Great Obama post

Over at Rachel Lucas. Heck, all her posts are great, and if I'd be honest I'd do little more than link to her and Kathy Shaidle all day, but I'm trying to show some restraint here, folks. Anyway, my favorite part from this post:

remember how much fun it was when Hillary was First Lady to call her names,
criticize everything about her (hair, face, clothes, ankles, size of butt,
voice, ideas, you name it)? How easy it was and how only some impotent feminists
cried foul? Well I hope you got it out of your system because you won’t be doing
the same to Michelle Obama when her husband gets elected, unless of course you
like being accused of racism.

The part where I disagree, though, comes here: "it makes no sense to me, because you’d think minorities would be less offended by Whitey treating them the same than by Whitey treating them like sensitive little children who can’t take their punches like everyone else." Come on, Rachel, you know that can't be true - if it were, affirmative action wouldn't even be an issue because black people would be too proud to accept it. We all know that certainly is not the case.

"Shared responsibility"

Hillary on mandatory universal health care, with the creepiest lines of last night's debate (and that's saying something):

"So I am adamantly in favor of universal health care. And that means everybody is covered. And we will have a system to make it affordable, but it will be required, as part of shared responsibility, under a new way of making sure that we don't leave anybody out and provide quality, affordable health care for everyone."

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

They say the Dems' use of children to defend their health program is emotional blackmail...

but the truth is, they just couldn't find anyone who was alive during Hillarycare to support its return.

The Wrong Way

What amuses me most about Hillary's baby bonus scheme is that, even for such blatant political bribery, it's too understated. Hillary should take a page from Duplessis. He never bribed voters - he outright threatened them! He told them, to their faces, that if they didn't vote for him he would make sure that no new road, bridge, or school ever got built in their town. And it worked! So, Hillary, as far as the nation's newborn go, should get less charitable and more Biblical. And the Republican candidate should promise, if elected, to make it his sworn goal to personally tase every single college student who didn't vote for him. After all, why simply mock their paranoia when you can also capitalize on it? Now that is my kind of politics.

I'm out, I'm out, thank the Lord, I'm out

Bigshot Harvard English professor Stephen Greenblatt recently gave an incredibly pompous and self-absorbed speech to undergraduates, extolling his own bravery as a writer (via ALDaily). I'm going to leave aside the arrogant cluelessness of teaching great writing by quoting extensively from your own works, as well as the gushing, schoolgirl account of being able to actually touch the hem of Bill Clinton's garment. Instead, I bring your attention to the very end of the speech, what is clearly meant as the surprising, shocking conclusion. Here is what this renowned Shakespeare scholar, who taught many of my friends, thinks is a daring example of risk, of taking a chance, of bravery. Here is the example through which he exhorts the students of Harvard to rebel against the establishment, to tap into the secret fears of our times, to make the jaded audience squirm guiltily in their seats:

"I go on in this vein for several long, unnerving pages. Only after I have fully mimed a voice of fear and hatred, do I turn in the direction that some of you may have anticipated. For, as you may have noticed, I have already begun to conjure up the situation of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. I have tried to do so in a way that enables me to suggest the play’s uneasy contemporary relevance, a sense at once fascinating and disagreeable that it is playing with fire. All my life I thought of the combustible material as anti-Semitism—or, to put the matter more carefully, Christianity’s Jewish problem. But the queasiness of Western cities no longer centers on the synagogue. It takes only a small substitution for the word 'synagogue' to tap into current fears: 'Go, Tubal, and meet me at our mosque. Go, good Tubal; at our mosque, Tubal.' "

I can picture the moment as if I were there (I have been, far too many times). Without a doubt, he paused, to let his breathtaking, courageous substitution sink in. Members of the audience gasped, then, composure regained, nodded knowingly - perhaps even applauded. Why, they suddenly realized, Muslims today are *just like* the Jews! And fear of Islam, well, it's the new, perhaps even more vicious anti-Semitism! Yes, I see now, yes! Oh, I hope the Professor doesn't get fired for daring to say it!

As the title says, I wasted a lot of money and a lot of years, but I'm finally out, thank God.

I guess I'm just too repressed, too cowardly, too blind to the truth, man. I guess I just couldn't handle playing with fire.

Hillary's Greatest Weapon

I usually stay away from talking about political strategy, because I don't know a thing about it. Still, humor me to forward a theory. I think the absolute greatest thing to happen to Hillary's chances is the candidacy of John Edwards. I used to think I was the only one who despised Edwards - I mean, I harbor for him a digust I've never felt for any other politician. But, as Hot Air proves today, I'm not alone. He's %100 pure sleazebag, and folks just can't stand the s.o.b. Why does this help Hillary? Well, lots of Republicans used to hate her. It used to be Anybody-but-Hillary. But now I think a lot of that energy has been taken up instead by Anybody-but-Edwards. I myself would much rather have Hillary than Edwards. At least I know she would have the balls to bomb something, even if it was only to distract us from the latest scandal. Anyway, that's the extent of my strategical insight into this matter, sorry for rambling!

Beware of Albanians Bearing Gifts?

Warning: I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about in this post. Never stopped me before!

A fun story about a hero's welcome for President Bush in Albania has been making the rounds the past couple of days. We are being told that Albania is another one of those former Soviet countries that has a special appreciation for the freedom America represents. Even more than that, we learn, Albanians are especially grateful to America for its aid in the Balkan wars. However, the story of the Balkans, and of Albania, is a great deal more complicated than the standard narrative would have you believe.

