Obama Rules!

[mudwhistle]

Barack Obama is a gifted politician who has led an exemplary life. His run for Presidency for many offers redemption that America has finally moved beyond race. But that laudable proposition is beginning to foster surreal rules of campaigning from both the media and Obama himself that do no one any good.

1. The 2008 campaign must stick to concrete issues and detailed policies. That said, Barack Obama can continue to speak only in vague terms of “hope and change.”

2. Rev. Wright’s racist tirades must be contextualized and only understood in their proper historic milieu of white racism—that is, unless he suddenly turns on Barack Obama, in which case one is now free to deride him as “mean-spirited,” “malicious” and on a “vendetta.”

3. Rev. Wright is like “an old uncle” and his church “not particularly controversial.” Those who insist otherwise are using “snippets” and “loops” out of context for cheap political advantage. But should the Rev. repeat his serial lunacies at the National Press Club on national television, and insult the sympathetic liberal DC press corps, then he is suddenly expendable and inexplicably not the same pastor that Barack Obama knew for 20 years—and so now to be freely derided as a “spoiler”.

4. It is assumed that Barack Obama’s exotic middle name Hussein can provide authentic multicultural fides and hope of projecting a new, more globally sympathetic American image abroad, but to voice ‘Hussein’ aloud is assumed to be nefarious.

5. It is legitimate to appeal to, and thus win en masse 90% of African-Americans of all classes over a rival liberal candidate, but it is absolutely illegitimate and a sign of a racialist strategy should someone else win two-thirds of that total of the white working-class vote—and, worse, acknowledge it as such.

6. John McCain can be written off as “losing his bearings” and wanting U.S. troops in Iraq for “100 years.” But to repeat the fact that a Hamas advisor has praised Obama, or that one of his own foreign policy advisors has met with officials of that terrorist organization, is “divisive,” “a distraction,” and the “old politics as usual.” McCain’s fuzzy references to Shiite/Sunni terrorist cooperation are signs of his senility. Obama’s repeated confusion over how many states there are in the Union (48? or is it 58?) is proof of exhaustion and lack of sleep.

7. Racial generalizations of any type in connection with the candidacy of Barack Obama are out of order. Barack Obama is free to characterize his grandmother as a “typical white person” and to lump the middle-class voters of Pennsylvania together as nativists, racists, and superstitious in their reliance on religion and guns. Only endemic white racism—never anger over Obama’s overt racialist stereotyping of the white middle class and his Reverend’s slurs—can explain that group’s rejection of him at the primary polls.

8. Substantial campaign contributions and the money nexus in politics are pernicious, proof of the “old politics” with a long history of distorting campaigns. The record fund-raising and enormous war-chest of Barack Obama are instead proof of a healthy American democracy and preclude any need for public campaign financing.

9. If a zealous pastor endorses John McCain, then his past illiberal talk about Catholicism demands a formal rebuke. If Barack Obama’s spiritual advisor of some twenty years addresses a meeting of a branch of the NAACP and announces that blacks and whites have genetically different brain chemistries and learning abilities, then one simply keeps quiet about it.

10. For conservatives to have suggested that the media was biased in favor of the Clintons in the 1990s was McCarthyesque. For Clintonites to suggest that it is now even more biased toward Obama is even more McCarthyesque.

This is the new political landscape that we are in, and those who object to it should expect to face hysterical outrage—in the manner of anyone who suggests that a messiah should at least try to practice what he preaches. And the problem is that those he will face as President—whether an Iranian religious nut, a Hamas terrorist, a Chinese communist, a Castro, Chavez, or North Korean extortionist—will follow no such Obama rules.

Works and Days » Obama Rules

[Comicsartist]

^Once a dumbass, always a dumbass.

[babylonDon]

No nono....That was well thought out...err...well cut and pasted editorializing.

It's a call to reason from a guy who calls multi-millionaires communist, and compares the democratic presidential nominees to terrorists.

Say mud? Whatever happened to that Osama fellow? Did we catch him yet?

[cheapseats]

Barack Obama is a gifted politician who has led an exemplary life. His run for Presidency for many offers redemption that America has finally moved beyond race. But that laudable proposition is beginning to foster surreal rules of campaigning from both the media and Obama himself that do no one any good.

1. The 2008 campaign must stick to concrete issues and detailed policies. That said, Barack Obama can continue to speak only in vague terms of “hope and change.”

2. Rev. Wright’s racist tirades must be contextualized and only understood in their proper historic milieu of white racism—that is, unless he suddenly turns on Barack Obama, in which case one is now free to deride him as “mean-spirited,” “malicious” and on a “vendetta.”

