Jesse Jackson’s Gaffe Helped Obama? I Don’t Get It…

Can anyone seriously explain to me why Jesse Jackson’s accidentally overheard remarks about Obama will help Obama in the polls, as nearly every media outlet seems to be claiming as if it were an obvious outcome?

Here’s two different supposed political experts on the matter:

“It reinforces Obama’s effort to present himself as an advocate of responsible personal behavior, a position that Republican candidates like to secure as uniquely their own,” Rozell said.

“Obama should give Jackson and O’Reilly an award for helping his campaign with white voters,” Schultz said.

I don’t get it. How is this supposed to work?

Imagine yourself the stereotypical “white voter” these guys seem to be imagining. What does this incident suggest to you other than that African American voters and leaders are politically divided, beneath the surface? Is that supposed to make you feel good, or something? Why is the fact that someone talked about cutting off Obama’s nuts, and Obama, obviously, doesn’t like the idea very much, supposed to change anyone’s opinion about anything or anyone?

Heck, it doesn’t even change my opinion about Jesse Jackson: the fact that people use crude, hyperbolic and aggressive language when talking in private about factional politics should surprise and outrage absolutely nobody. Except, of course, me being outraged that everyone from Obama’s campaign to FoxNews is pretending it’s a big deal.

Finally I would think that the very fact that the media is insisting that this gives Obama a chance to “look better” in front of voters should itself dampen, or even negate, that very effect. “Sistah Soljah” moments work only insofar as they seem immediate and authentic, and after the first, real Soljah moment, none really do anymore. Especially if the media telegraphs the whole thing in advance.

In my opinion, the only person who’s benefited from this incident is, amazingly and improbably, Al Sharpton, who had a uncharacteristically reasonable comment:

But the Rev. Al Sharpton admonished Jackson and cautioned against dividing black voters.

Obama “is running for president of all Americans, not just African-Americans,” he said. We “must be careful not to segregate Senator Obama and impose some litmus test that is unfair and unproductive.”

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Lazy Obama Editorial: Luke Boggs Phones It In

Conservative writer Luke Boggs was apparently so busy with other things this week that he decided to create his latest opinion column via cookie cutter. The result? The paint-by-numbers predictable “Obama’s frequent regrets may make us sorry.”

It’s a standard recipe in the world of political hit-pieces:

1. take the latest random minor controversy about an enemy candidate.
2. Claim that it’s part of a larger pattern demonstrating deep insight into a key character flaw.
3. Use that flimsy premise as a free-associating excuse to repeat, for the 8000th time, every other gaffe or controversy you can think of from the past several years, just in case readers have forgotten all the other columns that have been written bemoaning each of them in loving detail.

If it almost seems to write itself, that’s probably Boggs and his ilk on both sides of the partisan divide have already written it and things like it a million times over.

In this case, the free association that ties everything together is “regret.” Boggs wants us to believe that there is something significant and unusual about Obama regretting things. It’s a crude fiction: pretending that Obama is more likely than any average person, or any average politician, to regret decisions (all leading to dramatic concluding fantasies of promised presidential pratfalls). It’s an especially silly premise in the current political/media environment, where the cycle of gaffe to controversy to apology/regret plays out with a new story for each candidate nearly every week.

But in trying to prove his point that Obama is almost pathologically regretful, it doesn’t take long before Boggs turns to what might be the new standard in utterly vapid, meaningless columnist drivel: the Google search hit comparison.

So what jumped out at me was how quickly Obama regretted his decision. And that, in turn, made me wonder how often the senator has regretted other choices. Answer: pretty often. (Googling “Obama” and “regrets” yields more than a million hits.)

In addition to demonstrating ignorance of how search engines work and the confounding factors, Boggs is so lazy that he didn’t even control his “study.” “Obama regrets” indeed nets 1,150,000 hits. But “McCain regrets” gets 902,000 hits, almost as many. Mitt Romney only has 79,200 regrets, making it truly a tragedy for America that he lost the Republican nomination. “Bush regrets” nets 2,370,000 (handily beating Obama, despite Boggs’ claim that Bush has a laudable lack of regret).

