Tag: Andrew Sullivan

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Election 2008 Humor McCain Obama Politics The Media The Opinionsphere

Faux outrageous: The New Yorker’s Political Cover

[digg-reddit-me]The political cartoon by David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer currently making the rounds (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

For all those who laughed when they saw this (like me) but are offended by the Obama New Yorker cover (unlike me) – how do you justify the differing responses?

My position is that I agree with the popular reddit post yesterday citing Donklephant:

That New Yorker cover is clearly satire. We can’t get offended every two minutes. It’s not healthy.

Is anyone offended by the New Yorker cover but appreciative of this faux National Review cover?

Update: Lenny Bruce wisely observed:

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.

This doesn’t excuse the double standard that I see as the only explanation for not being offended at both or by either picture – but it does offer an explanation as to why this is considered more offensive now than it might be otherwise.

Updated again: One thing, upon reflection, that differentiates the two cartoons is that David Horsey’s cartoon has the virtue of merely exaggerating the truth while the New Yorker cover is based on outright lies.

Still – I feel that this makes the depiction of McCain more damaging than the ridiculous depiction of Obama.

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Election 2008 Foreign Policy Iran Israel McCain National Security Obama Politics

Bush to Attack Iran as an October Surprise?

After the past seven years, would you put it past this administration?

Andrew Sullivan is on the case:

Could Bush bomb Iran before the next election and create a sense of international crisis that could cause voters to swing back to McCain? From everything we know and Bush and Cheney, the answer, surely, is yes

Bill Kristol suggested on Fox New Sunday yesterday that Bush might attack Iran if it “looks like Barack Obama is going to win.”

John Bolton, also on Fox New yesterday suggests that Israel might decide to strike Iran before a President Obama took office.

Earlier this month, Israel conducted a massive war games exercise that American sources suggest was a test for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

The drumbeats of war are growing louder.

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Election 2008 Humor Obama Politics Videos

Bloggers Track Down “Michelle Obama ‘Whitey’ Tape”

[digg-reddit-me]The rumor of a tape with Michelle Obama using a slur against white people has finally been substantiated and Barack Obama has been caught in a lie! I am disillusioned.

On to the videotape:

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan and John Cole for finally getting the word out there.

This is almost as serious as Dunkin Donuts’ promulgation of terrorism. Almost.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics

Obama-Webb 08


A lot of liberal bloggers have been trying to bat down the idea of an Obama-Webb ticket: Kathy G on Matt Yglesias’s blog and Ezra Klein at The American Prospect. James Joyner over at Outside the Beltway provides a good summary of the arguments being used against Webb.

James Fallows, writing from his personal experience of Webb also tries to quash the idea:

Having first met Webb nearly thirty years ago – and having co-written an Atlantic cover story with him, and having broken my rule against giving money to political candidates two years ago when he began his Senate run – I can’t imagine a job he would enjoy less than the vice presidency.

Jim Webb has arranged his life so as to maximize his intellectual and personal independence, and minimize the things he “has” to do and the bosses he must answer to…The federal government office that least matches Webb’s lifetime path is the vice presidency.

But I think the final word so far has to go to conservative Ross Douhat who sees the great potential of an Obama-Webb ticket (h/t Andrew Sullivan.):

…what separates Webb from, say, a John Kerry or a John Edwards – both of whom appealed to Democrats because they seemed to (but didn’t really) shore up the party’s weaknesses on national security and with the white and Southern working class – is that he really is a different kind of Democrat. He isn’t a conventional left-liberal who happens to have a military record and/or a Southern accent; he’s a more sui generis figure, a cultural (though not social) conservative with heterodox views on a variety of issues.

This is why, were I Obama, I would look at the left-liberal case against Webb – on the grounds that he’s too anti-feminist, too pro-military, too skeptical about affirmative action and immigration, too hostile to Hollywood and academia – as an advertisement for the pick. An Obama-Webb ticket wouldn’t send just a message that people who share the same ethno-cultural identity as Jim Webb can have a home in the Democratic Party, the way Kerry and Edwards were supposed to show that veterans and Southerners could too be Democrats; it would send a message that people with Webb’s views can have a home in the party. It would lend substance to Obama’s thus-far insubstantial claim to be something other than a party-line liberal, and in the process it would have the potential to achieve at the national level what the Congressional Dems have successfully done at the local level – namely, expand the definition of what it means to be a Democrat. That’s the promise, as-yet-unfulfilled, of the Obama campaign. And that’s how you build a lasting majority.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics

Some perspective on how crazy Americans are…

Ben Smith tries to put the “Obama is a secret Muslim” belief into perspective.  As Andrew Sullivan says, “Maybe ten percent of Americans believing Obama is a Muslim isn’t so high after all.”

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Obama-Clinton?

Al Giordano of The Field is reporting that an Obama-Clinton ticket is a non-starter:

The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.

h/t Andrew Sullivan.

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Criticism Election 2008 McCain Politics

Where did the real Glenn Greenwald Go?

Glenn Greenwald has been one of the best – and most influential – voices in the blogosphere. Every day he writes an incisive piece exploring some hypocrisy within the Republican establishment and/or the press. He has been one of the few voices keeping alive such vitally relevant stories as the Pentagon propaganda scandal, the US attorney firings scandal, the many torture scandals, and the general media acquiescence to telling their stories on terms set by the Right. Greenwald’s writing does have a particular sense of continuous outrage that becomes off-putting. As serious as the issues we face are, outrage can become wearing. Despite this stylistic critique, I have found Greenwald to be one of the most insightful commentators on our current politics.

