Last week, the morning after President Obama's speech which we're not supposed to call a State of the Union though I'm really not sure why, CSPAN did not have its usual "Washington Journal" on at 7 am but instead Bill Bennett's morning radio show. I don't know why they did this other than perhaps to innoculate themselves for the fact that for some reason CSPAN did not run the Bobby Jindal Republican response to the speech the night before. Bennett, the guardian of American "moral values" - i.e., the chain-smoker while he was the Drug Czar and the one who might not have to parrot GOP talking points on the airwaves today were it not for a gambling addiction - was his usual tiresome though not altogether offensive self. What did stand my remaining two hairs up was some guest he had on (name escapes me), who is one of those people who claims he used to be a "liberal" but had an epiphany. I really hate those folks - and it really doesn't matter whether they say they've gone from left to right or vice versa (I knew plenty of the latter type in college). And the reason why is that when they say their views have changed, they are usually lying...but somehow by saying that they've "evolved" we're supposed to believe that they are somehow more thoughtful and credible. And it this instance, it's not hard to conclude the Bennett guest was lying.
The trigger of his "conversion" wasn't the fall of the Berlin Wall, the random Ayn Rand read, or a mugging at gunpoint by a black lesbian transgender illegal alien. He claimed it was the Clarence Thomas hearings. And his failure to accurately record the history speaks volumes as to his deceit.
First, he claimed that going into the hearings, all of the left wing including its usual media "pawns" were "lining up to exploit (Thomas) as a serial sexual harasser." Now lets throw some fresh spring water on the Wicked Witch: What were supposed to be the full Thomas hearings were OVER AND DONE WITH when the existence of Anita Hill came out. There was no discussion of sexual harassment either at the time Thomas was nominated or throughout the substantive hearings (as I have long argued, I thought he did not warrant confirmation for reasons completely unrelated to sex and entirely due to his command of the law or lack thereof - to say that an adult college graduate has never had a conversation on the subject of Roe v. Wade is imo perjurious, as much as anything). If Thomas' alleged misconduct were in any way on the table prior to the original hearings concluding, his nomination probably would have failed - if it had come out before the original hearings, it may have been pulled. But there was no orchestrated "drumbeat" to nail Thomas on his sexual conduct until way past 11 pm on the nomination's 24 hour clock.
Then the person through out the name of "Ted Kennedy" as "leader" of the "lynch mob." How convenient it is for someone who claims to have been a reasoned convert to one side of the fence from another by invoking the particular name of all those on Senate Judiciary which is most the scourge. Of course, Kennedy hardly participated at all in the Anita Hill portion of the hearings - a fact not at all subtly picked up by people like Arlen Specter. I recall Howard Metzenbaum being somewhat vigorous, and it was Paul Simon's office (not Kennedy's) most consistently linked to the leak of the Hill story to the press - which again, came after the hearings were presumed to be concluded with nary a mention of sex. Indeed, Kennedy's, er..."impotence" at the hearings (which wound up saving the nomination) helped create a groundswell of disdain for the fact that the Judiciary Committee considering these allegations was, without exception, all male.
Really, Mr. Bennett guest - stick to Ayn Rand or the Berlin Wall if you want to make the embodiment of your "seeing the light" somehow more solid than the Laffer Curve.
I saw "Medea Goes to Jail" last night. I had thought it would be more one of the those mindless "Big Momma" gag-promoters than a rather strange hybrid of inanity and (not lightly Christian-seasoned) morality. Of the latter (and those who know me are aware that, perhaps to a fault, I take religious-based lectures with more than a grain of salt), I nevertheless liked the point being driven home by the supporting role Minister-heroine type: "Forgiveness isn't for the person who wronged you. Forgiveness is for yourself." And I don't need a Biblical annotation to stand for that.
The Brahmin
Monday, March 2, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Yes, I can
My, my...it has really been that long since I posted.
What better today than to return to something (intended as being) thoughtful and world-oriented as opposed to selfish and introverted than today.
If anybody has read this with any sort of regularity they will no doubt snicker at the irony of my prognostication of the electoral prospects of he who is now the President. Aside from offering a cheery, "Touche", to the reader, let me just briefly offer my own explanation (which you can freely call, "spin") before moving on to other rantings:
1. I don't think anyone can seriously question that the sudden and total economic collapse of last fall seriously contributed to Obama's win...at a minimum, no way he wins that sort of electoral landslide (Indiana? North Carolina?) without it.
