Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, IlanaMercer.com, libertarianism, Liberty, Media
I’ll be on RT, the global Russian television news network, tomorrow Thursday, July 13, to discuss “Libertarianism Lite.” The segment is the daily newscast with Kristine Frazao. It airs at 4:00PM Eastern Time (1:00 PM Pacific).
Do click to “Like” the YouTube clip of the segment later, even if this scribe (who is not your typical SE Cupp-like circus animal) bungles it up.
RT, its hosts and producers, is the real deal when it comes to out-of-mainstream thinking.
Elections, Etiquette, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, John McCain, Media, Politics, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin
At last, presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) is deploying a tactic touted by this column in hammering home her own intellectual heft (relative to a politician, that is). She has to. Fox News’ Chris Wallace apparently thinks that asking Bachmann (as opposed to John McCain and progeny) whether she is a flake amounts to hard-hitting journalism.
Then and there, the “seldom fazed” representative replied (paraphrased):
Well, I think that would be insulting, to say something like that, because I’m a serious person. I’m a 55-year-old woman. I’ve been married for 33 years, and I have a post-doctorate [I think she meant post-graduate] degree in federal tax law. I have five children, and have raised 23 foster children and opened a charter school for at-risk youth.
[Note how the Fox News article is written in the passive voice, so as to avoid implicating its hired hand, Wallace.]
As I’ve written repeatedly, Bachmann is nothing like Sarah Palin. Palin is Bush in a bra (with all the implications about brain power that implies).
Rep. Bachmann, on the other hand, as was contended back in September of 2009, is very clever.
Back then , this column had already picked the GOP’s winning ticket: Ron Paul for commander-in-chief; Michele Bachmann as second-in-command.
Bachmann is eloquent and is seldom fazed. As attractive as Sarah, she is also cerebral, a quality poor Palin is without. Bachmann is not yet a libertarian, but neither is she wedded to the warfare state, and is wise enough to recognize the political value of denouncing America’s forays abroad in order to bring moderates and independents into the fold. Given guidance (and a good kick), she is not beyond apologizing for her unforgivable vote for the Patriot Act.
Conversely … Paul has gone from immigration hawk to toying with amnesty (with an asterisk or two). Bachmann will bring Paul back from the brink. Americans inhabit a world of reality TV and other frivolity. To win the GOP nomination in this parallel universe, Ron Paul needs political bling—he will want the punch, pizazz and money bombs a Bachmann can provide.
“Bundle Rand (Paul) and Bachmann—and the opposition, both Republican and Democratic, will be vanquished. But that’s for another day.”
UPDATE I: A Facebook friend wants an analysis of Sarah palin’s unraveling. Okay, here.
UPDATE II: Bill, as I wrote in “Bachmann: Bling For Ron Paul?”, Paul would not take MB on unless it was under his tutelage, after she was, “Given guidance (and a good kick),” and made to “apologize for her unforgivable vote for the Patriot Act.”
Alone, how is Paul to win? We’re in this to win, right?
UPDATE III: (June 29): WINNING. Myron, what is wrong with wanting Paul to win? He can win the nomination if he and MB combine forces. Alone he is unlikely to get anywhere. Defeatism is a luxury only well-funded, spoilt brats (like these) can afford.
Bachmann “has jumped into second place in the New Hampshire Republican primary. … While Bachmann remains well behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has 36 percent support, the other sixteen Republicans included in the survey all had levels of support in the single digits.”
The results of the Gallup poll released on Tuesday showed that Bachmann’s name recognition is up to 69 percent from 52 percent in a poll conducted in late February/early March. With the increase, Bachmann is behind only Romney, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Congressman Ron Paul, R-Texas, in terms of name recognition, Gallup also noted that Bachmann has a positive intensity score of 24, which ties with pizza magnate Herman Cain’s as the highest such score of any candidate
Ann Coulter, Conservatism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Media, Republicans
Given the perpetual parade of “intellectuals” who are not intelligent in our media—Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the “parrot press”—I don’t expect many Americans to be familiar with political philosopher Paul E. Gottfried. Nevertheless, Paul (he’s a friend) is one of the most important intellectuals in the United States. In “The Mainstreaming of Michelle Malkin,” he writes:
“A recent syndicated column by Michelle Malkin indicates what happens to interesting conservative commentators when they sign on as GOP flacks: They become predictable Republican mouthpieces and attack dogs against the Dems. For years I read Michelle with delight as she railed against weak-kneed politicians in both parties. She was murder on Republicans as well as Democrats—indeed, on anyone who truckled to the Hispanic immigration lobby. Even more refreshingly, she never indulged any politicians who caterwauled about victimized minorities. Michelle happily banged around the NAACP and other groups that played the victim card. The fact that she’s Filipino may have allowed her to get away with some of her rhetoric, but I doubt that particular ethnic background has provided her with much benefit. Being a devoutly Catholic Filipino doesn’t bring much in the way of liberal grace. That identity is far less useful than being an angry black woman like Michelle Obama screaming against American white racism.