Boggs should get extra points for making Obama’s children the random jumping off point for his rant, while at the same time purporting to lecture nameless “humorless activists” for criticizing Obama’s decision to allow them an interview. How dare anyone accuse someone of exploiting children for political gain when he’s doing it!

As I’ve argued before, most people are wasting their time when they pretend that they can actually judge what the psychological or personal character of any given public figure is “really” like. Media snippets, scandals and sound bytes are not exactly deep wells of objective or comprehensive insight. The commentariat simply finds some simple, emotionalized caricature for each figure and then constantly reinforces it with selection bias and forced interpretation. But it’s rare that the initial slate of traits they pick has much merit, or really sets the candidate so far apart from any other.

And that’s just the regular journalists. Pretending that an outright partisan like Boggs can perform objective psychological analysis on someone’s character right in the midst of an election is even more ridiculous.

The sensible standard is simply to figure out whether a candidate’s political stances, party, and/or what he’s likely to do in office, all fit what you want out of the next 4 years. Treat attempts to pigeonhole politicians on anything but their political history and proposals with extreme skepticism, if not blanket disdain. Of course, if everyone approached politics that way, people like Luke Boggs, who trade in sub-rational “psychological analysis” instead of real policy debates, wouldn’t have a place in the funnypapers. Or, at the very least, they wouldn’t be able to meet their deadlines, now forced to put some real, time-consuming thought into policy analysis.

Update: According to Google, Boggs himself has only 26,300 regrets. But at least for the moment, this very post tops the results list.

Defending Obama’s “Faith-Based” Funding Changes: Special Rules for the Religious?

I’m by and large indifferent to Obama’s promised expansion of “faith-based” funding, which like most government programs that target certain groups, is likely to boil down to patronage, just as it did in the Bush administration. Maybe he’ll do better, enforce some actual standards of quality and non-partisanship. In fact, given the outright disdainful incompetent way many of these programs have been run, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could do as badly. But politics has a certain gravity, not unlike economic markets, that quickly washes away one’s original intentions when it comes time to make policy. I can’t really celebrate or decry Obama on this stuff.

There are, however, some broader important church/state principles here, and a lot of people making arguments that I just don’t think hold water.

Most prominently, there’s the religious folks who are horrified that Obama is suggesting that they might have to play by the same rules as everyone else who receives government grants. The NYTimes calls it the “six little words” that threaten to throw a wrench into his overture to religious groups

Obama Against “Mental” Exceptions to Late-Term Abortion Bans

Obama’s stance on abortion is pretty much in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, but with one critical difference when it comes to late-term abortions (i.e. abortions post fetal viability). And, luckily, for him, it’s precisely the exception I would make. Obama doesn’t think that “mental distress” should qualify as an exception to bans on late term abortions. This position puts him at odds with pro-abortion rights groups and members of his own party.

Still, I think it’s the right one. Anti-abortion groups have a legitimate fear that sufficiently vague “mental” health exceptions could undermine the point of the ban entirely: any person can develop “tremendous emotional toll” even from a normal pregnancy. But that really doesn’t fall under the same situation as health exceptions in general, and in practice, this exception can basically serve as an end-run around the ban. Groups like NARAL, of course, paint things differently:

The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: “A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy. Severe fetal anomalies, for example, can exact a tremendous emotional toll on a pregnant woman and her family.”

This is yet another situation in which I wish people on both sides of the abortion divide would just express what they actually mean: what specific conditions is NARAL talking about? Conditions like anencephaly, where the brain essentially has not formed properly, and the baby has no higher brain function and no chance of survival beyond a few weeks? (I’m in favor of allowing abortion in such cases) Or does it mean Down’s Syndrome, a missing arm, or a partially malformed gut? All of the latter could be called “severe anomalies,” but such babies are essentially normal in terms of their capacity to feel and suffer. (I’m against abortion in such cases) The details matter.

In any case, while he’s sure to take fire from liberals on this, Obama has about as much chance of getting any honest credit for his stance as the New York Mets do of winning the Superbowl. Anti-abortion groups are, of course, having none of it:

David N. O’Steen, the executive director of National Right to Life, said Obama’s remarks to the magazine “are either quite disingenuous or they reflect that Obama does not know what he is talking about.”

