Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Will No One Kick Thomas L. Friedman in the Cock?
It's bad enough for this multi-millionaire who married into a mall-development heiress's family to parade around as if he were some Everyman, but sentences such as this (in today's Times, behind their firewall):
It annoys me no end to read about how China is now more popular in Asia than America — China, which censors Google and has supported a Sudanese regime engaged in mass murder in Darfur.
are incredible. To put it in context, it is a parenthetical statement about what an Obama presidency could do to repair the image of the U.S. abroad. Friedman, partaking of the rhetorical strategy that defines him as King of All Self-Styled Moderate Wise Men, contrasts the world's righteous anger with our current leadership over Iraq, Kyoto and the like with another, illegitimate anger, such as blaming "us" for "their" problems. (He doesn't list these problems, nor does he mention who exactly "they" are--the wretched of the earth, bureaucrats in dictatorial regimes, educated Western Europeans, or whoever).
This is the guy who's supposed to represent the erudite, liberal wing of political thought. Someone theoretically in line with the Times' um, stereotyped readership of New York intellectuals (and I don't just mean "Jewish"). This is also the deliriously pro-globalization simplifier who refuses any candid acknowledgment that for free trade to work successfully, it must be backed up by extraordinary military power. Such as the kind that frequently makes the world hate "us" (e.e., Latin America, Southeast Asia or the Middle East). This is also the guy who can utter with little introspection such a breathlessly hubristic and frankly bitchy aside about China being "more popular" than us even though they censor the internet (we've never done anything like that, being civilized). Nor have we in our squeaky clean adherence to human rights violations done anything but condemn the Sudan in the harshest terms. Also, Guantanamo doesn't exist and we haven't killed 900,000 Iraqi civilians since 2003. But most importantly--our record on the Sudan is unimpeachable.
I mean, what a fuckhead. But this is the kind of commentary we should expect from people who criticized the dirty hippies for not rallying around the war when it started and whose half-hearted remorse for having been myopic, irrational and generally stupider than said dirty hippies betrays the complete lack of humane intellect at the core of their philosophies. So of course the Friedmans get to keep their jobs no matter how wrong they were on the signature issue of our era, and by doing so reinforce the imprimatur which the New York Times bestows upon liberalism itself, all so everyone who reads him and agrees can, despite the illogic and lack of compassion there, consider themselves good, progressive people.
It annoys me no end to read about how China is now more popular in Asia than America — China, which censors Google and has supported a Sudanese regime engaged in mass murder in Darfur.
are incredible. To put it in context, it is a parenthetical statement about what an Obama presidency could do to repair the image of the U.S. abroad. Friedman, partaking of the rhetorical strategy that defines him as King of All Self-Styled Moderate Wise Men, contrasts the world's righteous anger with our current leadership over Iraq, Kyoto and the like with another, illegitimate anger, such as blaming "us" for "their" problems. (He doesn't list these problems, nor does he mention who exactly "they" are--the wretched of the earth, bureaucrats in dictatorial regimes, educated Western Europeans, or whoever).
This is the guy who's supposed to represent the erudite, liberal wing of political thought. Someone theoretically in line with the Times' um, stereotyped readership of New York intellectuals (and I don't just mean "Jewish"). This is also the deliriously pro-globalization simplifier who refuses any candid acknowledgment that for free trade to work successfully, it must be backed up by extraordinary military power. Such as the kind that frequently makes the world hate "us" (e.e., Latin America, Southeast Asia or the Middle East). This is also the guy who can utter with little introspection such a breathlessly hubristic and frankly bitchy aside about China being "more popular" than us even though they censor the internet (we've never done anything like that, being civilized). Nor have we in our squeaky clean adherence to human rights violations done anything but condemn the Sudan in the harshest terms. Also, Guantanamo doesn't exist and we haven't killed 900,000 Iraqi civilians since 2003. But most importantly--our record on the Sudan is unimpeachable.