2. The grim prognosis I gave Obama was firmly premised in that somewhere, somehow, some way, the John McCain of 2000 would show up. Instead, we got Joe the Plumber. Instead, we got a nursing home patient wandering off the grounds after hours. Instead, we got "That One." My analysis was grounded in the premise that the Republicans would nominate a candidate both weaker in ideological appeal than Barry Goldwater and weaker in charismatic appeal than Alfred Landon...in other words, a GOP nominee as weak as, well, whoever it was who ran against Woodrow Wilson in 1916. Given the fact that my now-deceased father (briefly a Republican) wasn't even born then, I thought the odds were fairly certain that they wouldn't hand the election to us. And I don't think too many fair-minded Obamaistas had such a confidence.
3. Here is where I missed something about Obama, although judging from his slogan-filled, telegenia-driven primary campaign, I don't know how, not knowing the guy, I could have picked it up: He more than matched his style with substance. Both by coolly addressing the economic Pompeii in progress while McCain behaved like any other extra in a 1970's airline crash disaster movie, and in doing a remarkable job of reaching to every wing of his party to form a cabinet that can truly be composed of the "best and the brightest" - I could say that the only flaw in his textbook campaign was perhaps not giving us a blueprint of just such an administration conceptualized, but I suppose one can't really argue with results.
Yes, you did. Job well done. VERY well done. Go to it, Mr. President.
I was a very lucky person in 2008, where lousy American political soothsaying aside, I did a lot better than a lot of others did.
I went abroad twice - paying for it every step of the way. I saw unchartered territory in the wee north of the Hebrides and rediscovered comfort food in a bistro in Montparnasse. I discovered the hauting beauty outside the run from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh and the simple, afterthought elegance of an intercity run between two world famous capitals, passing through an engineering marvel in the process. The first voyage was a nod to independence, the second helped wonderfully cement a very promising relationship.
What's more, Antioch may yet live. A letter of intent was signed which apparently sets in motion Antioch College being forever rid of the offspring that became its parasite - Antioch University.
During the summer, I took to drafting for this blog my experience of an e-mail exchange I had with someone who could only be described as a "wingnut" who wrote a "dance on the grave" piece about my alma mater for the American Thinker. When I challenged him on the notion that his vibrating the light fantastic for ideological purposes obscured the reality that people who had worked for years at this very private institution were losing their jobs, he quite conveniently chose to "invoke" (using only quotation marks, not in fact sharing any authentication, such as a copy of an email or a scanned document) an alleged "message" he had gotten from a "25-year tenured professor" which referred to the College's students as "degenerates," among other things. Needless to say, the professor was not identified by name. I sent him one reply, choosing my words carefully as to the quote's authenticity, which engendered a somewhat defensive response from the columnist, but again, no identification of this source.
I came to thinking that having a tenure of 25 years at Antioch would take one back to the very time I was a student there. And given the college's small size and the fact that, undeniably, not many had stayed, I forwarded my exchange to two of the four who met this biographical criteria (by my count, of the remaining two, one of them served on a Faculty committee determined to fight closure in Court; the other stayed in Yellow Springs to work on the "Non Stop Liberal Arts Institute" in town, which, I daresay, would rule these out as being people who would badmouth the institution to an obviously hostile voice). Of the two who I forwarded the exchange to (both of whom I had studied under), the revealing dichotomy is this: One of them had moved on to another institution, landing on his feet as Chair of the Department of International Relations at a college not far from here; the other (somewhat akin to being in steerage on the Titanic and surviving) remained associated with Antioch University - possibly the only one. The former Antiochian responded categorically that he had never met or known the right wing columnist. To my chagrin, the one associated with Antioch University never responded.
Thus, I cannot rule out the possibility that maybe someone really did harbor such a cynical attitude about Antioch. Was it this individual who wound up latching onto the University in order to keep his job? Only he knows. But I can also not rule out the possibility that the University was orchestrating such comments and leaking them to obviously hostile sources to advance its own agenda. I share that vignette to underscore that Antioch College never should have created Antioch University (and I can say that with all due objectivity, since technically it is the "university" which issued my bachelors' degree), and will never survive as a part of it.
The Mets blew it again...and for good measure, the Jets managed to do quite much the same thing. I suppose I can never stop being loyal to the colors and uniform. But the Wilpons are quite another thing. I have no plans to go crawling over others to Citi Field next year. If Jeff W. can say that after signing Santana, they "underachieved," I can give that statement about as much credit as one would give to so many of those uttered by our (ahhhhhh!) former President.
This was good. I missed doing this. Look forward to writing more.
Yes, I can. :}
The Brahmin
What better today than to return to something (intended as being) thoughtful and world-oriented as opposed to selfish and introverted than today.
If anybody has read this with any sort of regularity they will no doubt snicker at the irony of my prognostication of the electoral prospects of he who is now the President. Aside from offering a cheery, "Touche", to the reader, let me just briefly offer my own explanation (which you can freely call, "spin") before moving on to other rantings:
1. I don't think anyone can seriously question that the sudden and total economic collapse of last fall seriously contributed to Obama's win...at a minimum, no way he wins that sort of electoral landslide (Indiana? North Carolina?) without it.