“Yes, there is corruption in the Democratic Party, but this disease is hardly limited to those who bear the ‘D’ label.”
Then I noticed Michelle editorializing against corruption in the Democratic Party. On December 10, 2008, she began her new career with a long screed for National Review Online on the “Democratic Culture of Corruption.” After a series of polemics against Reid, Pelosi, and Barney Frank on Fox and in the usual GOP venues, Michelle came out with a well-publicized book, The Culture of Corruption, thanks to the tiresomely Republican publishing house Regnery. …”
While I agree with Paul—and have expressed similar misgivings, for example here and here— I still harbor some fondness for Malkin and Coulter. Yes, they are of and for the mainstream, but they both have talent.
Next, Paul needs to tackle the second-tier, mezzanine-level, Republican tart brain trust: SE Cupp, Margaret Hoover, and similar heavy hitting idiots, who’ve never uttered an original thought, and whose writing is like Ann Coulter’s vomit (to paraphrase Kevin Michael Grace).
UPDATE I: I have to disagree with Brett Gerasim on the wonderful job Mouths of the Republican mainstream are doing. Someone who spouts half-truths is still a wholesale liar. Moreover, he/she lacks the intellectual wherewithal to grasp the whole picture—of what a devotion to limited authority and republican virtues actually mean.
UPDATE II: Prof. Gottfried replies:
“Like Ilana, I would prefer to listen to Michelle or Ann than someone like Sean Hannity. But that’s not the issue I address in my commentary. What irks me is that perfectly intelligent and highly articulate conservative commentators have turned themselves into GOP hacks to advance their careers. This is not something that Ilana or I, even if we had the opportunity to sell out, would be likely to do. Moreover, Michelle and Ann would hardly be paupers even if they behaved with dignity and stopped kissing up to the GOP. They raked in loads of money before assuming their present abject roles. Although I’ve only heard him a few times, I have a much more positive impression of Mike Savage, who is quite happy to sock it to both of our zombie parties. Savage does not look as if he’s hurting financially because he’s failed to line up.”
Paul
UPDATE III: I think Paul takes for granted his analytical gifts. My good friend imagines that these women are capable of his insights, but are holding back. But anyone with such well-honed herd instincts is not that bright. Both are brighter than average, but that’s not saying much in “Age of the idiot,” as my father has termed the times in which we live.
Coulter is smarter than Malkin. Malkin believes every warring word she’s ever uttered. Ditto Monica Crowley, who is no fool, but is a statist to the core. These ladies are limited in their analytical capacities and in their individualism. Their integrity is also capped.
UPDATE IV (June 24): MONICA MINDLESS? I made a horrible mistake. Prof. Gottfried was kind enough to correct me:
“I agree with your update. By the way, I knew Monica Crowley when she was still serving drinks for Richard Nixon during my visits to the former president’s home in New Jersey. She is far less clever and pretty than Michelle or Ann. Paul.”
BAB's A List, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Journalism, Media, Middle East, Nationhood, Propaganda, Psychology & Pop-Psychology
Like the PLO (Jenin) and the KLA (Kosovo), Americans are lying for their cause—fame and a seat on Oprah’s (concave) couch.
BY NEBOJSA MALIC
The most curious thing about the case of Amina Arraf is that it was exposed as a fraud.
For those unfamiliar with the story, a blogger purporting to be a young Syrian woman (“Gay Girl in Damascus”) has been posting for the last several months – by the strangest of coincidences, just as the anti-government protests in Syria got going. Then, on June 6, a post purportedly from the blogger’s cousin claimed she had been detained by the Syrian police, whereabouts and fate unknown. This caused an uproar on the blogs, Facebook, Twitter and whatnot, as the entire conflict in Syria came to be seen through the prism of “Amina Arraf,” a Damascene lesbian.
Except she was a fraud. “Amina Arraf” was actually an American man, (aptly) named Tom McMaster. All the photos featured on the blog were from his Syrian trip. The photo purporting to be Amina was of Jelena Lecic, a London-dwelling Serb. The speed with which the hoax unraveled was simply amazing.
McMaster’s “apology” on the blog rang hollow: “While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true and not misleading as to the situation on the ground.”