“You cannot believe that abortion should not be allowed for mental health reasons and support Roe v Wade,” O’Steen said.

O’Steen is technically right here: a companion case to Roe was Doe v. Bolton, which defined “health” exceptions very broadly, including considerations of “emotional, psychological, familial” factors. But O’Steen is still essentially dissembling: the definition, while broad, is also vague enough that someone like Obama could reasonably believe that those other factors could almost never, on their own, justify an exception.

O’Steen, of course, has no reason to be charitable and honest in how he portrays Obama. Even if Obama really is closer to his own stance on this issue (which he already has a decent reason to doubt), Obama’s party taking power in the White House is far far more important to his chosen issue (outlawing abortion) than giving him credit for a minor agreement and risking rank-n-file anti-abortion voters potentially seeing Obama more favorably.

Obama’s Faith Based Mistake

An Obama presidency, apparently, will mean more “faith-based” programs funded by the government. Starting life as Bill Clinton’s “Charitable Choice” and then becoming yet another a clumsy partisan bludgeon in the Bush administration under the name of his “faith-based initiatives,” the drive to drive more government money into the hands of religious groups has always had a questionable track record. Religious groups themselves have been wary of government strings attached, and a whole lot of questionable programs with dubious efficacy have ended up with oodles of handouts (and the payouts have often been suspiciously partisan).

So color me somewhat skeptical that an Obama-run version is going to be any better. I’m mostly with Barry Lynn: shut the program down entirely. Go back to simply funding non-profits to provide services, and let churches figure out how to organize as non-profit charities, including all the same regulations and responsibilities, if they want any moola. Let the rules be the same for everyone, instead of trying to give religious groups special treatment.

On the other hand, Obama does get the above issue mostly right where Bush got it wrong:

And while Bush supports allowing all religious groups to make any employment decisions based on faith, Obama proposes allowing religious institutions to hire and fire based on religion only in the non-taxpayer-funded portions of their activities — consistent with current federal, state and local laws. “That makes perfect sense,” he said.

It does. The issue is simple: when the government contracts out some service to a private organization, what they’re paying for is the service, not the promotion of someone else’s ideology. For many religious organizations, this is potentially a problem: they don’t want the taking of some government money to force them to change all of their programs and services and ideals. The solution is simply to keep a separate set of books: to separate out the charitable service from the religious part.

Catholic charities have, in fact, functioned like this for decades, mostly without any problems at all. The modern Catholic attitude here has always been the most laudable: help people first. Not as a means promote their religion, but because their religion calls us to do it. And if people are inspired by that, want to understand what would motivate such charity, well great.

Unfortunately, too many evangelical organizations basically see the promotion of their ideology itself as the primary act of charity in many of these endeavors. Sure, we’d like to get you off drugs. But it’s getting you hooked on Jesus that will really help you. And that’s where we run into problems… and get lame whining like this:

That’s because telling a small organization to keep employees hired with federal funds separate from others “is unmanageable — and besides those folks want to hire people who share their vision and mission,” Towey said.

Sorry, but that’s just pathetic. If you care more about your own vision and ideology than providing the charity or service you’re supposed to be providing, that’s fine. But in that case, you don’t have the right to expect other taxpayers’ money to pay for your proselytizing, or to get a gay taxpayer’s money for your program only to turn around and discriminate against the person who’s unwillingly paying for it.

Obama Seal Gone: Nation’s Sanity Still in Question

The Obama campaign has rather wisely dropped the use of their latest logo, after much mockery.

Me, I’m left saddened and embarrassed for the media commentators who couldn’t resist piling on this story, and the many many people who took this non-issue seriously.

Political commentator Larry Sabato gets it right on the first try:

“The press corps adopts a subtext for each candidate,” Sabato told The Examiner. “Daddy Bush was ‘a nice guy but out of touch.’ Bill Clinton was ‘smart but randy.’ Bob Dole was ‘heroic but too old.’ Gore was ‘brilliant but a fibber and a bore.’ Dubya was ‘pleasant but dumb.’”

He added: “Obama’s subtext is rapidly becoming ‘charismatic but arrogant.’”