2. The grim prognosis I gave Obama was firmly premised in that somewhere, somehow, some way, the John McCain of 2000 would show up. Instead, we got Joe the Plumber. Instead, we got a nursing home patient wandering off the grounds after hours. Instead, we got "That One." My analysis was grounded in the premise that the Republicans would nominate a candidate both weaker in ideological appeal than Barry Goldwater and weaker in charismatic appeal than Alfred Landon...in other words, a GOP nominee as weak as, well, whoever it was who ran against Woodrow Wilson in 1916. Given the fact that my now-deceased father (briefly a Republican) wasn't even born then, I thought the odds were fairly certain that they wouldn't hand the election to us. And I don't think too many fair-minded Obamaistas had such a confidence.
3. Here is where I missed something about Obama, although judging from his slogan-filled, telegenia-driven primary campaign, I don't know how, not knowing the guy, I could have picked it up: He more than matched his style with substance. Both by coolly addressing the economic Pompeii in progress while McCain behaved like any other extra in a 1970's airline crash disaster movie, and in doing a remarkable job of reaching to every wing of his party to form a cabinet that can truly be composed of the "best and the brightest" - I could say that the only flaw in his textbook campaign was perhaps not giving us a blueprint of just such an administration conceptualized, but I suppose one can't really argue with results.
Yes, you did. Job well done. VERY well done. Go to it, Mr. President.
I was a very lucky person in 2008, where lousy American political soothsaying aside, I did a lot better than a lot of others did.
I went abroad twice - paying for it every step of the way. I saw unchartered territory in the wee north of the Hebrides and rediscovered comfort food in a bistro in Montparnasse. I discovered the hauting beauty outside the run from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh and the simple, afterthought elegance of an intercity run between two world famous capitals, passing through an engineering marvel in the process. The first voyage was a nod to independence, the second helped wonderfully cement a very promising relationship.
What's more, Antioch may yet live. A letter of intent was signed which apparently sets in motion Antioch College being forever rid of the offspring that became its parasite - Antioch University.
During the summer, I took to drafting for this blog my experience of an e-mail exchange I had with someone who could only be described as a "wingnut" who wrote a "dance on the grave" piece about my alma mater for the American Thinker. When I challenged him on the notion that his vibrating the light fantastic for ideological purposes obscured the reality that people who had worked for years at this very private institution were losing their jobs, he quite conveniently chose to "invoke" (using only quotation marks, not in fact sharing any authentication, such as a copy of an email or a scanned document) an alleged "message" he had gotten from a "25-year tenured professor" which referred to the College's students as "degenerates," among other things. Needless to say, the professor was not identified by name. I sent him one reply, choosing my words carefully as to the quote's authenticity, which engendered a somewhat defensive response from the columnist, but again, no identification of this source.
I came to thinking that having a tenure of 25 years at Antioch would take one back to the very time I was a student there. And given the college's small size and the fact that, undeniably, not many had stayed, I forwarded my exchange to two of the four who met this biographical criteria (by my count, of the remaining two, one of them served on a Faculty committee determined to fight closure in Court; the other stayed in Yellow Springs to work on the "Non Stop Liberal Arts Institute" in town, which, I daresay, would rule these out as being people who would badmouth the institution to an obviously hostile voice). Of the two who I forwarded the exchange to (both of whom I had studied under), the revealing dichotomy is this: One of them had moved on to another institution, landing on his feet as Chair of the Department of International Relations at a college not far from here; the other (somewhat akin to being in steerage on the Titanic and surviving) remained associated with Antioch University - possibly the only one. The former Antiochian responded categorically that he had never met or known the right wing columnist. To my chagrin, the one associated with Antioch University never responded.
Thus, I cannot rule out the possibility that maybe someone really did harbor such a cynical attitude about Antioch. Was it this individual who wound up latching onto the University in order to keep his job? Only he knows. But I can also not rule out the possibility that the University was orchestrating such comments and leaking them to obviously hostile sources to advance its own agenda. I share that vignette to underscore that Antioch College never should have created Antioch University (and I can say that with all due objectivity, since technically it is the "university" which issued my bachelors' degree), and will never survive as a part of it.
The Mets blew it again...and for good measure, the Jets managed to do quite much the same thing. I suppose I can never stop being loyal to the colors and uniform. But the Wilpons are quite another thing. I have no plans to go crawling over others to Citi Field next year. If Jeff W. can say that after signing Santana, they "underachieved," I can give that statement about as much credit as one would give to so many of those uttered by our (ahhhhhh!) former President.
This was good. I missed doing this. Look forward to writing more.
Yes, I can. :}
The Brahmin
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