The Debatable Land

Jon Snow Tries to Get Me To Hope for a McCain Miracle

Channel 4 News' anchor, Jon Snow, has just been talking about how electing Barack Obama means "America has come of constitutional age". Yes, really. Apparently none of those previous elections were legitimate. Now of course Snow's program tilts even further to the left than the BBC so you might expect him to say something like this. But there will, alas, be much more of this sort of nonsense.

Now in one sense, it's clear what Snow means: after all, there are many people who do not expect to agree with Obama politically who appreciate, nonetheless, that his victory is a splendid and significant moment in American history. But Snow's smugness, indeed his condescension, is another matter altogether. It's rather as though there exists the presumption that the millions of Americans voting for John McCain today can only be motivated by their fear - conscious or not - of a black man becoming President. Alternatively, it's like taking the kids to the zoo so they can see those strange Americans. Look, some of them have opposable thumbs!

Over at the Confabulum, James Poulos has a fine post reminding one that it is important to reject this tripe.

It’s impossible (for me) to doubt that whatever happens, either today or over the next four or eight years, Obama will be much better for America culturally than politically. But it’s ridiculous to hold Obama’s election over the heads of those who would dare to vote against him: taking away every nonwhite kid’s shot at true self-esteem! HOW DARE YOU?!?! etc. And indeed, I’ve heard it put this way — not just a matter of inspiring black kids (which of course is an awesome idea that all of us should be more involved in), but "hispanic, native American…"... People who won’t vote for Obama because they disagree with him aren’t shattering anyone’s dreams. If that’s what politics has become in this country — you annihilated my future! – then we really do need a long collective night in the drunk tank.

Still, don't expect this view to prevail in much of the foreign media, particularly the left-wing overseas press.

Financial Crisis: All Uncle Milton's Fault?

Will Wilkinson has some fun with Naomi Klein's latest nonsense.

Naomi Klein says [the financial crisis discredits neoliberalism]. Or she wants it to. She thinks it discredits Milton Friedman in particular, because for Klein not a sparrow falls without Friedman’s having somehow strangled it. Hers is a tiny intellectual universe containing, on the one hand, the things she likes and, on the other, the baleful influence of Milton Friedman.

Did you know, for instance, that Paul Bremer was a Friedmanite agent of mass destruction in Iraq? Apparently so!

Is Jonathan Freedland working for John McCain?

I was going to write about Jonathan Freedland's absurd column in today's Guardian, but thankfully Norm has said pretty much all that needs to be said. Do these people really want to increase one's sympathy for McCain? Because all this stuff about how the US owes it to the rest of the world to elect Obama is one good way of achieving just that.

Polly's Britian

A faithful correspondent emails: "I know it rightly pains you to contemplate the existence of Polly Toynbee, but is she actually saying that the worst thing about New Labour was that it wasn't authoritarian, expedient, or intrusive enough?"

I suspect readers know the answer to this but, to give Mrs Toynbee the benefit of the doubt, I thought it only fair to read the column in question. And, why, yes! She does seem to be of the view that now the government's days are numbered it should cast off its feeble moderation and do more - much more! - to tell people how they may, or more probably, may not, lead their lives.

Department of Trying Too Hard

Travis Daub at Foreign Policy:

       

A couple weeks back, we pointed out that John McCain likes to refer to America as "She," a habit that I assume builds some linguistic distance between himself and Hillary Clinton. Hillary could never refer to America as "She," so McCain subtly infers that a president Clinton could never protect the country in the same way that a masculine figure could.

David Corn over at Mother Jones took the analysis a step further:

Could the implication be that Barack Obama is not quite American and that he is not interested in protecting our country, which the ad describes with the feminine pronoun. In other words, the half-black dude with a funny name--who might be a secret Muslim--can't protect her. Has Lee Atwater been resurrected? This smacks of the George H.W. Bush smear-tossing campaign against Michael Dukakis in 1988--but also of Hillary Clinton's claims that Obama is not yet ready to be commander in chief.

Yeah, or maybe it's simpler than that and people tend to refer to their countries as "she" rather than "he" all the time. Think Britannia, think Marianne, think of the Soviet "motherland". Think too, if you like, of the old Punch cartoons that portrayed a weeping, mournful Hibernia.

Indeed, the striking exception to this general rule is, hmm, Hitler's Germany with its rallying calls to protect the Fatherland.