In their typical over-the-top, screaming defensive style when anyone questions the One, the Obama team has overreached and probably not done themselves much good in rebutting Jerome Corsi’s book. I would join Peter and many others in positing that much of what is in Corsi’s book is wrong, sloppy or inaccurate — but the same is true of Obama’s rebuttal. There are many who have pointed this out. But why do this, rather than put out a finely tuned rebuttal and be done with it?
Part of the explanation is that the Obama camp feels compelled, I think, to attack, attack, and attack some more so that other, more respected journalists feel queasy and frankly intimidated. No need to explore the Bill Ayers relationship. No need to determine what grants Barack Obama approved as part of the Woods Fund. No need to look into his Illinois state senate voting records (where are those records?). Just move on. That’s the intent and may be the result of all the furious push-back.
While Yuval Levin has logic and history on his side in questioning whether the tactic makes sense, it has become accepted gospel in the Democratic Party that John Kerry lost the 2004 race because of the Swift Boaters. Obama’s team must therefore rage and protest.
But getting back to the facts, what is missing, of course, is much of any response to David Freddoso’s book. His description of Obama’s sharp-elbows style of politics, the entire reformer myth, Obama’s interaction with the Daley machine and his far-Left background seem worthy of the frenzied rebuttal treatment, right? Well, so far not really a peep. Perhaps the Obama team is hoping that Freddoso’s book will get lost in the shuffle, but their silence seems to suggest they won’t have such an easy time with a well-researched book by a credible journalist.
And once again it seems odd that there is no comparable analysis of Obama’s past relationships and affiliations coming from mainstream outlets. But, just as they were beaten and beaten badly by the National Enquirer on the John Edwards story, it may be that the newfound attention to Obama’s past will spur enterprising mainstream journalists to root around and begin examining Obama’s record in Illinois and past relationships. People might begin to ask: why are only these two books looking seriously into his record? People might begin to wonder if the mainstream press has essentially given up critically investigating any Democratic presidential candidate. Nah, they’ll never notice, right?
Deepak Chopra and President Obama: Twins separated at birth?
“No, let us, as the neoconservative bloggers on Commentary suggest, welcome the forces of zealotry and close out any possibility for the healing power of understanding.” From your post, you would have preferred that prayer language, right? Are you folks completely deranged? Do you think it would take me more than five seconds to find similar language in any number of prayers by George Bush? What do you pray for every morning – war? I think I just answered my own question.
By “the destructive forces of zealotry,” I assume that Obama was referring to the zealotry he whipped up among his followers? Rather surprising that he should pray against the destructive force of his own frankly messianic campaign.
For years I’ve listened to my academic colleagues warning ominously of the dangers of fanaticism–but they were only ever concerned with “zealotry” on the right, of course; if one didn’t know any better, listening to them, one would think that abortion clinics were being bombed everyday and every forest in America was filled to bursting with militias that were filled with guys named “Bubba Jesus” and painted crosses on their automatic weapons. Ironic that now the fanatics are those same academics, as well as the media and activist types who believe everything the lefty academics tell them.
Who will be the first to publish a study of the zealotry among academics for Obama, and the appalling abandonment of anything resembling a balanced and critical viewpoint? And what will happen to that person’s career?
#2
Straight up. There are no divisions between Jew and Muslim and Christian. There is only the fight between extremists and those who are not. The extremists always want blood. Make no mistake, the people who want to bomb Gaza are exactly the same sorts who fire rockets into Israel. Bloodlust is all they know and all they want.
#3
Allhotairallthetime,
Name one Obama “zealot” who’s killed in his name? Your hyperbole is laughable.
If you want to compare, here is Bush’s last address to the National Prayer Breakfast (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08020712.html) and here is Obama’s address from this morning (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/02/62414025/1).
Sounds like a response one hears during the interview segment of the Miss America Pageant.
It does not take a cryptographer, or even a linguist to translate this tripe. In Lib-speak a “zealot” is a person who disagrees with the party line. The “healing power of understanding” is the assembly of those who love libs and hate “zealots”. It is reasonably safe to assume that Winston and Chester are fluent in the language. C’mon guys, who are you trying to kid?
Hi Chester, thank you for that creative variation on my alias. It’s really well done.
Intrigued by your comment, I took the time to look up “zealot,” and this is the present definition of the term: “a person who is fanatical or uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.” One of the examples given is “a feminist zealot who spent most of her time campaigning for women’s rights.”
There is, you’ll note, no mention of murder. Apparently one does not have to kill in order to be a zealot. Who knew?! Wait a second…I did! I knew that. If I recall correctly, when I wrote about zealotry among academics, I was not referring to a bloodbath of professors marching out into the Red States and going on conservative killing sprees. Yes, if I recall, I was referring to something like their “fanatical or uncompromising” devotion to Obama. And let’s see…I just looked up “fanatical,” and it refers to single-mindedness, zeal, obsessiveness. Again, no mention of killing. Again, who knew?! Wait a second…I did! Again!