None of these characterizations of any of these politicians was built on honest, accurate, or comprehensive appraisal of any of these men. Few of the claimed traits (except maybe for Clinton being “randy” and Dole being “old”) actually seem more characteristic of the men in question than they are for the others. Instead, they’re built out of an accretion of heavily interpreted, and often factually challenged, fluff pieces. Of which this seal case was the perfect, almost paradigmatic, example.

This is one more reason I’m far more cynical about voters (more in the aggregate than any individual) than I am about politicians, or even the media. It’s ultimately voter behavior that drives how politicians act, react, and how they present themselves. It’s voter demand that favors schoolyard psychoanalyzing for their election coverage instead of actual policy debates.

Voters get legitimately frustrated and cynical about our political system. But the political system has just as much cause to be frustrated with voters right back.

Almost Final Word on Obama Seal Nonsense

I honestly haven’t had a lot of interest in doing much election commentary here at the Bad Idea Blog, but there’s always just so much stupid flying around that it’s often hard to help myself.

Take this latest manufactroversy: the Obama campaign has been sporting a new logo, which sports elements of the standard U.S. Seal designs.

Can you guess what happens next? Of course: people immediately declare that it’s a bastardization of the Presidential Seal. And that particular Seal, something no one gave any thought to two days ago, has suddenly become one of the most sacred and inviolable images in the national consciousness. Holy Arrogance Batman! cries one anti-Obama website.

Even if it was actually a version of the Presidential Seal, I’d still be at a loss as to exactly how it would be arrogant: campaigns remix all sorts of patriotic iconography for their materials all the time. But, in fact, it’s not even that.

Folks, if you want to style yourself the proud defenders of the honor of U.S. icons from the petty purposes of politicians, perhaps you should learn more about them first. The symbolic elements on Obama’s logo are not, in fact, unique to the Presidential Seal. They are, in fact, known as the Great Seal of the United States, and it’s found all over the place. It’s on various Congressional Seals as well, as well as various government agencies. It’s stamped on most official U.S. documents. (And no, desperate defenders, a non-forged non-reproduction of similar elements is not a violation of federal law, as some have claimed)

And it gets even more ridiculous. The Drudgereport has headlined the logo as “Obama Changes U.S. Presidential Seal…” Can you get any more ridiculous than that (yes, you can, for instance: John A. Davison)? Well, sorry to deflate the hew and cry, but the Presidential Seal has not been “changed.” It’s still exactly the same as it was as far as I can tell.

This is just yet another example of political pareidolia: people hyped up on campaign crack who inevitably fit every single news tidbit into the same caricature of already chosen candidate of their ire.

You see, the logo isn’t, can’t possibly be just some of the standard sorts of US iconography used and remixed a million different ways on lots of campaign materials. It couldn’t even just be a seal similar to the Great Seal. No no: it’s THE Presidential seal, and bastardized by Obama’s fabled ego.

From the way these people go on about it, it’s as if they imagined Obama personally stole an official seal a trip to the White House, cut it up with scissors, scrawled all over it, and spray-painted it blue.

Folks, that’s not even remotely how campaigns work. Here’s pretty much the spectrum of where these sorts of things usually come from:

1) Whatever random Democratic design firm Obama’s campaign employs is tasked with coming up with a new logo. They, a bunch of random folks in a boardroom with a whiteboard, sit around brainstorming, pump out a few clunkers, and campaign people eventually reject most of them, liking bits of others. At the end of the process, they end up with the one everyone hates the least. And we’re off.

2) The campaign goes more grassroots: it needs a new logo, and fast, and HQ scrambles. Some random teenager “hey, I’m pretty good with photoshop!” and whips this up. The campaign, or even the candidate pats them on the head, and says “uh, thanks kid!” And we’re off.

But of course, none of that sort of inoffensive everyday nonsense fits easily into the “arrogance” narrative.

I can’t wait until this election is over, and the collective IQ of the country shoots back up to normal.

Rolling Stone Sloppily Slams John McCain’s Love of Evangelical Joel Osteen

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone journalist and special reporter on Bill Maher’s “Real Time,” isn’t happy with John McCain. Not at all. And he’s got a long list of complaints, the most valid and snicker-worthy one being that John McCain may be one of the few Presidential candidates in history who now opposes not one, but “two different bills bearing his own name.”

