Hitchens is in rare(fied) form today as he ventilates the integument of several of His Hopeychangeyness’s close acquaintance. Sample:
Liberal comment on Wright, and on the incredible damage that this conceited old fanatic has done to the Obama campaign, tends to dwell on the negative effect that black chauvinist rhetoric has on white working-class voters. Fair enough, I suppose. But why should a thinking black member of the working class want any truck with a Farrakhan fan or with a moral idiot who thinks that the drugs and disease in the black community are imposed by an outside conspiracy? I don’t need any condescending liberal to explain to me why black Americans are inclined to be touchy about the way their forebears were treated any more than I require a patronizing former Harvard law student to guide me through the anxieties of the gun-owning and hunting community. I can quite easily understand these points without pedagogic assistance. What I won’t be told is that Tawana Brawley was right, or that AIDS is the fault of the government, or that Jews were behind the slave trade, or that there is a secret Masonic code in the dollar bill. And the apologist for murder “Minister Farrakhan” and his big-mouth Christian friends flirt with this kind of half-baked garbage every day.
At the end of the piece he asks the question no MSM journalist will: how many of Obama’s ill-considered dalliances with truculent douchebags are the result not of his own convictions, but those of herself? Karl?
h/t Reynolds
RACIST!!! AND SEXIST!!!
/thor
Seriously, the timeline doesn’t fit all that well. Obama started going to TUCC before meeting his lady fair. Might have influenced officially joining, but he had plenty of other reasons to do so, as documented here at pw.
Teh SuXxOrious… Methinks there’s some Collins lyrics a coming – to Duran Duran’s Notorious…
I’m sure you have the original, does seem appropos…
No-no-Notorious. Notorious. Ah. No-no-Notorious.
I can’t read about it.
Burns the skin from your eyes.
I’ll do fine without it.
Here’s one you don’t compromise.
Lies come hard in disguise.
They need to fight it out.
Not wild about it.
Lay your seedy judgments.
Who says they’re part of our lives?
CHORUS
You own the money;
You control the witness.
I’ll leave you lonely.
Don’t monkey with my business.
You pay the prophets to justify your reasons.
I heard your promise, but I don’t believe it.
That’s why I’ve done it again. No-no-Notorious.
Girls will keep the secrets (uh)
So long as boys make a noise.
Fools run rings to break up.
Something they’ll never destroy.
Grand Notorious slam (bam).
And who really gives a damn for a flaky bandit?
Don’t ask me to bleed about it;
I need this blood to survive.
CHORUS
That’s why I’ve done it again. No-no-Notorious.
CHORUS
CHORUS
That’s why I’ve done it again. No. No.
That’s why I’ve done it again. No-no-Notorious.
That’s why I’ve done it again. No-no-Notorious.
No-no-Notorious. Yeah.
That’s why I’ve done it again. No-no-Notorious.
No-no-Notorious. Yeah.
That’s why I’ve done it again. No-no-Notorious.
No-no-Notorious…
Yeah, but was he trying to get into her . . . jodhpurs?
Oh, before MEETING fair Guinevere.
So, Hitchens reads Spengler. Who knew? And if he doesn’t, he should. He coulda been about 3 months ahead of the curve on this.
Somebody help me:
Why do people keep providing the caveat that of course Barack Obama doesn’t believe the wacky things his pastor says?
Remember Obama’s first reaction to Wright’s comments? That he didn’t find them to be all that controversial.
That’s not exactly the same as believing that the gubmint created the HIV virus to off black folks. But given the Left’s view of language, such conspiracy theories don’t need to be factual to be true.
People like Wright and Obama figure that it’s OK to engage in overheated, exaggerated, rhetoric, including uttering things that aren’t strictly factual, because The Narrative Must Be Served, and if the gubmint didn’t exactly create AIDS to exterminate Africans, they practically did, because look how they haven’t cured it yet and look how they won’t force Big Pharma to sell HIV drugs to Africa for $.03 a dose and look at how the Constitution defines a slave as 3/5 of a human being.
Fake but accurate, see.
So if you strapped Obama down to a dead-accurate lie detector and asked him if he believes that HIV is a government attempt at a Final Solution for the children of Africa, he’ll say “no” and the detector will confirm that it’s the truth.
