Choice is one of those issues that never leave the headlines for very long. The latest brouhaha began when Hilary Rosen, a Democratic Party advisor, claimed that Mitt Romney’s wife, mother of five, grandmother to 16, “never worked a day in her life.” What Rosen meant was that stay-at-home moms don’t contribute to the world of commerce as a plumber, or a lobbyist, might. Put aside for a moment things like tact or facts; and consider why an advisor or strategist would sneer at the rigors of motherhood on national television, in an election year – just a few weeks before Mother’s Day! The controversy echoes Hillary Clinton’s wild shot at women who bake at home.
As is often the case in these matters, the follow-on apologetics made a poor choice worse. Ms. Rosen quickly took to the airwaves to change the subject, claiming that, unlike Ann Romney, most women couldn’t choose between mothering and the workplace; asserting that wives are compelled to work outside the home. Rosen’s claim was quickly endorsed by President Obama who insisted, on the one hand, that political spouses should be off limits; then with the other hand, dragged his wife, Michelle, into the fray; claiming that even the distaff half of a breeding pair of lawyers, with a mid-six-figure income, had to work outside the home to make ends meet. The president argued, like Rosen, that wives don’t have choices; implying that they are victims - of economic circumstance. Never mind that claiming mothers (compared to fathers?) are not free to choose is at once condescending or patronizing. Indeed, the very phrase “working mothers” is at best a pleonasm.
Two of the four principals in this controversy are lawyers. You might think that litigators would have a better grip on facts, rhetoric, and precedent; but the real agenda here may be political, not economic or moral. The Rosen/Obama trope casts women working outside of the home as victims, not free agents. Or perhaps Rosen and the president merely confused no choice with poor choice.
Clearly, circumstances might mitigate a choice, but by tradition and common law, circumstances do not determine, control, or preordain. Unless the defense of poor choice is insanity, mothers are as liable for their selections as anybody. Custom and legal praxis does not support the Rosen/Obama twist on compulsion, on choice, on free will - or any related notions.
Arguments about free will and choice have an antique lineage. The decisive moment for Western culture came in the 16th Century when two Augustinian Monks, Desiderious Erasmus and Martin Luther, squared off in the middle of the Reformation. Luther landed the first blow by claiming that free will does not matter in matters of salvation. Fra Martin argued that an omnipotent God knew and predestined the fate of all men; some were saved and others were destined to burn. No amount of good works could lead to salvation. Luther’s argument is similar to what you might hear from empiricists today; just substitute biology, illness, or natural forces for God’s omniscience – or the devil’s grip.
(Flip Wilson, an American comedian with a finger on the pulse of modern absurdities used to justify his comedic antics with: “The devil made me do it!” Using the devil as an excuse for human frailties was given more than a little traction at the beginning of the modern era by Martin Luther.)
Back at the Reformation, Fra Erasmus replied to Luther that knowledge of good and evil was not destiny; just as a scholar’s knowledge of planetary movements did not influence those motions. He further claimed that free will was a gift to humanity; the capacity to choose between good and evil and suffer the consequences; rewards or punishment. Erasmus also argued that there would be no need for God’s commandments (or man’s law) if men and women were not responsible for choices or behavior. Clear lines between church and state had yet to be drawn in the 16th Century.
Still, the arguments of Erasmus had obvious civic significance.
Verily, these arguments were made in a day when morality was a serious issue in the public square, not the quaint historical artifact it has become. Nonetheless, over time, the views of Erasmus prevailed even in the secular world. Today, all notions of individual accountability, law, and democracy itself are based on an accepted understanding of free will. Indeed, the act of voting in a democracy is free men and women, freely choosing – and living peacefully with the consequences. Voting is true choice.
Political assaults on free will today, like those of Rosen and Obama, are not as convincing as they are selective. The contemporary understanding of “choice” is an example. Choice will usually be invoked when one or more options are inconvenient, burdensome, or selfish. Marriage, children, birth control, abortion, sexual proclivities, and even racial identity are examples.
Conversely, politicized notions of choice, or options, are seldom invoked when it comes to matters like: substance abuse, welfare, minimum wages, union membership, quotas, hiring, immigration, grade inflation, graduation standards, criminality, and now spouses in the marketplace it seems. In these cases, choice is often denied. A drunk, an addict, a dropout, or now a woman with two jobs is thought to be impaired, like a disabled veteran, as if choice had nothing to do with personal or even national destinies.
Indeed, many traditional cultures in the European Union, stimulated by generous welfare, labor, and immigration policies, are being displaced by primitive avatars. The no-go zones of France and northern Europe are egregious symptoms. Liberal immigration policies can be a value added, but when it morphs into colonization, the effects are far from salutary. Again, voting is choosing. Democratic choice in Brussels may be excising the adjective “European” from the noun Union.
Personal choices too, in concert, have enormous consequences. The correlation between selective notions of free will and poor choice has not gone unnoticed by science.
Take the cumulative impact of no marriage, late marriage, birth control, abortion, and same sex unions among citizens of the free world.
As Dr. Charles Murray points out, such choices are not the conceits of a selfish elite or an oppressed underclass anymore; these choices in America are now made by largely white middle and blue collar classes. Individually, each of the above options might be defended as progressive choices, but collectively they amount to a kind of biological or cultural nihilism, if not national suicide. The worst collective choices are often made with innocuous personal motives. Free will does not warranty good choices.
As Erasmus might have said, individuals and nations are responsible for their choices, good or bad, nonetheless. Free will is destiny; consequence is the price of choice.
In spite of what empiricists, lobbyists, or presidents might claim; we are not controlled or compelled by gods, devils, natural forces, or economic circumstances. And we are not free because we reside in a place called democracy. We are free only if we believe in free will - not moral evasions or selfish notions of “choice.”
___________
This article (with hyperlink sources) appeared in the American Thinker and the New English Review on 1 May 2012.
