Category Archives: Journalism

Update II: Sliming Sarah (& On Feminism Vs. Individualism)

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, John McCain, Journalism, Sarah Palin, War

CNN’s Campbell Brown has been a woman possessed even since Palin appeared on the political scene. As I write, she is “investigating” how Sarah Palin’s Pentecostal faith and the practices of her church may impact her political outlook. (The segment was evidently aired earlier today. It didn’t cause Blitzer such apoplexy.)

By logical extension, does Brown—who is not working with much, if you know what I mean—wish to imply that hanging around a Black Liberation Church for 20 years—a church that states its members “are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization”—might poison a presidential candidate’s worldview?

At the time, she and her ilk denied that being a proud, long-time member of a separatist, white-hating “Black-Value-System” community had any bearing on Barack’s worldview.

Update I (September 10): INDIVIDUALISM VS. FEMINISM. our long-time, valued reader, young Alex (see his comments below), seems quite confused lately, inundating the blog with dogmatic comments asserting Sarah Palin’s feminist bona fides.

Sarah Palin is an individualist, not a feminist. Fulfilling one’s potential doesn’t make one a feminist. Sarah Palin is not a woman’s issues liberationist; but an individualist; a doer. She sees a problem in her community and she sets about solving it. She’s an individual doing her best, as she sees it, to improve herself and the community she lives in. That seems to be her calling. She is not doing this qua woman, but as an individual. Since when is fulfilling one’s potential always a manifestation of a feminist mindset when a woman is concerned?

I suspect that the conservative prattle about sexism, which Alex has correctly derided, has confused our friend. Alex is right about the stupidity of conservatives adopting feminism rather than articulating Palin’s achievements in the language of individualism.

Does the fact that I wish to fulfill my potential as a writer make me a feminist? No; I’m an individualist through and through.

As to the gender roles in the Palin household: In the early years of their marriage, the very manly first Dude supported his wife and their children. Sarah Palin then got involved with the school—an involvement that led to a career. As her career evolved, the family organization changed. Is this feminism at work? Hardly! These are individuals interacting and completing one another at different stages of their lives.

I’d like one day to retire my brilliant husband and see him cook for me and play guitar all day. Does that make me a feminist? Au Contraire; that’s the give and take between mature, loving individuals.

Update II (Sep. 11): The Silly Sex continues to sound off over Sarah Palin. This time a Salon.com feminist evinces what in our household is known as the “V” Factor. “V” stands not for victory, but for the inability of a woman to transcend her genitals. Quite common among distaff America. Here are the histrionics of a uterus named Rebecca Traister:

“Palin’s femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She’s the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much. The kind of woman who, as Jessica Grose at Jezebel has eloquently noted, achieves her power by doing everything modern women believed they did not have to do: presenting herself as maternal and sexual, sucking up to men, evincing an absolute lack of native ambition, instead emphasizing her luck as the recipient of strong male support and approval. It works because these stances do not upset antiquated gender norms. So when the moment comes, when tolerance for and interest in female power have been forcibly expanded by Clinton, a woman more willing to throw elbows and defy gender expectations but who falls short of the goal, Palin is there, tapped as a supposedly perfect substitute by powerful men who appreciate her charms. …”

“The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin’s nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin’s candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.”

Update II: Sliming Sarah (& On Feminism Vs. Individualism)

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, John McCain, Journalism, Sarah Palin, War

At the time, she and her ilk denied that being a proud, long-time member of a separatist, white-hating “Black-Value-System” community had any bearing on Barack’s worldview.

Does the fact that I wish to fulfill my potential as a writer make me a feminist? No; I’m an individualist through and through.

Updated: And It Came To Pass, That THE TIMES Parodied Obama, And Behold It Was Very Good, And Truly I Say Unto You, It Rocketh!

Barack Obama, Britain, English, Intellectualism, Journalism, Media

The blog’s title is Rob Stove’s, the epistolary Wizard of Oz.