But if you ask him if it’s essentially true, I think he’d have a harder time denying it.
People ask why he stayed in that church for 20 years, as if it were some kind of mystery. Duh, people.
He stayed because he didn’t have a problem with the rhetoric. It was the same Kool-Aid he and his wife drank in the Ivy League, so BLT is jake with him, as far as it goes.
Today, Tammy Bruce (sitting in for Laura Ingraham) came out and said that Barack Obama is a bad person. I’m afraid I have to agree with her. He has not comported himself as an honest man, and he doesn’t hang with good peeps.
There’s only one explanation for Junior.
Years of having his ears boxed.
dicentra so nails it. I think I’m bookmarking that comment.
The most recent polling tends to bear out that many people agree with dicentra, at least to the degree that the intuit some overlap of their views.
To me, Hitchens is the new HST, but less addled by LSD, and a lot more grounded in reality. As a very rare recovering leftist, he has taken to the facts of life as they exist in this world as a fish takes to water. Even when I completely disagree with him, I am always jealous of his “wordsmithing” style, and his unbelieveably dry and terribly funny sense of humor.
And as much as I just about love Anne Coulter, and think she can be an absolutely hilarious lampooner (fortunately, I graduated school before a “lampoon” couldn’t be reckonized for what it is, and became “hate speech”).
Hitchens is just as sharp as she is, but without the jagged edges. I think his barbs are often even sharper than hers, but in a more laconic way. He doesn’t come at your eyes, he sneaks around the corner that you’ve just passed. This is a guy I would love to spend an evening in a bar with. I have the feeling that my jaw and stomach would hurt for days from laughing too much.
And what could be better than to see him wield his finely honed Excalibur on any leftist with the hair to debate him on TV? When he leaves the stage, the other dais is covered in bloody ribbons. All the while being SO civil.
This man, love him or hate him, is about the only commentator I can think of who can turn a phrase as sharp tongued as HST, or should I say, before HST went over the cliff into full blown paranoia.
Hitchens certainly knows how to cut to the chase.
I hope someday to have half of his talent, wit, and style. But only about an eighth of his scotch.
You don’t like Obama because you can’t read him accurately, with the comfort and precision that comes from the vested interests that fuel his campaign. I confess that I have the same antipathy; he is apparently not one of our usual candidates with a transparent mandate.
So, Obama hung with a wild-eyed sect of the Black Church that decries America. As a potential leader of this country, he gets my props for embracing the fact that this nation is an unpleasant mix of competing interests. He gets bad marks for the poor political finessing and bailing he should have been doing.
OT -but…I just can’t believe this (well…yes I can. I just don’t want to)
I just heard Clinton say that the oil companies should pay the gas tax this summer. What a maroon!
Cool! So instead of making 6 – 8 cents agallon, they would be PAYING AT LEAST two to three times that to fill OUR gas tanks..
Another economic wizard! It’s gonna be much better for the economy when there is NO gas at ANY price, don’t ya think?
But it’s brilliant! Then they can blame it on that miscreant ChimpmokeyMcHitlerstupidfuckhead Bush for it! He is out to destroy this country and it’s freedoms!
It’s really starting to make me sad, instead of mad. It’s beginning to look like Orwell only missed by twenty five years, and that snowball and the gang are marching on DC right now.
Lost Dog: What bullshit. Do my nails, and you gotta deal.
I would just add this, dicentra. You make good points. But America is a big country, full of divergent views. Things may be all good and true in your neck, but a lot of your legitimate fellows are experiencing a profoundly different experience. No skin off yours.
Things may be all good and true in your neck, but a lot of your legitimate fellows are experiencing a profoundly different experience.
I know, I know. A lot of people are ducking sniper fire in Tuzla, USA, and they’re angry about it. They blame Bush.
And who’s to say they’re wrong? What is truth? Internal coherence is such a fascist standard, and don’t even talk to me about correspondence with some alleged reality.
Cynn, you’re out of your league.
cynn,
“…he gets my props for embracing the fact that this nation is an unpleasant mix of competing interests.”