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Friday, May 4, 2012
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Stick a Fork in it Newt!
The Best way to sound like you know what you’re talking about is to know what you’re talking about.” - anonymous
Newt Gingrich has done it again. He throws his hat into the ring, and before it hits the ground, he has his foot in his mouth - again. Hard to believe that a politician can have too much ego, but surely Gingrich is suffering from an embarrassment of glitches. What was he thinking over the weekend when he attacked Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), one of a few politicians, other than Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), who has the courage to argue for common sense and fiscal sanity? Indeed, Ryan and Coburn are two of the most sensible and civil politicians in America. Neither is running for President.
Between Newt and “The Donald,” the Republicans have the beginnings of a circular firing squad. Are there no Democrats to excoriate?
Gingrich announced his presidential bid and then in the same week squandered his Sunday morning pulpit launch by attacking potential friends and allies, using rhetoric more appropriate to the loopy left.
On Sunday, he called Ryan's economic proposals an example of "right-wing social engineering," and suggested they were an attempt to impose "radical change" on Americans.
Ryan is a radical, a social engineer? Hasn’t this been the rap against progressives? Now, if Gingrich is neither right nor left, neither “radical” nor “right-wing,” then he has positioned himself in the moderate middle, the median strip – like road kill. No surprise then that the first prominent Democrat to endorse Newt’s lunacy was Howard Dean, left-wing spokesman extraordinaire.
Rhetorical fusillade may be the only fair way to characterize reactions to the Gingrich remarks. One caller likened the former Speaker of the House to a kind of political Michael Jackson, best remembered for setting his hair on fire. Another wag pleaded for a “mulligan,” arguing that Gingrich hadn’t been on the stump for a while and should be allowed a stroke or two.
Mulligan? A mulligan is what you get when you hit the ball in the water or out of bounds. Gingrich wrapped his wedge around his partner’s neck. When you try to decapitate a member of your foursome; the penalty is game over, off the course, and out of the club. Put a fork in it Newt, you’re done.
There’s good news and bad news in the wake Newt’s gaffe on Meet the Press. For conservatives who may have been harboring any illusions, Gingrich has revealed himself to be a crass opportunist, one willing to throw colleagues under the bus. Yet the bad news is likely to be more pervasive. Liberals have been gifted a film clip that will make a devastating campaign ad. No amount of backtracking or insincere apologies will unring that bell. Barack Obama ought to send Gingrich a thank-you note and a box of golf balls.
---------------------------------------------
A version of this entry appeared in the 18/19 May 11 edition of American Thinker’s blog. The author also writes at G. Murphy Donovan.
Newt Gingrich has done it again. He throws his hat into the ring, and before it hits the ground, he has his foot in his mouth - again. Hard to believe that a politician can have too much ego, but surely Gingrich is suffering from an embarrassment of glitches. What was he thinking over the weekend when he attacked Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), one of a few politicians, other than Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), who has the courage to argue for common sense and fiscal sanity? Indeed, Ryan and Coburn are two of the most sensible and civil politicians in America. Neither is running for President.
Between Newt and “The Donald,” the Republicans have the beginnings of a circular firing squad. Are there no Democrats to excoriate?
Gingrich announced his presidential bid and then in the same week squandered his Sunday morning pulpit launch by attacking potential friends and allies, using rhetoric more appropriate to the loopy left.
On Sunday, he called Ryan's economic proposals an example of "right-wing social engineering," and suggested they were an attempt to impose "radical change" on Americans.
Ryan is a radical, a social engineer? Hasn’t this been the rap against progressives? Now, if Gingrich is neither right nor left, neither “radical” nor “right-wing,” then he has positioned himself in the moderate middle, the median strip – like road kill. No surprise then that the first prominent Democrat to endorse Newt’s lunacy was Howard Dean, left-wing spokesman extraordinaire.
Rhetorical fusillade may be the only fair way to characterize reactions to the Gingrich remarks. One caller likened the former Speaker of the House to a kind of political Michael Jackson, best remembered for setting his hair on fire. Another wag pleaded for a “mulligan,” arguing that Gingrich hadn’t been on the stump for a while and should be allowed a stroke or two.
Mulligan? A mulligan is what you get when you hit the ball in the water or out of bounds. Gingrich wrapped his wedge around his partner’s neck. When you try to decapitate a member of your foursome; the penalty is game over, off the course, and out of the club. Put a fork in it Newt, you’re done.
There’s good news and bad news in the wake Newt’s gaffe on Meet the Press. For conservatives who may have been harboring any illusions, Gingrich has revealed himself to be a crass opportunist, one willing to throw colleagues under the bus. Yet the bad news is likely to be more pervasive. Liberals have been gifted a film clip that will make a devastating campaign ad. No amount of backtracking or insincere apologies will unring that bell. Barack Obama ought to send Gingrich a thank-you note and a box of golf balls.
---------------------------------------------
A version of this entry appeared in the 18/19 May 11 edition of American Thinker’s blog. The author also writes at G. Murphy Donovan.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Odd Couple; Lara Logan and CBS
“He who allows oppression shares the crime.” - Erasmus
Lara Logan walked into a journalist’s worst nightmare. Instead of covering a story, she became the story. Such hazards are something of a tradition at CBS; Mike Wallace became the William Westmoreland story and Dan Rather became the George Bush story. Wallace had a nervous breakdown and Rather retired in disgrace. Unlike her predecessors, Ms. Logan’s problem wasn’t fabricated evidence; she was assigned to, or volunteered for, the wrong story in the wrong neighborhood. And as it turns out; she, 60 Minutes, and CBS were just as reckless as Wallace and Rather.
The stage was set by a spin cycle of politically correct talking points, in effect an Oval Office party line that a complicit media were quick to parrot. Demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt were represented as “peaceful and democratic,” never mind that neither country had any experience with democracy since the Roman republic. The peace rhetoric pretty much ignored the mayhem, killing, arson, and looting as long as it was done in the name of anti-regime sentiments.