But since Glenn Greenwald has gotten back from his book tour, his writing has seemed off. Take these three lines from three of his latest blog entries:

They’re as transparent as they are dishonest and bloodthirsty.

The central truth of the 2008 election is that, with the exception of a few relatively inconsequential and symbolic matters, John McCain enthusiastically embraces the Bush/Cheney worldview in every way that matters.

John McCain is the ultimate embodiment of America’s hoary, Vietnam era “stabbed-in-the-back” myth. We should fight wars with massive bombing campaigns and unleashed force, unconstrained by excessive concerns over “collateral damage” and unimpeded by domestic questioning. That’s how we could have (and should have) “won” in Vietnam and how we’ll “win” in Iraq. That’s why the central truth of the 2008 election is that, when it comes to foreign policy, the Kristol/Lieberman-supported John McCain is a carbon copy of the Bush/Cheney warmongering mentality except that he’s actually more extreme about its core premises.

With all of these, I agree with the basic points Greenwald is making – but he veers into the territory of unconvincing polemicism instead of the more nuanced yet strongly worded critiques that are his best.  For me, even worse are the topical errors he has made.

In today’s piece about McCain embracing the “stabbed-in-the-back” narrative about Vietnam, Greenwald has to retract one of the more damning insinuations he makes – that McCain cares nothing for civilian casualties in war.

In another piece last week, Greenwald wrote about “The right’s selective political manipulation of Catholicism.”  But instead of taking the arguments of his opponents seriously, he – whether through laziness or misunderstanding – simply ignores their points.  Kathyrn Jean Lopez of the National Review is an extremely lazy thinker who Greenwald should be able to defeat handily in a blog-battle.  Yet Greenwald’s response to Lopez ends up being wildly off the mark.  He tries to attack her for hypocrisy for saying she wants to protect innocent human life while supporting Republicans.  Republicans have started a war that has cost over a million lives, Greenwald rightly points out.  What he fails to acknowledge is that Lopez would point to the hundreds of millions of “innocent lives” lost to abortion as a countervailing force.

She can – and should – still be taken to task for hypocrisy.  Andrew Sullivan has been especially effective on this front.  But Greenwald ended up seeming like a petty hack.

I know he’s better than that which is why I’m disappointed.

I have hope though that after some time to recuperate, the real Greenwald will be back.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Back…

After a long weekend of not feeling well and spotty internet service, as Indiana and North Carolina vote in the latest episode of this never-ending primary…

Here’s some quick highlights:

In his spare time in between campaigning, Mr. Obama is trying to broker a peace deal in the Niger Delta:

Rebels who have stepped up attacks on Nigeria’s oil industry in the last month said on Sunday they were considering a ceasefire appeal by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has launched five attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta since it resumed a campaign of violence in April, forcing Royal Dutch Shell to shut more than 164,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

“The MEND command is seriously considering a temporary ceasefire appeal by Senator Barack Obama. Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem,” the militant group said in an e-mailed statement.

Andrew Sullivan has come around to the idea of an Obama-Clinton ticket:

The old political adage that you should keep your friends close but your enemies closer therefore seems appropriate. Clinton will not be running for president in 2012 if she is vice-president in 2009. The same could not be said if she were consigned back to the Senate to lick her wounds and plot her future…

There’s also a way for Obama to explain this choice in a way that does not violate — and in fact strengthens — his core message. His model in this should be Abraham Lincoln. What Lincoln did, as Doris Kearns Goodwin explained in her brilliant book, “Team Of Rivals,” was to bring his most bitter opponents into his cabinet in order to maintain national and party unity at a time of crisis. Obama — who is a green legislator from Illinois, just as Lincoln was — could signal to his own supporters in picking Clinton that he isn’t capitulating to old politics, he is demonstrating his capacity to reach out and engage and co-opt his rivals and opponents. Done deftly, picking Clinton could even resonate with Obama’s supporters as a statesmanlike gesture, a sign of the kind of reconciliation he wants to achieve at home and abroad and energize his own party for the fall. It is consonant with his core message: that he can unify the country in a way few other politicians can. It would even help heal the gulf that has opened up between the Clintons and black voters in this campaign. It’s win-win all round.

And the Empire Strikes Barack:

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The Urgency of Our Problems as a Nation

An astute reader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog lays out the essential rationale for Obama’s candidacy and explains the strength of Clinton’s continued candidacy…

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

On “Bitter”

Andrew Sullivan on “Bittergate” and “Wrightgate”:

Interestingly, the two incidents that Clinton pounced on damaged both Clinton and Obama equally – and their main effect has been to solidify Republicans behind McCain. And this makes sense: the kind of political-cultural warfare this represents is pure Rovism. It’s designed to help Republicans. Which may be all that the Clintons will accomplish with this.

Ezra Klein writes about this latest “bitter” controversy:

…this is why I don’t like writing about the campaign. It’s full of hollow scandals and ignored travesties. But you have to cover the hollow scandals, because they’re are blown up until they’re definitional in the campaign. And that leaves me writing about high-profile non-events in a way that helps cement their importance, even if I’m writing to deride their legitimacy.

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