Let me fix that for you.
“…the fact that this nation is an unpleasant mix of competing ideas – and it needs to be STOPPED! RIGHT THE FUCK NOW! BECAUSE WE ARE LOSING OUR BUTTS IN THE ARENA OF IDEAS!”
There. That’s better. We really need someone who is going to pull out his sword and yell: “This is the way it is going to be, you stupid idiots! But I’m saying this ina nice way” Yup. Sounds pretty intelligent to me.
I like many of your posts, but sometimes I hate the fact that you, and way too many others, appear to have no knowledge of the constitution, or the story of the founding fathers and what political courage and genius the constitution represents. And let’s not forget the freedoms that this genuis guarantees to EVERY ONE. The Constitution was written to GUARANTEE that ideas would ALWAYS compete freely (“freely”: – Derived from “Freedom”). Unfortunately, we have some people who haven’t been able to win at the ballot box, so they have poisoned this country’s conversation with with outright (and outrageous) lies, and a promise to throw open the doors to Alladin’s treasure, for all to gorge until they are ready to explode.
And about half this country thinks that’s just a dandy idea. Especially an overwhelming proportion of the people who’s job it is to keep you informed – i.e. – the media.
Responsibility for our own lives? Nah! O will take care of us.
Responsibility for your family? Nah! O will take care of them.
Responsibility to individually uphold the constitution? Nah! We don’t even have to know what it says (or means), because “those who care”, like I do, will tell me.
Idiots all.
Here’s my question to you: “Who decides who may talk, and who may not? You? Me? Charles Manson? Arianna Huffington? Pat Robertson.” If you open your eyes, you will see that the ONLY people who are trying to supress free speech in this country are those on the left. And they do it viciously most of yhre timeThey are scared shitless that someone might hear another point of view.
That’s a deadly serious question, cynn. I’m not kidding. You not only are not protecting your liberty, You are DYING TO GIVE IT AWAY. Who decides when free speech needs to have more bites taken out of it than already have been? Or how many bites do we get before we decide to throw it over the side completely? When you are walking on thin ice, you don’t plop down a chair and point a hair dryer at the ice to see ow long ir will be before it dumps you into the drink.
Jeebus. I wish people who think Obama is the cat’s meow would stop trying to nail everybody’s feet to the floor. It hasn’t occurred to you yet that you are putting nails through your own feet, too, has it? With your own personal hammer. The world is an ugly place, and here comes Barack, telling us that we live on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
The pied piper, eh?
Unfortunate, I would have to say.
Cynn,
“Lost Dog: What bullshit. Do my nails, and you gotta deal.”
I couldn’t have proved my point any better than you have.
But I don’t have to do your nails!
Obama is first going to mandate a full cupboard for me and my family and a new Cadillac (Re: Obama’s wife says so), and then HE is coming to your house to do your nails! That’s the way it will be! I can’t wait!
Please don’t take this as a flame, but you need to read up on history a little bit more. Obama has been around before under many different names, and he’s back again.
I really do like a lot of your posts and I think we could get along more than passably, but Obama is one scary dude (I hate to keep referring to “the flea thing”, but I don’t think you have assimilated the meaning yet).
Nothing personal, I just happen to think that anyone one who has a two word vocabulary (hopey, changey – and I can’t remember who said this first, but it is right on the money!) probably is not yet ready to be President of The United States Of America. Our enemies are NOT just waiting for us to be “nice”. Well, maybe they are, but only because then they can kick our asses. I don’t know if you are old enough to remember Jimmuh Carter (but, from your comments, I doubt it), but the whole world was laughing at us for being so “nice”. The Iranians couldn’t believe that Carter came to them on his (our) knees, instead of wiping out half of their country. That’s what they expected.
They are still laughing down our sleeves at us, and taking their cue on A-bombs from a man who was not qualified to be persident, and has to keep proving it, over and over, year after year. Jimmuh is a menace.
But then again, I am old enough to remember when we didn’t live on the “Big Rock Candy Mountain”, and Americans understood the ever changing dangers of the REAL world.
“Big Rock Candy Mountain”! (Guffaw), BTW, is a song you probably don’t even know, and was written for hobos many years before even I was born, and is a Marxist song all the way..