Indeed, hypocrisy became comic opera when pyramid tour guides brought counter-revolutionary camels and horses to the fray in Tahrir Square. Tragically, some of the animals and their keepers were summarily executed on the spot, presumably in the name of democracy.
Nevertheless, in the space of a week, President Obama was pressing for “democratic” reform and Mrs. Clinton was holding the Cairo rioters up as a “model” for some undefined Arab utopia. Presumably, CBS executives, and possibly Ms. Logan herself, bought into this false narrative and wanted to be in Tahrir Square for the victory lap. Al Jazeera was the worst of the “revolutionary” shills, seldom broadcasting any footage that would challenge the anti-Mubarak narrative.
The drumbeat from most reporters, following al Jazeera’s lead, was to portray the demonstrators as peaceful, diverse, ecumenical, and enlightened. No anti-American or anti-Israeli sentiments were reported. The stage was set for tragedy when CBS allowed a slight blond American to mingle with a predominantly male, testosterone fueled, anti-Semitic and xenophobic mob in Tahrir Square. Indeed, Christiane Amanpour, Katie Couric, and Anderson Cooper had already experienced near misses. And if Christina Lamb’s research on the subject is to be believed, the photogenic Mr. Cooper was as likely to be buggered as any female reporter.
This is not to shoot the wounded or to suggest that the victim is to be blamed. Lara Logan, war correspondent, would be the last to think of herself as a victim; but, she was exploited nevertheless. She was undone by naiveté and high risk bravado - and these, CBS producers exploited in full measure.
Ms. Logan is as famous for her drop dead good looks and extramarital escapades as she was for her reporting. Indeed, there are numerous internet web sites dedicated to Lara’s secondary assets. Her journalistic colleagues broadcast “hotie” photos and Logan’s extra-marital exploits widely - and with relish. In short, you might say, as they did back in the day, she had a reputation.
Coverage of Lara Logan’s personal life, especially by Rolling Stone and Huffington Post reporters, was nothing short of salacious and predatory. Logan’s wedding was touted in one headline as a “shotgun” affair. An internet post by Matt Taibbis was entitled “Lara Logan, You Suck!” The girly men at Jann Wenner’s Chicago salon were incensed because Logan had dared to defend General Stanley McChrystal. Taibbis salted his attack on Lara with infantile bigotry; characterizing American soldiers in Afghanistan as “drunken assholes” and “insubordinate douche bags.”
CBS’s chief foreign affairs correspondent was savaged often and maliciously by colleagues, including Katie Couric, long before the Tahrir Square incident.
Surely, all of this is well enough for CBS ratings, but to send such a high profile, risky icon into a conservative, religiously intolerant, and misogynistic Arab hothouse approaches some unfathomed level of cultural ignorance and stupidity. Adultery can be a capital offense in dar al Islam.
Adulterers, especially females with celebrated indiscretions, are seen as prostitutes or worse in the world of Islam. No Arab male will be prosecuted for assaulting an American infidel, even one with press credentials. CBS executives had to know this; which probably explains network attempts to hide the Logan’s trauma from Egyptian authorities and the American public. A cowardly media mainstream is unlikely to seek justice for one of their own, especially a women. Treasured illusions about Muslim civility are too important to put at risk.
Lara Logan’s image was not the only risk factor. The near universal refusal of the professional left, the academy, and several American administrations to recognize or confront the golems of Islamic and Egyptian culture are part of the back story too. Many religious or cultural practices enable the abuse of women in Egypt and other Arab communities. These include, but are not limited to: vindictive fatwas, child marriage, honor killings, genital mutilation, amputations, stoning, purdah (burkas and hijabs), polygamy, consanguinity, slavery, and death penalties for adultery. Christina Lamb’s Afghan protégé characterized women under Islamic law as “insects in the dust.”
The silence of American feminists on institutionalized Arab misogyny is deafening. High profile American women like Madeline Albright (now at PEW Global Attitudes), Hilary Clinton, and now Michelle Obama, ladies who could make a difference, have yet to act against the systematic abuse of women among one fourth of the world’s population. Tongue tied feminists are co-conspirators with the “animals” of Tahrir Square.
World Health Organization (WHO) studies reveal that over 90% of Egyptian women have been abused by circumcision. Apologists regularly defend genital mutilations in Egypt as “cultural” practices, as if that matters to young girls, butchered to suppress their sexual pleasure. PEW and other polling agencies, that survey Egyptian and Arab attitudes, also document wide-spread support for terror, religious law, anti-Semitism, and political Islamism. How do these facts not influence the judgment of the Oval Office, the State Department, and the corporate offices of American news networks?
Sexually repressed cultures like those of the Arab League are unlikely to see a difference between liberated working girls and targets of opportunity. If just one of those 200 “peaceful,” democratized, internet savvy Arab males knew of Ms. Logan’s history; in their culture, she’s fair game. Islamic law does not distinguish between adulterers and whores. No Muslim male will ever be prosecuted for “raping” a woman who flaunts marital indiscretion. If Rachael Maddow (of Air America fame) ever covered a Muslim riot for MSNBC, her life might be forfeit under at least two Sharia statutes. The truth about the worst in Islam is ever a bitter pill.
And there’s a profound difference between courage and recklessness. CBS and 60 Minutes knew of Lara’s personal baggage and sent her into a howling mob of angry Arab males anyway. And Ms. Logan, having been warned at least once by the Egyptian officials, chose to put herself at risk again, among those she may have imprudently thought to be on “the right side of history.” She and CBS were tragically wrong about the risks of an irredentist Egyptian revolt and nearly fatally wrong about the personal perils of xenophobic, misogynist cultures.
CBS probably can’t be charged with sexual abuse, but someone should sue the suits for reckless endangerment. The American public should demand to know also how and why the men in the CBS support crew did not fight to protect Lara Logan from a gang assault. That story is one you may never see in Rolling Stone or on 60 Minutes.