Taibbi, however, is particularly peeved by McCain’s choice of inspiring evangelical authors:

McCain’s transformation is so complete that at a recent town-hall meeting in Nashville, when asked to name an author who inspired him, the candidate — who once described televangelists of the Jerry Falwell genus as “agents of intolerance” — put none other than Joel Osteen at the top of his list. “He’s inspirational,” McCain said.

Standing at the meeting, I didn’t write Osteen’s name down in my notebook — apparently because my brain refused on some level to accept that McCain had actually said it. Of all the vile, fake, lying-ass, money-grubbing shyster scumbags on the face of this planet, there is perhaps none more loathsome than Osteen, a human haircut with plastic baseball-size teeth who has made a fortune selling the appalling only-in-America idea that terrestrial greed is actually a form of Christian devotion. “God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us,” Osteen once wrote. This is the revolting, snake-oil-selling dickhead that John McCain actually chose to pimp as number one on his list of inspirational authors. So much for “go, sell everything you have and give to the poor,” and all that other hippie crap from the New Testament.

Taibbi, who’s famous for penning the poorly received “52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope” while “coming out of a Vicodin haze,” has quite a talent for outraged posturing. But no matter how many fulminating expletives he tosses out, I just don’t buy it.

He’s got this thing exactly backwards.

See, the thing is: Osteen is actually one of the least offensive of televangelists I can think of. The primary complaint most people have about Osteen is that is not that he’s a fire-breathing hatemonger, but rather that he’s milquetoast. He preaches happiness and self-improvement, at times with only the barest hints of scripture or doctrine. Some conservative critics have even hinted (hyperbolically, certainly) that his ministry is “atheistic” in character, or even that it represents the last gasp before Christianity collapses into materialism and embrace of popular culture. When Larry King grilled him on his theological views, “I don’t know” was Osteen’s most common answer. And he took considerable heat for being unwilling to clearly state that Christ was the only way to heaven.

Osteen does toe the general conservative evangelical party line when called on it. But the point is that he rarely goes out of his way to emphasize traditional religious right stalking horses. He’s even famous for his “no politics from the pulpit” principle, which, if you know anything about politics, is nigh unthinkable in some quarters (Democratic politicians who regularly run whirlwind tours of African American churches, I’m looking at you).

Like most evangelicals, Osteen’s views on homosexuality are hardly laudable… but they’re also about as tame as one could possibly expect, given his chosen religion:

“We don’t think it is God’s best and we have personally seen many homosexuals changed through the power of God. But we aren’t going to judge or turn people away because they are gay. We all have sins in our lives and it is no worse than any other issue.”

Translation: ‘yeah, homosexuality bad, yadda yadda, let’s move on to another subject.’ And don’t think that this ambivalence has gone unnoticed by the more traditional neighborhood gaywatch patrol.

What’s especially silly about the sudden Osteen-hate is that Taibbi had just finished launching a salvo of preemptive accusations about McCain being an inevitable race-baiter (“watermelon-waving” is one particularly polite phrase he uses). But Osteen’s mega-church empire is characterized by a degree of racial integration that few progressive churches can match. I’m willing to get that there’s a far higher percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in Osteen’s congregation and leadership than there are African American and Hispanic writers at Rolling Stone.

I’m also willing to bet that Osteen’s church has given far more money in charity, both percentage-wise, per parishioner, and of course in total, than Taibbi ever has, despite Taibbi’s whining about Osteen’s supposed obliviousness to Jesus/”hippie crap.”

In short, while there’s certainly plenty one can criticize about Osteen, he’s by far least threatening of any of the crowd-pleasing evangelical names McCain could have tossed out to his audience. I’m not exactly in tune with what Osteen believes, but then I’m not in tune with either Obama or McCain when it comes to religion, and I doubt I’d find Obama’s religious inspirations all that compelling either. That doesn’t mean I think they’re all vile: I just don’t agree with how they see the world.

Taibbi, on the other hand, clearly just hates Osteen’s guts. But at least for this atheist, I think that tells me more about Taibbi’s than it does about Osteen. Or McCain.