You and Obama would make a great couple, but he knows exactly what he is doing, and you don’t seem to have any clue. But I give you ground here, because you don’t appear to know anytyhing about history, as most “hopey changeys” don’t either, so you get a pass.
If I could only convince you to go read some history books at the library, I might even actually do your nails – if I can get there before Obama. He has a private jet and limos, while I only have a 1990 Volvo. I think he might beat me there!
But I guess that will never be allowed to happen, because “that’s not fair!” Because Obama has already said that he will do your nails (if only implicitly), which means that, after your nails are done, history will always mean very little to you. Beyond a combination of sounds that come out of your mouth when you say “Fuck history! Nothin’ there for me!”
Nothing personal, cynn. You just happened to be the one who got into my sights tonight. This really isn’t personal, but.. sometimes hopey changeys just light my jets.
And, honestly. That “come together” stuff is meant for sex, not your life. It is an absolutely wonderful fantasy, but that’s all it is. If you don’t believe me, go live in a commune for a while. There are three people that take care of business, and the rest sit around smoking pot, asking: “Where’s my dinner?”
I have been around the block a few times, and it is too obvious that Obama is a fantasy that would rob us of many of the freedoms we have left.
Sorry. Honest. Nothing personal.
Somebody help me:
#6
Why do people keep providing the caveat that of course Barack Obama doesn’t believe the wacky things his pastor says?
Thor will be along to tell you.
But America is a big country, full of divergent views. Things may be all good and true in your neck, but a lot of your legitimate fellows are experiencing a profoundly different experience.
Here’s a thought – some of us DON’T live in a lollipop world but still don’t want Mr. HopeChangey. I missed the boom of the 90’s and never got paid off financially for my devotion to the Republican party. Yet … I’m still not a Democrat. I’m supposed to be clinging to my gun and bible, but again the liberals are just clueless.
… a lot of your legitimate fellows are experiencing a profoundly different experience.
Seriously, Carin, theft is fine if you are having a profound experience.
You are many times judged by the company you keep. Obama thought he’d get a pass on the company he kept, because he’s a black liberal democrat. He was wrong.
But America is a big country, full of divergent views. Things may be all good and true in your neck, but a lot of your legitimate fellows are experiencing a profoundly different experience.
I understand, Carin, that the country is full of “divergent views.” What I don’t accept is that views = realities. Having a different view doesn’t give you license to say that the government invented AIDS to wipe out African Americans. You are certainly entitled to a different view about government efforts to stop the spread of AIDS in the black community, but you don’t get to just make shit up.
Yeah, well Cowboy, you got evidence that the gubmint didn’t create HIV? Huh? Where is it then?
See, the reason you can’t find any is that they didn’t keep any records and then burned them all.
Things may be all good and true in your neck, but a lot of your legitimate fellows are experiencing a profoundly different experience.
Wow, that’s amazing how you were able to look right into my soul! Because I should really be chagrined that I would dare to think that my troubles are on some kind of par with those of Barack Obama’s, given that he went to Harvard and I only went to Cornell.
Because only the people who suffer from poverty and bigotry are authentic people. The rest of us, who might struggle with other kinds of pain, don’t know jack squat about what’s what in this world.
Seeing as how White Privilege shields you from illnesses (physical and mental), loss, death, layoffs, abuse, financial troubles, social rejection, and government oppression.
Got it.
I understand, Carin, that the country is full of “divergent views.†What I don’t accept is that views = realities. Having a different view doesn’t give you license to say that the government invented AIDS to wipe out African Americans. You are certainly entitled to a different view about government efforts to stop the spread of AIDS in the black community, but you don’t get to just make shit up.
Cowboy – I think you missed my point. I was quoting Cynn ( I think?) , and was assuming that she wasn’t referring to the wackjob opinions of Wright. What I am rejecting is the idea that my voting pattern signals how I’m doing financially or otherwise. That conservatives are voting TODAY for preserving some sort of status quo- ironic, huh?!? -of privilege. Cynn seems to think that Mr. HopeyChangy is the only solution for those not doing well in today’s society. I disagree.