been full for years.
Respect might be the most fitting single word to sum up Dungy's career and that's fitting. Through it all, he always earned respect.
"I think the biggest thing was you never wanted to disappoint coach Dungy because of how he treated you,'' Husted said. "I think any player who ever played for him will tell you it was an honor to play for him. The league is going to miss him and I wish you could clone him and make every coach like that because it would benefit the whole league. But you know that whatever he does going forward, he's going to keep doing it the right way and he's going to positively impact a lot of people.''