This Election Hangs On Race? Whose Fault Will That Be, Greeley?

Roman Catholic priest and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Andrew Greeley thinks that racial prejudice is everywhere, and is a major player in this election:

How many of the male readers of this column who are habitues of bars, locker rooms, commuter train bull sessions, pool rooms and men’s clubs have not heard the indigenous racial slurs of such environments applied to Obama?

Now, I didn’t and still don’t think that the “Obama’s crazy minister, Jeremiah Wright” controversy was much more than hype, but I have to concur with the folks at National Review’s blog Corner:

But if Father Greely were really concerned about ubiquitous racism, rather than politics, why hunt for it in locker rooms, bars, and other stealthy places, while neglecting it when it is openly aired and audaciously voiced by Father Pfleger from the pulpit of Trinity Church?

It seems very dubious to attack racism generally as a pernicious influence all while giving a pass to Obama’s own racially charged allies… who he has been forced, repeatedly, to denounce. And don’t get me wrong here. I certainly don’t think it’s fair to besmirch Obama based on the views of others: views that he’s shown no direct evidence of sharing. But I just wish that same charity could be extended to more of the American public as well.

Race as a subject in politics is a sort of catch-22. If you don’t pay much attention to it, then people can later argue that you ignored a really important sub-text. It could be, as some fear, that a considerable number of racists will quietly vote against Obama this year. But on the other hand, making a lot of noise about race is as good a way as any to ensure that bitter racial disputes will come to the fore, and dominate the debate in an ugly way. Based largely in innuendo and interpretation, along with healthy doses of cultural disconnect (which is not the same thing as racism), racial tensions in politics tend to feed on themselves.

And in any case, if racists really are likely to quietly vote against Obama, it’s hard for me to see what making a significant fuss about it is going to accomplish. If people consciously act out of secret racist motives, then aren’t they quite unlikely to change their votes because of some general accusation of widespread racism? And if they subconsciously have racial motives, as Greeley alleges, then calling them out on it isn’t going to make people already in denial more self-aware: it’s just going to make them feel insulted and see Obama’s defenders as taking cheap shots for petty advantage.

I guess I just don’t see what good focusing so much on the problem would do (aside from firing up the Democratic base) no matter what you think the level of secret or overt racism at play is. If you think that Obama’s candidacy faces its greatest hurdle in some sort of ubiquitous American racism, then fine. No one can easily prove or disprove that view… but what can we really do about it aside from kvetch?

It makes far more sense, in my mind, for Obama’s well meaning allies to give up on bemoaning racism, and focus on just convincing people like the man and his policies directly. If people are quietly racist, then the best cure is for them to discover that they like and respect the candidate who happens to be black.

That will change racial attitudes, overt and covert alike. That approach is going to go much farther fighting racism than stoking the fires of bitterness and outrage at a largely invisible and untrackable beast of indeterminable size.

The Bible: Read it as Being Correct OR Take Seriously What it Actually Says?

From James McGrath, who’s been following the strange and embarrassing saga of Obama-as-Anti-Christ rhetoric, comes what turns into quite an interesting reflection on the tension between wanting the Bible to be prophetically correct, and wanting to read what the text is really, literally trying to say.

As McGrath explains, that tension is particularly high in the Bible’s final chapter. Revelations, the fevered dream of a Christian-vindicating apocalypse, has always been one of the Bible’s most controversial inclusions. While there’s always the possibility that some other apocalypse would have taken its place (they were quite popular theological devices at the time), its hard to even imagine what Western History would have looked like without its long series of end of the world cults and the omnipresent fear the world was ever heading towards the greatest darkness imaginable.

But Biblical scholars have long known that the clearest, simplest meaning of the text is that it refers to and end of days that prominently features Roman Empire. And not just any future possible Roman Empire: the very one that is now non-existent. Given the specific continuities described in Revelatons, any attempt to fit any modern Anti-Christ du jour runs into some severe problems, per McGrath:

Once one realizes this, suddenly it becomes clear that fundamentalists are forced to believe that the temple will be rebuilt and a new Roman empire created, simply to make the world the way it was when the book was written, so that its imagery can still have a future reference. But it makes no sense to say that John refers to a series of 6 emperors, and then ignores all the others that followed until Obama became president of the United States, and suddenly he is the last one. There is nothing in the text and nothing in any form of intelligent reasoning that could make such a leap justified.

