21 Responses to “COMMENTARY on C-SPAN”

1. mds123 says:

   March 12, 2009 at 6:15 am

   do read today’s washpost lead editorial on freeman; the reporting is better than pincus’

   but, really, the pincus story is a full-letter grade better than what passes for journalism @ the nytimes
2. Scientific Socialist says:

   March 12, 2009 at 7:03 am

   As is so often the case, the Jews are to blame as they are for, among other things, the economic downturn, global warming and New Coke.
3. Will Banyan says:

   March 12, 2009 at 7:17 am

   Oh the humanity! How dare anybody ever suggest that the right wing American Jews are not only politically active but can be successful in lobbying weak and supple congressmen.

   Obviously the politically correct line is that all Jews are victims and only craven and cowardly anti-Semites would believe or even contemplate that they had any political power worth noting.

   Methinks it looks like the score has been evened, after a lot of DC insiders, who don’t care for Likudnik policies crippled John R. Bolton’s nomination as UN Ambassador back in 2005 with a similar range of tactics, including a smear campaign on the blogosphere and direct and indirect approaches to Senators by various notables…

   I was under the impression that was how such games were played in Washington. So I don’t buy this BS from the supposedly aggrieved victors in this stoush that they are being unfairly maligned.

   You won. Well done. Don’t pretend to be powerless…
4. Seth Halpern says:

   March 12, 2009 at 8:32 am

   I still don’t get why the Saudis would be keen on this guy, who would almost certainly try to cook the books for Iran – except insofar as Riyadh has already accommodated itself to Tehran’s regional hegemony and is unsettled by continued American squirming. Of course it’s helpful if the Jews not only knock off one of Iran’s presumptive enablers but get blamed for it. Freeman may have shared with the Saudis a visceral distaste for democracy but his reflexive Petainism would have been a strategic disaster for the petro-kingdom and its neighbors, hence scant consolation. I don’t know if they’re exactly popping champagne corks over there but I doubt they’re entirely mortified, and I suspect their American diplomatic alumni are content to play their own parts in this little psychodrama with the obligatory effusions of “indignation.”
5. Alexander Almasov says:

   March 12, 2009 at 8:37 am

   Man, yum-yum’s sophistication abt the ways and wiles of evil WashDC shore is enlightening (as is only appropriate).
6. Scientific Socialist says:

   March 12, 2009 at 9:00 am

   Will,

   Freeman was hoisted on his own petard; his record-and given his ubiquitousness, there is plenty of it-speaks for itself. And in invoking John Bolton, could you possibly draw a more obtusely tangential analogy? His nomination was doomed by those wanting to both flip the bird to Bush as well as to continue living the fantasy of the U.N. as a legtimate, uncorruptible force for the good of mankind.
7. Peter Shalen says:

   March 12, 2009 at 9:52 am

   All I can add to mds123′s comment is that I’m not holding my breath waiting for the Times to publish their own editorial denouncing Freeman.
8. Warpublican Review says:

   March 12, 2009 at 9:58 am

   “As is so often the case, the Jews are to blame as they are for, among other things, the economic downturn…”

   Don’t conflate jews with israel – there are jews and there is Israel and they don’t always see eye to eye. Jews Like Jennifer Jewbin or Jew Podhretz or Abe Jewwald having nothing in common with Jews like Glenn Greenwald or Rachel Maddow or myself – who are disgusted at the kowtowing and dual loyalty we find with J-Rub and her buddies at Contemptuous – you guys are the same people who have given jews bad names throughout history -
9. Peter Shalen says:

   March 12, 2009 at 10:33 am

   #9,

   Oh, now I see. It’s only the bad Jews with the hooked noses, who live in Israel or write for Commentary, who are responsible for the economic downturn. What a perceptive observation.

   P.S. Drop dead.
10. ian says:

    March 12, 2009 at 11:24 am

    I had two comments deleted on the NY Times Comments page, one where I sent them Freeman’s entire unabridged quote regarding China, which they implied was taken out of context. Now we see the violence inherent in the system. Anyway I have to go. Steve Rosen is sending a coded message and I can’t miss it.
11. Warpublican Review says:

    March 12, 2009 at 11:42 am

    “Oh, now I see. It’s only the bad Jews with the hooked noses, who live in Israel or write for Commentary, who are responsible for the economic downturn. ”

    No – it’s bad jews who write for Commentary who kowtow to Tel Aviv and barely hide their dual lyalty – i have no idea what their noses look like…
12. MAH says:

    March 12, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    Hey, warpublican, Israel is also full of Jews like you and Glenn Greenwald and Rachel Maddow. And guess what? They are allowed to live there, vote, and express their beliefs. Which they wouldn’t be allowed to do anywhere else in the Middle East. Thanks to Jews all over the world, like the Contentions crew, Israel is still surviving and you are free to act like a self-loathing jerk. It’s Jews like you who have hid your heads under the blankets throughout history that have made Israel’s survival imperative for the existence of all Jews.