I mean, what a fuckhead. But this is the kind of commentary we should expect from people who criticized the dirty hippies for not rallying around the war when it started and whose half-hearted remorse for having been myopic, irrational and generally stupider than said dirty hippies betrays the complete lack of humane intellect at the core of their philosophies. So of course the Friedmans get to keep their jobs no matter how wrong they were on the signature issue of our era, and by doing so reinforce the imprimatur which the New York Times bestows upon liberalism itself, all so everyone who reads him and agrees can, despite the illogic and lack of compassion there, consider themselves good, progressive people.
Now Is Not the Time for Gun Control. It's the Time to Ban Late-Term Abortion!
What a fucked-up convergence of insanity. Students who wear t-shirts that say "Bong Hits for Jesus" can get suspended because as all reasonable people can infer, the right of free speech does not protect juvenile comedy that refers to the use of harmless controlled substances. But the Second Amendment must remain absolutely inviolate, even after the worst mass murder by a single gunman in U.S. history. And the Second Amendment must be defended from across the political spectrum, by no less a personage than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has urged for cooler heads to prevail on this utterly black-and-white issue. Thanks, you goddamn Mormon.
Guns are for assholes. They can be found clipped to the belts of people who think it's fun to intimidate and inflict death.
To argue otherwise is absurd. Go on Daily Kos, and you will see, among all the comments posted by self-proclaimed progressives, a real streak of pro-gun machismo. It is as if the trifecta of losing Democratic cultural issues (gays, guns and God) they have chosen a Clintonian strategy of triangulation by supporting all three, as long as the last one is watered-down into a huggy, nonsectarian contentlessness. It maintains equilibrium, and makes the Democratic party more palatable to Western state libertarians and the interior Northeast. Very principled. I hope more people get shot so we can pick up NY-24 and ID-01 in November 2008.
And of course, in keeping with the conservative "culture of life" (which apparently means anything childishly authoritarian, up to and including mass death) it's now been deemed crucial for the government to step in and contravene the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Let's not worry about signing statements or unauthorized surveillance of US citizens. The completely disproportionate attention paid to this one rare procedure by the cultural right is so fucking stupid. But now that they've gotten the one piece of red meat on abortion they're going to squeeze out of this hypercon Court, I hope they enjoy it. Because if the 5-4 majority goes any further in dismantling the right to privacy, it might just bury the Republican Party forever. They lose on the issues anyway, and it's only their financial advantage that keeps them in power. Now they don't even have that anymore. Honestly, I think this is the crest of their excesses in this domain.
Guns are for assholes. They can be found clipped to the belts of people who think it's fun to intimidate and inflict death.
To argue otherwise is absurd. Go on Daily Kos, and you will see, among all the comments posted by self-proclaimed progressives, a real streak of pro-gun machismo. It is as if the trifecta of losing Democratic cultural issues (gays, guns and God) they have chosen a Clintonian strategy of triangulation by supporting all three, as long as the last one is watered-down into a huggy, nonsectarian contentlessness. It maintains equilibrium, and makes the Democratic party more palatable to Western state libertarians and the interior Northeast. Very principled. I hope more people get shot so we can pick up NY-24 and ID-01 in November 2008.
And of course, in keeping with the conservative "culture of life" (which apparently means anything childishly authoritarian, up to and including mass death) it's now been deemed crucial for the government to step in and contravene the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Let's not worry about signing statements or unauthorized surveillance of US citizens. The completely disproportionate attention paid to this one rare procedure by the cultural right is so fucking stupid. But now that they've gotten the one piece of red meat on abortion they're going to squeeze out of this hypercon Court, I hope they enjoy it. Because if the 5-4 majority goes any further in dismantling the right to privacy, it might just bury the Republican Party forever. They lose on the issues anyway, and it's only their financial advantage that keeps them in power. Now they don't even have that anymore. Honestly, I think this is the crest of their excesses in this domain.