Ahithophel: Well done!
Ahithophel (re: #9)
Brilliant satire!
But probably much too subtle for the “Chesters” and the “Winstons” of the world.
#9
Commentary & CounterPunch, Birds of a Feather
I don’t know what’s more appalling. The amateur use of cliché after cliché or the sentimental tripe of Obama’s ideas. The notion that the “zealotry” of Osama Bin Laden and his followers is going to be magically disarmed by the bleating of the Unicorn-in-Chief is risible.
He apparently didn’t learn anything despite sitting in a black church for 20 years. Black preachers know how to express their ideas with originality, energy and force. Obama’s words are about as useful as a limp–
I think you know what I mean.
Sounds about right: Obama’s going to govern on a wing, a hope, and a prayer.
No wonder Cheney thinks another attack on the homeland is probable. I’ve got a standing bet with all of my progressive friends: $1,000 that says Obama does not get America through the next four years without a terror attack on our country or our country’s interests.
Lot’s of excuses, citing of statistics, probabilities, blaming Bush for inflaming the Muslim world. But, no takers.
Real zealotry defined, from Andrew Sullivan today:
“In contemporary America, the right is now in an almost parodic state of ideology. There isn’t just a rigid set of beliefs, indifferent to any time or place (e.g. tax cuts are right in a boom and a recession, in surplus and debt); it is supported by a full-fledged organization or “movement”; this “movement” generates journals and magazines and blogs designed fundamentally to buttress the cause; and the most salient distinction discussed in these circles is between those who are for the cause and those against it (with particular scorn for any dissidents). There is, for good measure, always an enemies list, to maintain morale: the dreaded libruls! New leaders emerge because small groups of the ideological intelligentsia select them on the grounds of their conformance with the ideology – Palin and Jindal spring to mind. Or previously rational figures have to convert to full obedience to the tenets of the new faith if they are to become proper “conservatives” – McCain, Romney, two otherwise capable figures turned into hollow shells by the need to kowtow to fanatics. The final phase of this ghastly cycle is the Limbaugh-Coulter phase, in which nothing is left of the conservative cat, except a preening narcissism-as-entertainment grin.
It is precisely this ideological calcification of a set of pragmatic policies for a specific time and place – Britain and America in the late 1970s – that has killed conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy. When a primary race is dedicated to reviving the image and memory of a president elected almost thirty years ago, and when a general election campaign gets reduced to crude, identity-based appeals to a single demographic, you know classical conservatism is indeed dead. “
I don’t know that Andrew Sullivan is considered a reliable source of information around here. It might save you quite a bit of typing next time to know that. Fortunately, his name appeared in the first line, sparing us the necessity of reading the rest of the Sullivan-based drivel.
CFB, thanks for immediately proving his point.
#16,—considered a reliable source of information around here.
Groupthink is characteristic of Zealotry
I’ll only need to change a few words in that thing to post it to a liberal website.
Obama’s next speech: “It’s nice to be nice.” Brilliant!
Inflicting Andrew Sullivan on readers here as a response to Greenwald’s gentle mockery of The One is disgustingly disproportionate, a kind of blog war crime. For shame, Winston!
“This is my president?”
Yes Abe, this is your president. I don’t see anything odd about what was said. Nothing out of the ordinary that any other president or elected official says about such stuff.
The “destructive forces of zealotry” referred to by Obama can be assumed to be directed at the global community. This wasn’t a reference to solely domestic centrifugal forces of “zealotry”. But that’s how contentionistas choose to interpret this statement. There is a lot of fanaticism around the world. This ideological, religous, nationalistic fanaticism is the source for almost all of the ills that have plagued humanity for millenia and are still ever present in our modern world. To be opposed to such destructive forces is a good thing. Do you disagree? Being a sound-minded centrist devoid of a concrete ideology; I like for my elected officials (dems & republicans) to use language such as this. This is how bridges are built with the opposition, other cultures and potentional adversaries. Bush or any other president could have said the same thing (literally the same sentence word for word) and it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. Why does this bother you? Seriously, I read so much of the stuff on this site – because I like the discussions and good converations (with some). Some of the posts are excellent and right on point, other stuff is too off the mark that it doesn’t merit legit review, and then there’s this petty quibble about a stupid prayer breakfast. You do better work discussing foreign policy.
Anyway, if you’re complaining about this – then I really don’t know what to say about your ability to objectively review an issue without inter-mingling your intense partisan position into everything that you write about.
For the record, I’m secular and have no religous affinity or beliefs. And yet, I have the same beliefs (prayer) that Obama does in regards to combating the forces of zealotry. Zealotry = ignorance. The mindset of the zealot is that of a simplistic plebe with a psychological profile that is dominated by fears, prejudices and hatred. That is not who I am. I’ve read your stuff, and this isn’t who you are either. So why the petty insults about this? There are so many other things that you can criticize this new administration about. This isn’t one of them.