3. Rev. Wright is like “an old uncle” and his church “not particularly controversial.” Those who insist otherwise are using “snippets” and “loops” out of context for cheap political advantage. But should the Rev. repeat his serial lunacies at the National Press Club on national television, and insult the sympathetic liberal DC press corps, then he is suddenly expendable and inexplicably not the same pastor that Barack Obama knew for 20 years—and so now to be freely derided as a “spoiler”.

4. It is assumed that Barack Obama’s exotic middle name Hussein can provide authentic multicultural fides and hope of projecting a new, more globally sympathetic American image abroad, but to voice ‘Hussein’ aloud is assumed to be nefarious.

5. It is legitimate to appeal to, and thus win en masse 90% of African-Americans of all classes over a rival liberal candidate, but it is absolutely illegitimate and a sign of a racialist strategy should someone else win two-thirds of that total of the white working-class vote—and, worse, acknowledge it as such.

6. John McCain can be written off as “losing his bearings” and wanting U.S. troops in Iraq for “100 years.” But to repeat the fact that a Hamas advisor has praised Obama, or that one of his own foreign policy advisors has met with officials of that terrorist organization, is “divisive,” “a distraction,” and the “old politics as usual.” McCain’s fuzzy references to Shiite/Sunni terrorist cooperation are signs of his senility. Obama’s repeated confusion over how many states there are in the Union (48? or is it 58?) is proof of exhaustion and lack of sleep.

7. Racial generalizations of any type in connection with the candidacy of Barack Obama are out of order. Barack Obama is free to characterize his grandmother as a “typical white person” and to lump the middle-class voters of Pennsylvania together as nativists, racists, and superstitious in their reliance on religion and guns. Only endemic white racism—never anger over Obama’s overt racialist stereotyping of the white middle class and his Reverend’s slurs—can explain that group’s rejection of him at the primary polls.

8. Substantial campaign contributions and the money nexus in politics are pernicious, proof of the “old politics” with a long history of distorting campaigns. The record fund-raising and enormous war-chest of Barack Obama are instead proof of a healthy American democracy and preclude any need for public campaign financing.

9. If a zealous pastor endorses John McCain, then his past illiberal talk about Catholicism demands a formal rebuke. If Barack Obama’s spiritual advisor of some twenty years addresses a meeting of a branch of the NAACP and announces that blacks and whites have genetically different brain chemistries and learning abilities, then one simply keeps quiet about it.

10. For conservatives to have suggested that the media was biased in favor of the Clintons in the 1990s was McCarthyesque. For Clintonites to suggest that it is now even more biased toward Obama is even more McCarthyesque.

This is the new political landscape that we are in, and those who object to it should expect to face hysterical outrage—in the manner of anyone who suggests that a messiah should at least try to practice what he preaches. And the problem is that those he will face as President—whether an Iranian religious nut, a Hamas terrorist, a Chinese communist, a Castro, Chavez, or North Korean extortionist—will follow no such Obama rules.

Works and Days » Obama Rules

Obama Rules, by Victor Davis Hanson

Per Pajamas "Sending the MSM down the river" Media:

Hanson, for those who somehow have missed him until now, is a professor of Classics at California State and also is a part time farmer, both of which have contributed to his writing as a military historian. As a classicist, Hanson is well versed in the sources in their original Greek, and as a farmer he understands how agriculture affected the experience of the Greeks at war.

[mudwhistle]

So none of you can refute the author's points?

[Chantytown]

So none of you can refute the author's points?

You mean, like... again?

[babylonDon]

So none of you can refute the author's points?

Can you tell anyone why you deserve that validation?

[HarperLee]

If it is from pajamasmedia.com, it must be true.

[babylonDon]

I'd prefer to continue to throw pies at the messenger, until such time that the messenger stops appearing clownish.

[winthrop]

Not to offer validation, but so Mr. Whistle does not feel put upon, I will respond to a few, but not repeat the rebuttals of the others.

1. The 2008 campaign must stick to concrete issues and detailed policies. That said, Barack Obama can continue to speak only in vague terms of “hope and change.”

Like most candidates with no interest in putting their rally audiences to sleep Mr. Obama talks in "generalities" in most speeches (although I have heard him outline his plan college students to repay their government loans through public service). But his more detailed plans can be found here by the non lazy, which may include those who cut and paste rather than offer their own observations in their own voice.

2. Rev. Wright’s racist tirades must be contextualized and only understood in their proper historic milieu of white racism—that is, unless he suddenly turns on Barack Obama, in which case one is now free to deride him as “mean-spirited,” “malicious” and on a “vendetta.”