Post-mortem commentary on the Logan affair is as shallow as earlier collegial attacks on her character. Most, like that in the Chicago Sun Times fall under the “s—t happens” school of journalism: “Women are victims because they are women.” Here Richard Roeper cites obscure and questionable (Egyptian) statistics about trivial harassment of women in buses and on Cairo streets:” Such analysis is pure bandwagon. CBS and NPR are worse still, still desperately trying to hang the Logan assault on Mubarak.
Lara Logan wasn’t assaulted because she was a vulnerable, attractive woman caught in a city of fanny pinchers. She was attacked for the same reasons that Daniel Pearl was beheaded. She was a journalist (aka spy), an American, and thought to be a Jew. For too many in the Islamist and Arab world, such credentials are presumptive evidence that merits vigilante justice.
The most distressing fallout of the Lara Logan saga lies ahead. The Obama/Clinton team is unlikely to change the party line about the Arab League; full speed ahead with revolution, consequences be damned. And American journalists, especially women, are unlikely to stop their suicidal rooting for Islamic monoculture. In all of this, politicians and pundits will fail to see the hazards of haste and cultural denial - where the enemy of our enemies will never be our friends.
-----------------------------------------------------
The author also writes at G. Murphy Donovan. This essay appeared in the 22 February 11 addition od American Thinker.
Lara Logan walked into a journalist’s worst nightmare. Instead of covering a story, she became the story. Such hazards are something of a tradition at CBS; Mike Wallace became the William Westmoreland story and Dan Rather became the George Bush story. Wallace had a nervous breakdown and Rather retired in disgrace. Unlike her predecessors, Ms. Logan’s problem wasn’t fabricated evidence; she was assigned to, or volunteered for, the wrong story in the wrong neighborhood. And as it turns out; she, 60 Minutes, and CBS were just as reckless as Wallace and Rather.
The stage was set by a spin cycle of politically correct talking points, in effect an Oval Office party line that a complicit media were quick to parrot. Demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt were represented as “peaceful and democratic,” never mind that neither country had any experience with democracy since the Roman republic. The peace rhetoric pretty much ignored the mayhem, killing, arson, and looting as long as it was done in the name of anti-regime sentiments.
Indeed, hypocrisy became comic opera when pyramid tour guides brought counter-revolutionary camels and horses to the fray in Tahrir Square. Tragically, some of the animals and their keepers were summarily executed on the spot, presumably in the name of democracy.
Nevertheless, in the space of a week, President Obama was pressing for “democratic” reform and Mrs. Clinton was holding the Cairo rioters up as a “model” for some undefined Arab utopia. Presumably, CBS executives, and possibly Ms. Logan herself, bought into this false narrative and wanted to be in Tahrir Square for the victory lap. Al Jazeera was the worst of the “revolutionary” shills, seldom broadcasting any footage that would challenge the anti-Mubarak narrative.
The drumbeat from most reporters, following al Jazeera’s lead, was to portray the demonstrators as peaceful, diverse, ecumenical, and enlightened. No anti-American or anti-Israeli sentiments were reported. The stage was set for tragedy when CBS allowed a slight blond American to mingle with a predominantly male, testosterone fueled, anti-Semitic and xenophobic mob in Tahrir Square. Indeed, Christiane Amanpour, Katie Couric, and Anderson Cooper had already experienced near misses. And if Christina Lamb’s research on the subject is to be believed, the photogenic Mr. Cooper was as likely to be buggered as any female reporter.
This is not to shoot the wounded or to suggest that the victim is to be blamed. Lara Logan, war correspondent, would be the last to think of herself as a victim; but, she was exploited nevertheless. She was undone by naiveté and high risk bravado - and these, CBS producers exploited in full measure.
Ms. Logan is as famous for her drop dead good looks and extramarital escapades as she was for her reporting. Indeed, there are numerous internet web sites dedicated to Lara’s secondary assets. Her journalistic colleagues broadcast “hotie” photos and Logan’s extra-marital exploits widely - and with relish. In short, you might say, as they did back in the day, she had a reputation.
Coverage of Lara Logan’s personal life, especially by Rolling Stone and Huffington Post reporters, was nothing short of salacious and predatory. Logan’s wedding was touted in one headline as a “shotgun” affair. An internet post by Matt Taibbis was entitled “Lara Logan, You Suck!” The girly men at Jann Wenner’s Chicago salon were incensed because Logan had dared to defend General Stanley McChrystal. Taibbis salted his attack on Lara with infantile bigotry; characterizing American soldiers in Afghanistan as “drunken assholes” and “insubordinate douche bags.”
CBS’s chief foreign affairs correspondent was savaged often and maliciously by colleagues, including Katie Couric, long before the Tahrir Square incident.
Surely, all of this is well enough for CBS ratings, but to send such a high profile, risky icon into a conservative, religiously intolerant, and misogynistic Arab hothouse approaches some unfathomed level of cultural ignorance and stupidity. Adultery can be a capital offense in dar al Islam.
Adulterers, especially females with celebrated indiscretions, are seen as prostitutes or worse in the world of Islam. No Arab male will be prosecuted for assaulting an American infidel, even one with press credentials. CBS executives had to know this; which probably explains network attempts to hide the Logan’s trauma from Egyptian authorities and the American public. A cowardly media mainstream is unlikely to seek justice for one of their own, especially a women. Treasured illusions about Muslim civility are too important to put at risk.
Lara Logan’s image was not the only risk factor. The near universal refusal of the professional left, the academy, and several American administrations to recognize or confront the golems of Islamic and Egyptian culture are part of the back story too. Many religious or cultural practices enable the abuse of women in Egypt and other Arab communities. These include, but are not limited to: vindictive fatwas, child marriage, honor killings, genital mutilation, amputations, stoning, purdah (burkas and hijabs), polygamy, consanguinity, slavery, and death penalties for adultery. Christina Lamb’s Afghan protégé characterized women under Islamic law as “insects in the dust.”