Gerard Baker’s lampoon of Obama was read on Fox-News’ Hannity & Colmes. Mr. Hannity credited “My producer,” rather than its talented author (who narrated). The banal front men and women of American punditry prefer not to doff a metaphoric hat to their betters. In fact, unless absolutely irresistible—as this piece surely is—they prefer that the less known about ideas not their own, the better. Dimming debate so that they are never outshone is the impetus behind the men and women of America’s malpracticing media. The result: a paucity of original thinking in American public life. Mencken would have been unemployed today, because brilliant (and non-partisan).

Satirical writing such as Baker’s is seldom undertaken by American pundits, whose writing is strictly prosaic and pedestrian. Likewise, it remains unappreciated by readers. Rob tells me that “in Australia there seems to be this notion that if a writer uses nuance, he must be homosexual.” I’d argue that this perception is rooted in a culture that still values manliness, albeit in its symbolic manifestation. Anointed public intellectuals in the US are almost always the “girlie boys”—down to their trendy eye wear, fussy falsettos, and pasty faces. Their writing is similarly androgynous.

(Vastly inferior, my “Mephisto’s Medicare: A Parable” was written many years ago when the muse struck. More “prosaic” versions thereof were published in the Calgary Herald and Vancouver Sun. I take consolation in knowing I’d do better today.)

Update (July 28): Please note “Mild Colonial Boy’s” comments hereunder. I missed the part of the broadcast to which he refers. My bad. Therefore, he is correct; I may have been hasty, but heck, 99 percent of the time my comments obtain. It is most unusual for the cable cohort to air, much less credit, original thinking.

HE VENTURED FORTH TO BRING LIGHT TO THE WORLD
By Gerard Baker

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth – for the first time – to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child’s very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child’s wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child’s journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

Leading Black American Journalist Dishes It Out On Africa

Africa, Journalism, South-Africa

I recommend Keith Richburg’s 1997 book, Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa. Given what he had written, it is not surprising one never sees this man on the idiot box.

However, back in 1994, he ought to have listened to the Afrikaner who predicted the descent of Zimbabwe into the African abyss. But they were the bad guys. I wonder if Richburg would care to throw the bones on South Africa—predict what’s in the offing there. Or will he wait until the truth is undeniable and another western outpost on the Dark Continent bites the dust.

Richburg writes this in the British Observer:

“[M]uch around the continent has remained the same. Some of those who I considered ‘new’ African leaders have proven themselves just as venal and anxious to cling to power as the Big Men of old. And some of the places offering a modicum of hope have fallen backwards. Ivory Coast and Kenya, two places that during my time were considered islands of stability, places where foreign correspondents went to regroup, file their stories and have a good meal before flying into the next war zone, have slipped into their own vicious violence. Both countries fell apart after elections that exposed deep ethnic divisions, sad confirmation again that even in the most seemingly stable countries, tribalism is never very far from the surface.

Somalia was a failed state ruled by warlords and rival militias when I last set foot there in 1994, and it remains today a place of violence and anarchy. And after the Rwanda genocide, the world said: ‘Never again’, only to watch as a new genocide takes place in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Despite all the talk about an African renaissance of democracy – and some notable election successes – by almost any measure repression remains widespread. According to the Economist democracy index, of the 44 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, 23 are listed as authoritarian, 13 as hybrids, seven, including South Africa, are called ‘flawed democracies’. The US-based democracy-monitoring group Freedom House rates 14 sub-Saharan African countries as ‘not free’ and 23 others were considered just partially free. Freedom House said the year 2007 ‘saw the deterioration of freedom on the continent’.

And for most, along with repression is the poverty. Africa is still home to most of the world’s poorest countries, a fact that many of the more optimistic like to obscure by pointing out facts such as how the stock market in Ghana provides one of the world’s highest returns on investment. A broader view was supplied by Kofi Annan. With the rise in global food prices, he warned recently of ‘100 million people on the brink of abject poverty’ which will be measured ‘in the number of infant and child deaths across Africa’.”

Read the complete column.