October 14, 2008
The Hitch: Vote for Obama
McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace.
Even "single-issue" voter CH sees the light. From Slate:
The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.
More here.
I've been calling voters. And I've given money. Do your part here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 01:29 AM | Permalink
Comments
Do you know if that photo was taken directly after his waterboarding experiment or his Vanity Fair mud mask experiment? Such a forlorn expression. Maybe he misses the Rothmans.
Let's hope he's staking a new claim to his own political courage. He wouldn't have to try stress positions, sleep deprivation, isolation or hypothermia to condemn them, together with the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act and other manifestations of US totalitarian drift, as often as he does belief in a God.
Religion poisons everything? The propensity for believing absurdities and committing atrocities "can work without that assumption."
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Oct 14, 2008 6:49:05 AM
There may be worse things than provincial roots, piety, and vindictiveness in local quarrels. Guess who said this about the Charles Manson 1969 murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and her friends in her Beverly Hills home:
“Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach. Wild!”
Hint: it wasn't Sarah Palin.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODE2MDAxZjBiYTI1OWI4YzNlM2RmYWU4MzU2MTM3Zjc=
Posted by: Marilyn Terrell | Oct 14, 2008 9:31:40 AM
@Marilyn Terrell,
You seem to be mixed up.
First, Hitchens defended Palin for her provincial roots and piety (and even her flirtatiousness). He criticizes her for her, "vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations" and her false claims to political courage.
Second, just because you can find someone who would be even worse than Palin doesn't make Palin qualified for the office she's seeking.
Third, you're trying to use the reprehensible statement Bernardine Dohrn made when Obama was a child against Obama. He has never, ever endorsed those views. In fact, he's criticized them.
Posted by: Eric | Oct 14, 2008 10:03:41 AM
@ Eric: You're right, today Obama does criticize their actions, but he chose to launch his political career from their living room in Hyde Park in 1995, when he first ran for state senate. Did he consider their actions reprehensible then? If so, why would he accept any support from them?
I'm not defending Sarah Palin, but I do wonder why candidate Obama, over the past two years, has not been subject to the same level of media scrutiny as Palin has in her six weeks on the national stage.
Posted by: Marilyn Terrell | Oct 14, 2008 12:39:32 PM
An Obama supporter criticizing Gov. Palin for "bizarre religious and political affiliations"?! Really? With a straight face? Palin allowed some oddball to pray over her -- she wasn't even a member of his church. Obama took his children to hear the vituperous race-baiter Jeremiah Wright for years. Records show she was never a member of the breakaway Alaskan independence party, and if we fault her for addressing them, shouldn't we likewise fault Obama for accepting the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America and actually being a member of the radical Chicago New Party in the 1990s? Hitch isn't even making sense here-- my take is that he's just jumping on the bandwagon in the face of what he sees as an inevitable Obama presidency, in order to reclaim some relevance and msm-cred. It seems quite the opposite of courageous, to me.
Posted by: PearlsMom | Oct 14, 2008 2:15:24 PM
For fun, let's imagine that Sarah Palin had been President of the Harvard Law Review, a respected community organizer, a Professor of Constitutional Law at one of the nation's foremost law schools, a three-term Illinois State Senator, an author of two highly regarded books, a United States Senator, the clear winner of the most grueling primary campaign in memory, and that, on top of all this, she possessed managerial and intellectual capabilities that even her greatest detractors admit are top-notch. Conversely, imagine that Obama had attended five colleges in five years (two of them junior colleges), placed third in a statewide beauty pageant, worked briefly as a sports reporter, became city council member then mayor of a town of less than 6,000, served for less than two years as Governor of Alaska, was selected (not elected) as a Vice Presidential candidate despite having no national exposure or experience, repeatedly had trouble answering even the most basic questions, possessed an undeniably amateurish grasp of policy both foreign and domestic, and then, as a desperate last resort, began unabashedly stirring racial animosity at rally after rally.
The comparisons between these two candidates are ridiculous. One is a serious figure with undeniable talent and vision; the other is a total joke.
As for scrutiny. When Sarah Palin's college essays are hunted down and released (I would ask for Todd's, too, but he never graduated), when the entire histories of everyone she's ever shared a room or shaken a hand with are revealed, when the circumstances surrounding her childhood education become leading news stories, when her religious beliefs are examined under a national microscope for months on end, and when her very motives are lambasted as 'mysterious' or 'unknown' — when all that happens, then get back to me about scrutiny.
Posted by: ghostman | Oct 14, 2008 2:55:12 PM
You tell 'em, ghostman.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 14, 2008 4:18:24 PM
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