The evidence builds that the McCain camp badly botched Sarah Palin’s rollout. That said, the savage media treatment helped create the conservative backlash which will, the McCain team hopes, boost the base’s turnout. Lesson for future VP’s: don’t let the campaign staffer know-it-all’s control your fate.
If you were an undecided voter, would it make you more inclined to vote for Barack Obama if you were told you were hung up on race? On the other hand, I find it hard to believe anyone pays much attention to Joe Biden.
Well, if you ever need someone to send a poison-pen letter, John Dowd is the fellow. His nastygram to the Gray Lady about its pathetic story on Cindy McCain (don’t take my word — ask Salon’s Glenn Greenwald) really is a thing to behold. (h/t Mark Hemmingway)
To conclude this of Barack Obama–”his instincts are conservative—he is a churchgoing, Christian family man”–you’d have to ignore the church he was going to, his entire voting history, a slew of professional and personal relationships and over a year of rhetoric from his primary campaign. That suggests either denial or deep cynicism about the life Obama has lived.
Does McCain have some of the worst spokespeople ever?
About Joe the Plumber: “When we saw a middle-class guy, a common tradesman, who can articulate conservative values and principles off-the-cuff, without being intimidated by the awe-inspiring presence of the world’s most powerful man, we smelled a rat,” the [Obama campaign] source said. “Not to mention the fact that he’s living in one of those middle states where there’s no chance of him meeting the kind of intellectuals who could train him to speak intelligibly.” Ok, that’s from ScrappleFace. But it’s a sadly accurate take from inside the NY-DC corridor.
Not exactly “I am Spartacus! ” But it’s a trend. The MSM plays dumb — they are playing, right?
Instead of more dreary media conference calls with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, maybe the McCain camp should put on Stephen Moore and Joe the Plumber.
Sam Schulman names some names among eastern conservative pundits and concludes: “All share a dreadful secret–their writing is driven by an anxiety to be tastemakers to the gentry, not merely thinkers and entertainers. There is nothing more anxious-making than striving to create taste for the classes, not masses, or even to keep up with it. (The struggle to do so is etched in the lines of Tina Brown’s face.) But what the classes think is a matter to which the GOP standard-bearers are sadly but nobly indifferent.”
I have a different take: like Edna St. Vincent Millay (“I love humanity but hate people”), there is a class of pundits who love conservatism but hate conservatives.
And no, I don’t think the issue for Sarah Palin and others is just finding a better pundit to listen to. If you’re an elected conservative with high approval ratings, you already know more than just about any pundit–at least when it comes to winning elections and governance. If you want to know about successful conservatism go ask Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, or even Rudy Giuliani, not the “house conservative” at an MSM newspaper.
Jeffrey Goldberg tells you about everything you ever imagined was wrong with airport security. Unless there’s an ocean, the answer seems to be: just drive.
Nebraska has better judgment than Obama. But you already knew that.
When you see a headline reading “Polls in 8 countries show wide Obama support,” do you wonder if ACORN has overseas offices?
The New York Times, as always, working for a One-World Collective.
Purdy is looking back to a pre 9/11 world, not forward.
I always skim the Times in order to see what’s the latest worry/fad of the Left. In the course of doing so, one has to endure the nauseating adulation of whatever/whoever is their favorite cause/person of the day.
The unfailingly nasty and snooty “interviews” by Deborah Solomon in the Sunday Magazine epitomize what’s wrong with the Times. Today she attacks Dambisa Moyo for the heresy of questioning the — dare I use the word? — stimulus/aid programs that Bono and other celebs have inflicted on Africa. Ms. Moyo has the temerity to compare the poverty in China to that in Africa, and to note that no one either feels sorry for the Chinese or sends China “aid.”
Even though Solomon has the advantage — like all things NY Times, the interviews are fixed (“Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Deborah Solomon”) — many of the non-Lefties she interviews put her in her place. Predictably, Solomon simply worships her Leftist interviewees.
What is this thing called the “New York Times” that everyone is referring to?
Ritchie
Wish I’d said that (your #4). Oh but I will, soon & for the rest of my life!
Gird # 3
A note to a friend who treats me with some (complete?) disdain because I have given up wasting my time on the NYT:
For the umpteenth time, here’s why I don’t buy the NYT, on paper or on the web [this was before the change].
First, I don’t want to add to its declining revenues.
Second, as someone has said: The NYT has become something I never bother to read unless I accidentally delete my talking points email from the DNC that morning.
Third, the NYT has become ridiculous both in its ideological approach to “news” & its unprofessional editing.
Fourth & more important, most important, I don’t want to keep wasting my time unlearning via blog corrections what I was hoping to have learned from the Grey Lady. I keep telling you that it makes more sense to surf the web first & see what the NYT thought was important & which facts about such important matter were ideologically slanted or just plain wrongly presented. And the ‘net will also alert me to the NYT’s few worthwhile articles such as the one on the Black Left Tackle from Mississippi.