The silence of American feminists on institutionalized Arab misogyny is deafening. High profile American women like Madeline Albright (now at PEW Global Attitudes), Hilary Clinton, and now Michelle Obama, ladies who could make a difference, have yet to act against the systematic abuse of women among one fourth of the world’s population. Tongue tied feminists are co-conspirators with the “animals” of Tahrir Square.
World Health Organization (WHO) studies reveal that over 90% of Egyptian women have been abused by circumcision. Apologists regularly defend genital mutilations in Egypt as “cultural” practices, as if that matters to young girls, butchered to suppress their sexual pleasure. PEW and other polling agencies, that survey Egyptian and Arab attitudes, also document wide-spread support for terror, religious law, anti-Semitism, and political Islamism. How do these facts not influence the judgment of the Oval Office, the State Department, and the corporate offices of American news networks?
Sexually repressed cultures like those of the Arab League are unlikely to see a difference between liberated working girls and targets of opportunity. If just one of those 200 “peaceful,” democratized, internet savvy Arab males knew of Ms. Logan’s history; in their culture, she’s fair game. Islamic law does not distinguish between adulterers and whores. No Muslim male will ever be prosecuted for “raping” a woman who flaunts marital indiscretion. If Rachael Maddow (of Air America fame) ever covered a Muslim riot for MSNBC, her life might be forfeit under at least two Sharia statutes. The truth about the worst in Islam is ever a bitter pill.
And there’s a profound difference between courage and recklessness. CBS and 60 Minutes knew of Lara’s personal baggage and sent her into a howling mob of angry Arab males anyway. And Ms. Logan, having been warned at least once by the Egyptian officials, chose to put herself at risk again, among those she may have imprudently thought to be on “the right side of history.” She and CBS were tragically wrong about the risks of an irredentist Egyptian revolt and nearly fatally wrong about the personal perils of xenophobic, misogynist cultures.
CBS probably can’t be charged with sexual abuse, but someone should sue the suits for reckless endangerment. The American public should demand to know also how and why the men in the CBS support crew did not fight to protect Lara Logan from a gang assault. That story is one you may never see in Rolling Stone or on 60 Minutes.
Post-mortem commentary on the Logan affair is as shallow as earlier collegial attacks on her character. Most, like that in the Chicago Sun Times fall under the “s—t happens” school of journalism: “Women are victims because they are women.” Here Richard Roeper cites obscure and questionable (Egyptian) statistics about trivial harassment of women in buses and on Cairo streets:” Such analysis is pure bandwagon. CBS and NPR are worse still, still desperately trying to hang the Logan assault on Mubarak.
Lara Logan wasn’t assaulted because she was a vulnerable, attractive woman caught in a city of fanny pinchers. She was attacked for the same reasons that Daniel Pearl was beheaded. She was a journalist (aka spy), an American, and thought to be a Jew. For too many in the Islamist and Arab world, such credentials are presumptive evidence that merits vigilante justice.
The most distressing fallout of the Lara Logan saga lies ahead. The Obama/Clinton team is unlikely to change the party line about the Arab League; full speed ahead with revolution, consequences be damned. And American journalists, especially women, are unlikely to stop their suicidal rooting for Islamic monoculture. In all of this, politicians and pundits will fail to see the hazards of haste and cultural denial - where the enemy of our enemies will never be our friends.
-----------------------------------------------------
The author also writes at G. Murphy Donovan. This essay appeared in the 22 February 11 addition od American Thinker.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Applebaum; the buck stops with BP?
“Never confuse movement with action.” – Ernest Hemmingway
Frau Fraud
Almost every time you read an Applebaum column in the Washington Post, you will be reminded that the author is a conservative. Such clues are necessary because, unlike Charles Krauthammer, you would never know from reading Annie's copy. Applebaum is in danger of giving tokenism and affirmative action a bad name.
Indeed, Ms. Applebaum reads more like E.J. Dionne on a bad hair day. Take her recent contribution, "The oil spill isn't Obama's Katrina,"(Wash Post, 15 June) where she absolves the administration for the accident and its consequences. With such reasoning Ms. Applebaum qualifies for an "s--t (rhymes with twit) happens" tee shirt, or maybe a bumper sticker that reads; THE BUCK STOPS WITH BP.
More than a few facts are ignored or distorted in Ms. Applebaum’s argument. First, the accident wasn’t a spill; it was a blowout (aka leak). Second, Katrina was an "act of God," as lawyers are wont to say, and the blowout was man-made. Thirdly, if you give government, at any level, an excuse to do nothing - it will do nothing. A fourth feature of the problem, overlooked by Applebaum, is that federal restrictions in safe areas have pushed oil seekers to deeper waters where the hazards are greater.
Nonetheless, the Oval Office response to the Gulf disaster from the start was too little and way too late. The initial posture was "not our problem," and a storm of invective was hurled at the most visible industry culprit. In fact, there were several industries and a host of government culprits including the Minerals Management Service (MMS). When the MMS chief, Elizabeth Birnbaum, was fired; the President either did not know, or lied, about the firing to a room full of complicit journalists. If the government could do nothing, why fire the hapless Ms. Birnbaum?
Instead of marshaling every resource, foreign and domestic, to manage the damage, political and Press nitwits insisted on quibbling for two months about estimates of the "flow," as if they didn't know that precise flow could only be known once the flow was captured. Here we have a legitimate Katrina flashback. Remember those early Press casualty estimates; those 10,000 Katrina dead that never materialized?
The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a case study of a flawed model of governance. Like all liberal or socialist models, the internal contradictions are insurmountable. On the one hand, the statist argues for more government hands in every detail of life - until government fails; and then he blames everyone except the “managers” feeding at the public trough.