And so we’re left with a real dilemma for fundamentalist literalists (though few will likely acknowledge it): which is more important? That the Bible must be seen as correctly predicting future events, at all costs, no matter how elaborate the interpretive gymnastics required to keep it even potentially viable? Or that you should read and take seriously the plain text meaning of the words?

McCain Panders to the Left, Bitter Hillary Supporters Pander to the Right…

…could it be destiny?

Anyway, it’s often dizzying for me to flit between two different political universes.

On one hand, we have unrepentant Hillary Clinton bloggers who have decided to extend their primary efforts to elect Hillary into the general election.

Now, I can’t help but have some sympathy for these folks. Political campaigns are an addictive, disorienting rush: it’s like falling down the Alice in Wonderand’s rabbit hole and staying there for months. These bloggers bought lock stock and barrel into every negative thing ever said or thought about Obama. They posted novels worth of breathless declarations and outrage, retyping daily campaign emails and talking points, pouring on lifetimes worth of analysis, all of which self-confirmed, a little more each day, the conclusion that Hillary was the one true Democrat, and Obama the champion of everything phony and vile.

I’m not playing favorites here: in this sort of delusion, they are, of course, the precise mirror image of Obama’s own #1 fans. It’s just that for Obama’s boosters, there’s simple continuity, and the rush now continues apace without any wakeup call. For Hillary’s hacks, however, it means they have to let go of the drama and the obsession. To cool off, and realize that maybe, just maybe, campaign rhetoric is a teensy bit overblown for dramatic effect. But it’s not an easy thing to admit.

Still, I can’t remember quite this sort of viciousness when Howard Dean lost, and back in the 2004 primaries, I thought I’d never met people more fired up for someone than they were for Dean. Even so, all those folks seemed to get over it pretty darn fast.

On the other hand, over on the actual conservative side, we find that many folks aren’t too happy with what McCain’s been whispering into the ears of disgruntled Hillary devotees.

McCain, apparently, favors liberal judges and has the same position on gay marriage as John Kerry. Who knew? (I’ve just gotten over finding out that Tim Russert was somehow both a dogged liberal apologist and a Big Media Bush-lover who rolled over for the Iraq War, so maybe I’m just not ready for this new oxymoronic shocker.) Of course, I have a feeling that the “PUMA’s” (Party Unity My Ass) in question here might be taking wishful thinking a bit too far.

Amongst McCain’s former Hillary-supporting visitors, however, there was a rather uncomfortable note sounded when it came to light that a certain Paula Abeles was involved in organizing them.

As Ben Smith explains it:

… Abeles first made the news in 2003, when she and her husband, then-Monticello Association President Nat Abeles, led the fight to keep members of the Hemmings family — descendants of Jefferson slave and, some historians believe, mistress Sally Hemmings — out of a gathering of the Monticello Association, which is made up of lineal descendants of the third president.

She even went as far as to pose as a 67-year old African American woman named Cassandra Mays-Lewis in chat rooms to help in her husband’s efforts to lobby against the inclusion of Jefferson’s “blacker” descendants at “family” reunion gatherings.

For a group whose chief complaint against Obama was how dirty he was for supposedly “race-baiting” the Clintons, they probably could have chosen their own company a little more wisely.

Michelle Malkin’s Lazy “Baby Momma” Excuses

I’m not fan of Michelle Malkin, but she’s perfectly justified in complaining when her critics employ sexist and racist stereotypes to dismiss her arguments and positions out of hand. And you’d think that’d make her more self-aware and sympathetic when other people receive the same the same lazy treatment. Isn’t it better to stand on unmoving principle about what’s acceptable and honest in public discourse, rather than pretending that any tit justifies any tat?

Apparently not. When FoxNews recently ran a graphic calling Michelle Obama “Obama’s baby momma,” Malkin was quick to both (legitimately) deny any responsibility and then simply belittle the idea that it was objectionable.

For Malkin, instead of a chance to unabashedly exercise a principle, it was just another chance to play into her usual game of interpretive innuendo.