3. Rev. Wright is like “an old uncle” and his church “not particularly controversial.” Those who insist otherwise are using “snippets” and “loops” out of context for cheap political advantage. But should the Rev. repeat his serial lunacies at the National Press Club on national television, and insult the sympathetic liberal DC press corps, then he is suddenly expendable and inexplicably not the same pastor that Barack Obama knew for 20 years—and so now to be freely derided as a “spoiler”.

Yes, Reverend Wright proved to be more interested in exploiting his own Fifteen Minutes than supporting Mr. Obama's candidacy, showing his true priorities.

4. It is assumed that Barack Obama’s exotic middle name Hussein can provide authentic multicultural fides and hope of projecting a new, more globally sympathetic American image abroad, but to voice ‘Hussein’ aloud is assumed to be nefarious.

No, it is assumed to be "nefarious" to imply having the name "Hussein" is itself "nefarious" in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

5. It is legitimate to appeal to, and thus win en masse 90% of African-Americans of all classes over a rival liberal candidate, but it is absolutely illegitimate and a sign of a racialist strategy should someone else win two-thirds of that total of the white working-class vote—and, worse, acknowledge it as such.

Did Mr. Obama win African-American support by exploiting the fear of The Other (the answer, by the way, is "no").

6. John McCain can be written off as “losing his bearings” and wanting U.S. troops in Iraq for “100 years.” But to repeat the fact that a Hamas advisor has praised Obama, or that one of his own foreign policy advisors has met with officials of that terrorist organization, is “divisive,” “a distraction,” and the “old politics as usual.” McCain’s fuzzy references to Shiite/Sunni terrorist cooperation are signs of his senility. Obama’s repeated confusion over how many states there are in the Union (48? or is it 58?) is proof of exhaustion and lack of sleep.

Not knowing the difference between Shiites and Sunnis is an example of the same lack of understanding of Middle Eastern dynamics which have cost us so much for the past seven years (one might even say the past sixty years)...losing track of how many states are in the U.S. is meaningless in terms of life and death.

7. Racial generalizations of any type in connection with the candidacy of Barack Obama are out of order. Barack Obama is free to characterize his grandmother as a “typical white person” and to lump the middle-class voters of Pennsylvania together as nativists, racists, and superstitious in their reliance on religion and guns. Only endemic white racism—never anger over Obama’s overt racialist stereotyping of the white middle class and his Reverend’s slurs—can explain that group’s rejection of him at the primary polls.

But the response to that "stereotyping" and those "slurs", while ignoring equal or even more egregious "stereotyping" and "slurs" with which those voters may agree, can be argued a result of dying racism, particularly since such results have proven to be less overwhelming than might be expected.

8. Substantial campaign contributions and the money nexus in politics are pernicious, proof of the “old politics” with a long history of distorting campaigns. The record fund-raising and enormous war-chest of Barack Obama are instead proof of a healthy American democracy and preclude any need for public campaign financing.

What is the origin of the money? Yes, Mr. Obama has contributions from big donors, but the majority of his funds come from individual donors sending small amounts.

9. If a zealous pastor endorses John McCain, then his past illiberal talk about Catholicism demands a formal rebuke. If Barack Obama’s spiritual advisor of some twenty years addresses a meeting of a branch of the NAACP and announces that blacks and whites have genetically different brain chemistries and learning abilities, then one simply keeps quiet about it.

No, and one will note few have "kept quiet about it". There is all but deafening silence in the MSM on the comments of Hagee/Parsley/Falwell/Roberson, particularly in comparison to the "All Jeremiah All The Time" Carnival Show.

10. For conservatives to have suggested that the media was biased in favor of the Clintons in the 1990s was McCarthyesque. For Clintonites to suggest that it is now even more biased toward Obama is even more McCarthyesque.

To suggest the MSM "All Monica All The Time" Carnival Show was biased "in favor of the Clintons" is/was not "McCarthyesque", it is stupid beyond the ability to tie its own shoes.

This is the new political landscape that we are in, and those who object to it should expect to face hysterical outrage—in the manner of anyone who suggests that a messiah should at least try to practice what he preaches. And the problem is that those he will face as President—whether an Iranian religious nut, a Hamas terrorist, a Chinese communist, a Castro, Chavez, or North Korean extortionist—will follow no such Obama rules.

This observation actually has some merit, only I would add the Republican Machine and its 527 hit squads to that list which will follow not "Obama rules".


Oh look, I responded to all the comments after all...oh well, consider yourself validated, Mr. Mud.