The knee jerk reaction of the Oval Office to the Gulf disaster was to point fingers and look backwards. Somehow, even after years in power, four if you count a Democrat Congress, the previous administration is still blamed for all of our ills. The "blame Bush" irredentism is a creepy echo of Communist era paranoia when totalitarian failures were laid at the feet of Imperialists and counter revolutionaries.
The excuse making of Ms. Applebaum and like minded apologists does nothing but resurrect all the original doubts about a politician who was thought to be a callow amateur; an inexperienced, empty suit with a good rap. The "community organizer" model is one that sees management as a public relations problem; i.e. you manage the crisis by controlling the spin.
The drilling embargo announced shortly after the blowout is illustrative. Before the explosion, the White House was for more drilling, after the accident, a moratorium was announced - natural disaster would now be compounded by economic suicide. Halting new drilling is like shooting the wounded. What's next, grounding every airline after the another crash?
Stephen Chu’s resume is another swirl in the spin cycle. The White House seeks to reassure a skeptical public by mentioning the Energy Secretary’s Nobel Prize at every opportunity. Mentioning Chu’s physics prize does nothing but illuminate his lack of experience as a crisis manager or drilling engineer. Dr. Chu’s prize is about as relevant to the Gulf problem as Mr. Obama’s prize was to world peace. Credentials may be necessary, but they are never sufficient.
Ms. Applebaum, like the White House, seems oblivious to the big picture; that is how to achieve energy independence and minimize risk. There are no risk free solutions and there are no silver bullets either; there are only painful trade offs. Most hobby horse technologies amount to expensive wishful thinking while proven solutions like nuclear power languish because of opposition from the left. The same “progressive” factions that oppose safe shallow water exploration and safe drilling on federal lands are also anti-nuclear.
So again the nation is in peril because politicians can not overcome ideological or obstructionist partisans. The true villains in the Gulf disaster are vacuums; a want of political leadership and a lack of legislative courage.
Anne Applebaum is correct about one thing; the Gulf oil blowout is not another hurricane; it's much worse by orders of magnitude. The White House and Congress are hurling charges about a "reckless" oil industry in the vain hope that nobody notices the public servants who continue to posture and dither at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is more dangerous to work on a drill rig or a deep sea fishing boat than it is to serve in combat. The risks and sacrifices of oil workers are seldom noted by politicians or industry critics. Death by fire is a horrible end.
Until the blowout, BP was one of the most successful companies of modern times. Would that public services of any sort be half as productive or competent. Big enterprises, like BP, create jobs and wealth; big government consumes wealth and often smothers enterprise. It is obscene for any politician to suggest that safety is not a constant concern of those who take the risks as a condition of their employment.
BP has lost half its market value since the accident; were governments to shrink comparably when they fail, taxpayers might be better served. The problem with our notion of “public servants” is that only half of the phrase is true.
Ms. Applebaum's brand of journalistic agnotology recently won a Pulitzer Prize, a tribute which should put to rest any doubts about her politics. Indeed, she and fellow laureate, Janet Cooke, now share the same pedestal and similar fantasies.
_______________________________
This article originally appeared in the 22 June 10 edition of Family Security Matters.
Frau Fraud
Almost every time you read an Applebaum column in the Washington Post, you will be reminded that the author is a conservative. Such clues are necessary because, unlike Charles Krauthammer, you would never know from reading Annie's copy. Applebaum is in danger of giving tokenism and affirmative action a bad name.
Indeed, Ms. Applebaum reads more like E.J. Dionne on a bad hair day. Take her recent contribution, "The oil spill isn't Obama's Katrina,"(Wash Post, 15 June) where she absolves the administration for the accident and its consequences. With such reasoning Ms. Applebaum qualifies for an "s--t (rhymes with twit) happens" tee shirt, or maybe a bumper sticker that reads; THE BUCK STOPS WITH BP.
More than a few facts are ignored or distorted in Ms. Applebaum’s argument. First, the accident wasn’t a spill; it was a blowout (aka leak). Second, Katrina was an "act of God," as lawyers are wont to say, and the blowout was man-made. Thirdly, if you give government, at any level, an excuse to do nothing - it will do nothing. A fourth feature of the problem, overlooked by Applebaum, is that federal restrictions in safe areas have pushed oil seekers to deeper waters where the hazards are greater.
Nonetheless, the Oval Office response to the Gulf disaster from the start was too little and way too late. The initial posture was "not our problem," and a storm of invective was hurled at the most visible industry culprit. In fact, there were several industries and a host of government culprits including the Minerals Management Service (MMS). When the MMS chief, Elizabeth Birnbaum, was fired; the President either did not know, or lied, about the firing to a room full of complicit journalists. If the government could do nothing, why fire the hapless Ms. Birnbaum?
Instead of marshaling every resource, foreign and domestic, to manage the damage, political and Press nitwits insisted on quibbling for two months about estimates of the "flow," as if they didn't know that precise flow could only be known once the flow was captured. Here we have a legitimate Katrina flashback. Remember those early Press casualty estimates; those 10,000 Katrina dead that never materialized?
The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a case study of a flawed model of governance. Like all liberal or socialist models, the internal contradictions are insurmountable. On the one hand, the statist argues for more government hands in every detail of life - until government fails; and then he blames everyone except the “managers” feeding at the public trough.
The knee jerk reaction of the Oval Office to the Gulf disaster was to point fingers and look backwards. Somehow, even after years in power, four if you count a Democrat Congress, the previous administration is still blamed for all of our ills. The "blame Bush" irredentism is a creepy echo of Communist era paranoia when totalitarian failures were laid at the feet of Imperialists and counter revolutionaries.
The excuse making of Ms. Applebaum and like minded apologists does nothing but resurrect all the original doubts about a politician who was thought to be a callow amateur; an inexperienced, empty suit with a good rap. The "community organizer" model is one that sees management as a public relations problem; i.e. you manage the crisis by controlling the spin.