Note, I’m not talking about mere opinions on the ‘net re the NYT, I’m talking about facts. You do realize from Logic 101, what happened happened & what did not happen did not happen. And yet you still read & cite factually-impaired NYT articles with their faux science, faux stats & faux Republicans (the head of the local Planned Parenthood or Teachers’ Union, who never gives that identity & claims his/her family has voted Republican since Fremont but would not vote republican in 2008 because of BushHitlerMcChimpy).
When it comes time for political reporting, for Bush bashing, the NYT’s reporters say: “Sometimes a story or a juicy quote is just too good to authenticate!” As someone put it: “The NYT; We Decide. You Want Reporting? Try A Blog.” To which I’d add: “You want fact checking? Try a Blog with commenters.” Any good one, such as this, will attract commenters who have some knowledge, even expertise in a particular subject who are not afraid to take on the host & other commenters for what they see as faux facts & faux stats.
And yes, I’m willing to spend a few minutes on an evocative NYT article on Inwood or [our alma ma], all the while knowing that I’ll have to be aware of the inevitable incorrect political spin & faulty economics. And your snarky comment that this article is “not political”, it’s a rare NYT article which is not politicized, or haven’t you noticed? For instance, many banal articles on Inwood wind up with a would-be deep-think riff about poverty which can or should be conquered by socialism. Let it rest, unaddressed, as Cole Porter would say.
And BTW, note the correction already appended by the NYT to the article you sent on [our alma ma]. Even if it had no editor from our beloved alma ma, any editor, even one from Dubuque, should be struck by the incongruity in the article & at least question it before it was printed. It’s like the NYT mistake about the Broadway No 2 IRT train which they thought was slated to run down 2nd Ave whenever that subway gets built or the ones where it mixes up my Inwood with Inwood L.I.
And don’t tell me that “in fairness” it printed a correction here. It never does when the mistake involves more cosmic matters such as deep hatred of Bush rather than an inconsequential mistake like this one.
Today on “As the Stomach Turns”: The New York Times death watch continues. Tune in to find out How much Pinch is losing per month (and we’re not talkin’ weight) as the Comptroller’s sexual harassment charges become all the news that’s fit to print. Learn what last week’s lunch with George Soros was all about and whether George will (not that George Will) finally consummates his relations with that organ of democracy the Times, which just happen to be achangin’ more than Pinch would like. Get the latest in New York Times water cooler gossip (unfortunately the chatter sounds more like real news than anything you’ll find on the pages of the paper). Find out if The One will finally step in to rescue Pinch in repayment for all the free publicity on 08? Only David Axelrod knows for sure. Will Conrad Black be pardoned as a sop to the Right in preparation for the big-Times bail-out? Only Barbara Amiel knows for sure. Will Mark Steyn return to the paper with an un-bowdlerized op-ed critical of Broadway Musicals and light-in-the-loafers dancers? Again, tune in this week and find out, all will be revealed, this could be the best Broadway opening since Cyd Charisse threw a shoe only to have it land on Nelson Rockefeller’s privates, which stood up an saluted Ms Charisse on the occasion. And finally, in a special feature length comic strip, Learn how Charlie Brown finally gets the better of Lucy, fakes a kick at the football, and instead puts the boots to Lucy herself. This friends is violence so satisfying that even pacifist Liberals will stand up and cheer. All these and many other stories will be brought to you at great expense in future issues of The New York Times, coming soon to an ISP near you.
It seems to me that Lincoln saw the United States as an experiment in government based on freedom and equality. His reading of the Declaration of Independence was implicitly universalist, in that he must have assumed that if the experiment was successful then it could serve as a model for other nations in search of an alternative to the tyrannies that had dominated the world in the past.
I see a huge difference between a vision that is universalist in this sense and one that is “cosmopolitan” (Purdy’s word). Obama’s desire to be “cosmopolitan” no doubt underlies his attempts to “engage” some of the worst tyrannical regimes of our time. I see nothing in the Declaration or in any of Lincoln’s words that would justify such “engagement.”
Purdy’s phrase “global inheritance” seems equally misplaced. If our national experiment was to serve as a model for other nations, it would constitute a global gift from us to the rest of the world, not an inheritance from the rest of the world. “Engagement” with tyrants is part of the cynical diplomatic traditions with which the Founding Fathers wished to break. “A decent respect for the opinions of mankind” required us to explain our actions to the rest of the world, not to follow their example.
I can no longer read the Times, pretty much for the reasons that From Inwood has listed. And I have to say I miss it. Today is Sunday, it’s cold outside and I’m not feeling well. Twenty years ago I would have spent a good part of the day enjoying the look, the feel and the smell of the different sections. Schadenfreude toward the Sulzbergers is all very well, but it doesn’t make up for what’s lost.
9: Man, Tennyson, Dowson, Proust, and Frost all at once!
Alexander Almasov:
Thanks for identifying my influences. And you might have added “As the Stomach Turns.”
Cheers
Thank you to everyone above for the interesting comments, since as From Inwood indicates, comments are as important as the post.
Thanks particularly to Peter Shalen (#8), since the difference between “universalist” and “cosmopolitan” is an important insight — and for explicating what a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind” actually entails. The Declaration of Independence did not seek the approval of the world, but rather to meet the obligation to explain why a separate way was necessary.
Thanks especially too to Ritchie Emmons for the laugh (again).