Well, all right then. It doesn’t matter that Tom just lied to the entire world for months. Or that he hasn’t given anyone any reason to believe he actually knows what is actually going on in Syria. It doesn’t matter – he FEELS strongly about it, so he’ll just make up some stuff and serve it with a side of gay rights. The audience will love it.
Both the mainstream media and the internet, suckered by McMaster’s sock-puppetry, are now making excuses. Well, Assad’s Syria is a repressive dictatorship, so there was no way to verify the story, and uh…
Horse-hockey! People didn’t bother challenging the Araf fiction because it was a fiction they wanted to believe. The story had it all – a plucky young woman, gay no less, going up against an “oppressive” regime Washington has hated for a long time. Even now, when the whole thing has been exposed as a massive fraud, most people take the underlying assumptions behind it in stride: that the government in Damascus is evil and needs to be overthrown. Why, they are sending tanks against its own people! (Psst: so did Clinton at Waco.)
It isn’t the first time something like this is happening. Back in 1998, a CBC reporter named Nancy Durham visited the Serbian province of Kosovo, covering a terrorist outfit known as the “Kosovo Liberation Army.” She was told a heart-rending story by a girl, Rajmonda, who claimed to have lost her sister to “Serbian aggressors.” The story aired in January 1999, just as the Western public opinion was mobilizing for a war on Serbia (then still called Yugoslavia). The war began in March and lasted till June, when NATO occupied Kosovo and let the KLA run wild. Returning to look in on Rajmonda, Durham found her family very much alive and well. She had been conned. The whole thing was a KLA trick. Anything for the cause. Yet even as Nancy Durham apologized for being duped and, in turn, duping her audience (the only reporter covering the Balkans that has done so), she still called Rajmonda’s town by its Albanian name, Skenderaj (instead of Srbica). It was a reflection of the “reality” the KLA was creating with the help of NATO troops and the mosaic of lies such as Rajmonda’s story, which they’d fed to all the Western reporters.
Jack Kelley, a USA Today reporter, was busted in 2004 for making up many of his stories. He also covered the conflict in Yugoslavia, and his story of a war diary “proving” Serb atrocities fell firmly into the fake category. Interestingly enough, the source Kelley quoted, “humanitarian activist” Natasa Kandic, weaseled out of the entire affair claiming that, while she personally hadn’t seen the diary in question, surely the claim of atrocities contained therein was true. You see, Kandic makes a pretty penny spinning tall tales of Serbian atrocities, and even gets access to the New York Times editorial pages. The fact that she’d fed Kelley a line of bull never hurt her reputation – because the publishers of her drivel wanted and needed her atrocity porn to be true.
Last, but not least, I vividly remember this sort of behavior during the Bosnian War (1992-1995). During the last year of the war, I worked with a host of Western journalists covering the war from Sarajevo, where I used to live. As their interpreter, I accompanied them to interviews and also translated the local media coverage. Imagine my surprise a year later, when I came across some of their archived articles while I was studying in the US (thanks to the wonders of computerized university libraries, then in infancy) and discovered a substantially different account of what had taken place.
We saw the same things, heard the same words, yet they reported something quite unlike what I had seen and heard. They reported what the audiences back home wanted to hear: vicious villains and virtuous victims, black hats and white hats, and in the end a noble West riding to the rescue, too late for many but better late than never. Some went on to become celebrities, others got into positions of power from which to start more “humanitarian” crusades. And their myth about the Bosnian War still stands, despite the steady trickle of revelations about its fictional character.
In 2004, an unnamed Bush administration official (later said to have been Karl Rove), contemptuously dismissed NY Times reporter Ron Suskind as someone belonging to the “reality-based community“:
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
While it sounds like unbelievable hubris, I don’t doubt for a moment that Rove (if that was indeed him) fully believed this then, or that he still does. It helps explain the entire Bush presidency, but also that of his successor. It doesn’t matter what actually goes on, only what people believe is going on. Everything becomes contingent on perception management. It’s Orwellian. It’s Hollywood. It’s the world our rules live in, and most of us go along.
To borrow a famous line from an Aaron Sorkin play, we can’t handle the truth. We want the lies, because the lies are what we’ve been conditioned to expect and digest. And our rulers believe they can will the world to conform to their desires. They were proven wrong over a thousand years ago, by a Viking named Knud who shamed his fawning courtiers by pretending to believe their platitudes and trying to command the tide.
Knud went on to conquer England. Modern-day emperor wannabes can’t even conquer Afghanistan, and not for the lack of trying. But in the minds of their subjects and their own, they are all-powerful, invincible and unquestionable, even as the tide is coming.
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Nebojsa Malic has been the Balkans columnist for Antiwar.com since 2000, and blogs at grayfalcon.blogspot.com. This editorial is exclusive to Barely A Blog.