The drilling embargo announced shortly after the blowout is illustrative. Before the explosion, the White House was for more drilling, after the accident, a moratorium was announced - natural disaster would now be compounded by economic suicide. Halting new drilling is like shooting the wounded. What's next, grounding every airline after the another crash?
Stephen Chu’s resume is another swirl in the spin cycle. The White House seeks to reassure a skeptical public by mentioning the Energy Secretary’s Nobel Prize at every opportunity. Mentioning Chu’s physics prize does nothing but illuminate his lack of experience as a crisis manager or drilling engineer. Dr. Chu’s prize is about as relevant to the Gulf problem as Mr. Obama’s prize was to world peace. Credentials may be necessary, but they are never sufficient.
Ms. Applebaum, like the White House, seems oblivious to the big picture; that is how to achieve energy independence and minimize risk. There are no risk free solutions and there are no silver bullets either; there are only painful trade offs. Most hobby horse technologies amount to expensive wishful thinking while proven solutions like nuclear power languish because of opposition from the left. The same “progressive” factions that oppose safe shallow water exploration and safe drilling on federal lands are also anti-nuclear.
So again the nation is in peril because politicians can not overcome ideological or obstructionist partisans. The true villains in the Gulf disaster are vacuums; a want of political leadership and a lack of legislative courage.
Anne Applebaum is correct about one thing; the Gulf oil blowout is not another hurricane; it's much worse by orders of magnitude. The White House and Congress are hurling charges about a "reckless" oil industry in the vain hope that nobody notices the public servants who continue to posture and dither at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is more dangerous to work on a drill rig or a deep sea fishing boat than it is to serve in combat. The risks and sacrifices of oil workers are seldom noted by politicians or industry critics. Death by fire is a horrible end.
Until the blowout, BP was one of the most successful companies of modern times. Would that public services of any sort be half as productive or competent. Big enterprises, like BP, create jobs and wealth; big government consumes wealth and often smothers enterprise. It is obscene for any politician to suggest that safety is not a constant concern of those who take the risks as a condition of their employment.
BP has lost half its market value since the accident; were governments to shrink comparably when they fail, taxpayers might be better served. The problem with our notion of “public servants” is that only half of the phrase is true.
Ms. Applebaum's brand of journalistic agnotology recently won a Pulitzer Prize, a tribute which should put to rest any doubts about her politics. Indeed, she and fellow laureate, Janet Cooke, now share the same pedestal and similar fantasies.
_______________________________
This article originally appeared in the 22 June 10 edition of Family Security Matters.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Op-Ed Immunities
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” – Sigmund Freud
Maureen Dowd and the New York Times (see "Boy, Oh Boy," 12 Sept 09) have made it official; Barack Obama has been granted ethnic immunity. Like Marion Barry, former mayor and now councilman in the District of Columbia, and Charles Rangel of the House Ways and Means Committee, any criticism of the president’s behavior might be dismissed as racism. Never mind that the president was raised by a white mother and abandoned by a black father. Never mind that he then enjoyed a privileged background which included the best prep school in Hawaii; followed by Ivy League undergraduate and graduate schools. Never mind that our first “black” president does not send his daughters to the self-segregating, all black, District of Columbia public schools. Never mind any of this; the new post-racial, bi-racial president is now just another victim of white racism.
Miss Dowd begins, as many such arguments do, with invective, an ad hominem attack. The purpose of name calling is to poison the well. Thus Joe Wilson (R-SC) is smeared at the outset as a “milquetoast” backbencher. Dowd goes on to say that she didn’t hear Wilson shout “you lie”, she heard him shout “you lie, boy” at the president. Like the thought police, Maureen now reads minds. Put aside, for the moment, Dowd’s vitriolic clairvoyance, which surely says more about her patronizing view of black men than it does about Wilson’s motives. More disturbing is her treatment of the facts. Surely, anyone who calls the president a liar on the floor of the House of Representatives can not possibly be a wimp. Just as surely, if the shout of “liar” could be heard by the President, Speaker Pelosi, and the entire nation, Wilson wasn’t speaking from the any literal or figurative “back bench”. Indeed, the most surprising part of the 9 September confrontation was that the shout of “liar” was only heard once.
If Wilson lacks tact, his candor more than compensates. This is more than we can say for Maureen’s hysterical reaction. She goes on in her column to use every snarky trick in the rhetorical playbook to impugn Representative Wilson’s integrity. We are told that he is a descendant of Confederates, a citizen of South Carolina, and similar innuendo or guilt by association attributed to conservative white males from south of the Mason Dixon. Between calling Obama a “boy” and savaging Wilson for being a southern “white male”, Dowd manages to validate many of the stereotypes about aging liberal spinsters; so much venom, so little time.
Yet, what Miss Dowd didn’t say is even more telling. She doesn’t say anything about the facts that might prove or disprove Wilson’s charge. He shouted “liar” at that point in Obama’s health care pitch where the president claims his bill would not cover illegals. A day or two later, House Democrats quickly inserted language in the healthcare draft to exclude illegals, in effect, giving more than a measure of truth to Wilson’s charges.
Dowd also ignores other distortions like cost, tort reform, and the impacts on Medicare and Medicaid. The most blatant mendacity she ignores might be Obama’s claim that a reordering of 20% of nation’s economy would not “add a dime to the deficit (sic).” Hearing all this, there are three possibilities; Obama is a liar, he is a fool, or he believes he is speaking to idiots. Most of the truth may lay behind door number three. Obama was addressing a joint session of Congress. P.J. O’Rourke has characterized that collective as a “Parliament of Whores”. In contrast, Miss Dowd labels the same forum as a “majestic chamber”. The space between these extremes is filled by opinion polls which now rate American politicians somewhere between the floor and dirt.