Chester:
“Make no mistake, the people who want to bomb Gaza are exactly the same sorts who fire rockets into Israel.”
Of course, that is not mindless hyperbole. No, of course not. That is speaking truth to power. You, sir, are a parody of yourself, but you do not have enough self-awareness to know it.
I have no grave objection to what Obama said. I don’t think Abe did, either. He just called it “mush,” and suggested it was odd to have a President who deals in mushy prayers. It’s a mildly critical comment at most.
I read the account of the speech from USA Today; it wasn’t terrible, though it reminded me a little of “interfaith” services I’ve seen where some woman wearing three scarves and a power stone around her neck gets up and invokes “Thou creative spirit, She Who fills us all with light and compassion….”
I think most of us would agree that zealotry, insofar as it refers to an unthinking, prejudicial, even hateful condition, is a negative state of affairs. My only point was that Obama (I believe) has allowed and even encouraged a zealotry oriented toward himself, for the sake of his own personal advancement. I think he should have done more to discourage the messianization of “the One.”
SR – I really am convinced you mean well, but the notion that “zealotry… is the source for almost all of the ills that have plagued humanity for millenia” is daft. Lots of people have suffered and died for lots of reasons other than anyone’s zealotry, and, if you’ll allow me to butcher some Scots poetry, “many a woman gives forth in pain many a babe that ain’t worth ha’in’”: My personal estimate is that zealotry is responsible for a tiny fraction of the world’s “ills,” as compared, say, to the Seven Deadly Sins.
And frankly what’s wrong with zealotry per se? Zealous pursuit of justice, knowledge, enlightenment, success, etc., can be highly beneficial to the zealous individual as well as to larger society. I think there’s a better argument that forms of zealotry are at base responsible for all human progress. If you mean the term only to apply to belief systems and pursuits with which you happen to disagree, then you’re welcome to your preferences I suppose, and to pursuing and asserting them as zealously if hypocritically as you like, but in other societies, which only a zealous Post-Modern Eurocentrist would presume inferior to his own, zealotry is or has been greatly prized. Who are you to judge another’s mode of worship, his or her highest values and most fervent beliefs?
It’s ironic, and then again predictable, that this somatic President would be having so much trouble with “stimulus.” It’s as though he wants to spend $1 Trillion administering Prozac to every man, woman, and child, and call it shock therapy – which it would be in a way.
@ #25 -
Good points CK. Thanks for the perspective. I think though that we see eye to eye – more or less.
Abe:
Would you talk to your son, Glennn, over there at stalin.com please.
He’s got is panties all in a knot over Dick Cheney’s terror warnings.
Someone should install a metaphor-checker on Jon Favreau’s computer. For a gifted speechwriter, he sure puts out a lot of crap. It would help if he stopped trying to be creative and just used plain English.
Sounds like a religious version of Tom Friedman’s upscale MoDo superficialities.
Or that late announcer: “In a world….”
We need a separation of State & Sanctimony.
Ahithophel
“interfaith” services…where some woman wearing three scarves and a power stone around her neck gets up and invokes “Thou creative spirit, She Who fills us all with light and compassion….”
We must go to the same events!
Ahithophel:
Your # 3, with the emendations & penumbras of your #9, amount to an excellent thoughtful, clear explanation of so many zealous Obama supporters.
The word “zealot” applied to them, though spot on, does, it seems, turn them off & allow them to sidebar about “rightwing nuts” or some such robotic, uncivil appellation unworthy of the deep thinkers they pretend to be. They equate zealotry with “delusion” or “obsession” & they know that Obama’s ideas are real & encompass beauty, truth, & goodness. So let’s say (& I’m indebted to Dr. Paul McHugh here) that many of these Obamacons, leftist zealots have “overvalued ideas”, which, while not idiosyncratic, are self-dominating & are given great importance by intense emotional feeling over their significance & by evoking persistent behavior in their service.
I must dissent. Few Obamanauts have been at this game long enough to be credited with authentic zealotry. The worst have been engaged in pantomimes of zealotry: They’re fans, fashion victims, faddists, infatuated children experience puppy political love. Some few act like cultists, but the true zealots on the other side are hardcore leftist activists who have attached themselves to Obamamania because they believe it serves their purposes. They’ll pitch Obama over the side on the day they’ve concluded he’s no longer useful to them – as he would them. Otherwise, most were just having a good time, like citizens of “Steeler Nation” waving “terrible towels.” For a season it suited them to entertain larger ideas, to join their rooting interest to their political interests more enthusiastically than perhaps normally, but if the big O goes into a slump, they’ll forget they ever cared about his fortunes and switch to some other diversion.