Did you know, for example, that ethnic Albanians are overwhelmingly Muslim? Do you remember that the recent Fort Dix terrorist plotters were ethnic Albanians? Did you know about Al Qaeda's longstanding presence in Albania? Islamic fundamentalism in Albania was almost entirely ignored during America's military intervention there, since it was years before 9/11. Today, however, I think it may be time to reconsider our involvement.

Here is a must-read article from a Canadian general who commanded UN troops in the Balkans, who argues that we fought for the wrong side. Key excerpt:

The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and
indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and
independent Kosovo.We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the
violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated
victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve
independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden
and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other
terrorist-supported independence movements around the world.

Julia Gorin has also written at length about the myths of Kosovo. This article ends with links to all her other articles on the subject. As she puts it, "we mistook for Nazis people who were fighting the Nazis' real heirs."

I frankly do not know what to make of all this, at least not with any certainty. All I am saying is that we should be careful about this outpouring of Albanian friendship, and President Bush should be very careful before declaring, as he has, that he supports Kosovo's independence (I was reminded of de Gaulle's infamous cry, "Vive le Quebec libre!").

There may be more here than meets the eye.

UPDATE: So it begins. HotAir has the video; I told you they couldn't be trusted!

Bono Update

I made fun of how Bill Clinton played to his audience of college kids by equating Bono with Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. This news is a few days old, but I'm very glad to see that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn't buy the hype.

The man attacking Harper in that article is Bob Geldof. You may remember him from the spectacularly successful Live Aid concert, which revitalized the African continent. As Geldof so astutely realized, the only thing holding back Africa's tremendous potential was a few unbalanced checkbooks - a situation he and his followers corrected with a graceful ease. Who could have known that sending a few million dollars to Africa's rulers would lead to such a sudden and miraculous turnaround? Today, of course, the nations Geldof helped are infinitely better off, living in peace and prosperity, outpacing much of Europe in rates of productivity and growth. Proving the cynics and skeptics wrong, a few million phone calls and a great big rock concert really were enough to change the face of a continent - indeed, of the world. Oh, wait.

You know, I probably shouldn't criticize Geldof too harshly. Compared to the hundreds of millions of African deaths caused by other mindless liberal fashion trends, Live Aid's relatively minor death toll may in fact be cause for celebration.

p.s. there is one huge factual error in that article about Geldof I linked to, so glaring that I am amazed that nobody at the Guardian caught it before publication. As every Harvard student knows, the Ukrainian famine was not a direct result of Stalinist policy, but a bad break in a tough year. I mean, duh.

Bill Clinton's speech: preliminary take

I'll be honest, I enjoyed his speech, even though it was almost all b.s. and he's so gosh-darned slick that it's impossible to take anything he says seriously anyway. I'll write about its substance at length when I have more time (busy all day with the folks and grad events and packing this week), but I did want to mention my favorite non-substantive parts. Clinton talked about the other serious speakers invited to class day (it's usually comedians, like Ali G or Will Ferrell, or this amazing, must-read Conan O'Brien speech), and singled out the following: Martin Luther King (who was killed that very spring, so his wife gave the speech), Mother Teresa, and (I swear I'm not making this up) .... Bono! I have to admit, I lost it, and kept on cracking up uncontrollably every time he came back to this (he did quite often) and repeated the MLK, Mother Teresa, and Bono line. I'm sorry, but Bono? The people behind me definitely thought I was nuts, but I couldn't help it, I kept on giggling every time he said Bono.

I also cracked up when he spoke of his world travels and used incredibly corny lines, like "In the African village I visited, they have a word, bobada, and it means 'that which connects us all'" or like "the villagers there don't say 'How are you?', they say 'I see you' - but do we really see each other?" These aren't verbatim, and I made up the african word he used (but it sounded something like that [UPDATE: It was ubuntu]), but are basically the lines he used. Then he told what should have been a very moving story about a woman who lost nine of her ten children in the tsunami, and how he saw her remaining child, and "it was the most beautiful baby I've ever seen." I'm sorry, but the way he said it, with all his squinting and over-the-top 'charisma', I was giggling like a schoolgirl. When he then told the story of meeting another African baby, and naming it 'Dawn,' because it represented hope, I was literally pinching myself to keep from guffawing.

Another classic moment: after his speech, the organizers brought out a saxophone and asked him to play it. He got mad. I mean, visibly angry. I was shocked. It was incredibly rude of the organizers to bring out a sax like that, after a serious speech, and expect him to act like a trained monkey and amuse the students, but still, I was expecting him to joke about it and refuse with a smile, but he really got pissed off for a moment there. Also, and I'll get to this when I cover the substance of his speech (short version: what we all have in common is far more important than what distinguishes us - I liked it since it reminded me of Flannery O'Connor's vision of all our virtues being burned away), but even though he got huge applause, his words clearly went in one ear and out the other, because the speakers almost immediately went back to the very attitude that his entire speech was against.

On a closing note, the best line of the day, from a student speaker, giving a very funny speech. He was talking about Love Story (set at Harvard) and how much it reminds him of his own life. "I, too, have cancer [the crowd goes quiet, very confused, concerned] . . . Not 'real' cancer, but cancer . . . for Harvard." Huge uncomfortable silence, everyone on stage behind him looked shocked and disgusted (except one friend of mine, who was cracking up). Anyway, in very poor taste, but I loved it, very Sarah Silverman-y (mature content and language warning there, btw).