Indeed, former President Jimmy Carter has endorsed Dowd’s histrionics. Speaking to NBC’s Brian Williams on 15 September, Carter claimed that race was at the core of opposition to Obama. On the same day that Dowd’s piece appeared, Colbert King at the Washington Post flashed his race card too, capturing the moment with; “It’s all sweet music to the ears of Lee Harvey Oswald wanabees.” When the race card appears, it is often a symptom that someone is losing an argument.
Miss Dowd has made a cottage industry out of conservative cadavers; she has been dining out on the Bush family, in particular, for 20 years. When not conducting séances for the Times, Dowd and her Washington Post colleague, Sally Quinn, preside over Georgetown salons on the left bank of the Potomac. Indeed, if Helen Thomas is the dean of the White House Press Corps; Dowd has earned her giblets as doyenne of the Georgetown chapter of the Obama Girls.
Yet even self-anointed pom pom girls sometimes trip over their laces. Joe Wilson didn’t call the president a “boy”, Maureen Dowd did. In doing do, she resuscitated the original raps against the President – questions about his maturity and competence. Before coming to Washington, Obama had three bullets in his resume; two books about himself and a legislative record of voting “present” on any issue that might threaten his “political viability”. Using race to inoculate Obama against criticism isn’t doing the President any favors.
Indeed, the best advice for Dowd, her sycophants, and the New York Times appeared in the on-line commentary after her 12 September polemic; “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Grow up!”
Maureen Dowd and the New York Times (see "Boy, Oh Boy," 12 Sept 09) have made it official; Barack Obama has been granted ethnic immunity. Like Marion Barry, former mayor and now councilman in the District of Columbia, and Charles Rangel of the House Ways and Means Committee, any criticism of the president’s behavior might be dismissed as racism. Never mind that the president was raised by a white mother and abandoned by a black father. Never mind that he then enjoyed a privileged background which included the best prep school in Hawaii; followed by Ivy League undergraduate and graduate schools. Never mind that our first “black” president does not send his daughters to the self-segregating, all black, District of Columbia public schools. Never mind any of this; the new post-racial, bi-racial president is now just another victim of white racism.
Miss Dowd begins, as many such arguments do, with invective, an ad hominem attack. The purpose of name calling is to poison the well. Thus Joe Wilson (R-SC) is smeared at the outset as a “milquetoast” backbencher. Dowd goes on to say that she didn’t hear Wilson shout “you lie”, she heard him shout “you lie, boy” at the president. Like the thought police, Maureen now reads minds. Put aside, for the moment, Dowd’s vitriolic clairvoyance, which surely says more about her patronizing view of black men than it does about Wilson’s motives. More disturbing is her treatment of the facts. Surely, anyone who calls the president a liar on the floor of the House of Representatives can not possibly be a wimp. Just as surely, if the shout of “liar” could be heard by the President, Speaker Pelosi, and the entire nation, Wilson wasn’t speaking from the any literal or figurative “back bench”. Indeed, the most surprising part of the 9 September confrontation was that the shout of “liar” was only heard once.
If Wilson lacks tact, his candor more than compensates. This is more than we can say for Maureen’s hysterical reaction. She goes on in her column to use every snarky trick in the rhetorical playbook to impugn Representative Wilson’s integrity. We are told that he is a descendant of Confederates, a citizen of South Carolina, and similar innuendo or guilt by association attributed to conservative white males from south of the Mason Dixon. Between calling Obama a “boy” and savaging Wilson for being a southern “white male”, Dowd manages to validate many of the stereotypes about aging liberal spinsters; so much venom, so little time.
Yet, what Miss Dowd didn’t say is even more telling. She doesn’t say anything about the facts that might prove or disprove Wilson’s charge. He shouted “liar” at that point in Obama’s health care pitch where the president claims his bill would not cover illegals. A day or two later, House Democrats quickly inserted language in the healthcare draft to exclude illegals, in effect, giving more than a measure of truth to Wilson’s charges.
Dowd also ignores other distortions like cost, tort reform, and the impacts on Medicare and Medicaid. The most blatant mendacity she ignores might be Obama’s claim that a reordering of 20% of nation’s economy would not “add a dime to the deficit (sic).” Hearing all this, there are three possibilities; Obama is a liar, he is a fool, or he believes he is speaking to idiots. Most of the truth may lay behind door number three. Obama was addressing a joint session of Congress. P.J. O’Rourke has characterized that collective as a “Parliament of Whores”. In contrast, Miss Dowd labels the same forum as a “majestic chamber”. The space between these extremes is filled by opinion polls which now rate American politicians somewhere between the floor and dirt.
Indeed, former President Jimmy Carter has endorsed Dowd’s histrionics. Speaking to NBC’s Brian Williams on 15 September, Carter claimed that race was at the core of opposition to Obama. On the same day that Dowd’s piece appeared, Colbert King at the Washington Post flashed his race card too, capturing the moment with; “It’s all sweet music to the ears of Lee Harvey Oswald wanabees.” When the race card appears, it is often a symptom that someone is losing an argument.
Miss Dowd has made a cottage industry out of conservative cadavers; she has been dining out on the Bush family, in particular, for 20 years. When not conducting séances for the Times, Dowd and her Washington Post colleague, Sally Quinn, preside over Georgetown salons on the left bank of the Potomac. Indeed, if Helen Thomas is the dean of the White House Press Corps; Dowd has earned her giblets as doyenne of the Georgetown chapter of the Obama Girls.
Yet even self-anointed pom pom girls sometimes trip over their laces. Joe Wilson didn’t call the president a “boy”, Maureen Dowd did. In doing do, she resuscitated the original raps against the President – questions about his maturity and competence. Before coming to Washington, Obama had three bullets in his resume; two books about himself and a legislative record of voting “present” on any issue that might threaten his “political viability”. Using race to inoculate Obama against criticism isn’t doing the President any favors.
Indeed, the best advice for Dowd, her sycophants, and the New York Times appeared in the on-line commentary after her 12 September polemic; “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Grow up!”
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