The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Shirley Sherrod’s Lawsuit Threat Against Andrew Breitbart Is Still Just a Threat

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | 56 Comments

It’s the easiest thing in the world to say, “I’ll sue you for defamation!” Actually filing such a lawsuit is another and far more drastic step. A government official successfully pursuing a defamation suit against a private citizen is quite nearly impossible.

Any responsible lawyer would provide three words of helpful advice to Shirley Sherrod: “Discovery’s a bitch.”

Category: Andrew Breitbart

White Hipster Beaten by Black Teen: ‘Shouldn’t Be Listening to Rap Music’

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | 34 Comments

Cultural criticism in Broward County, Florida:

Declaring that white people “shouldn’t be listening to rap music,” a 14-year-old Florida boy allegedly assaulted a man Monday night in what police say was a racially-motivated attack. The teenager was arrested after he allegedly struck the 22-year-old victim, who is white, in the face. According to a Palm Bay Police Department report . . . the victim was on a sidewalk listening to rap music when he was confronted by the boy and other teenagers. The suspect told the man to turn off his music, adding that he was “white and he shouldn’t be listening to rap music.” When the victim replied that he “could listen to whatever he wants,” the suspect “repeatedly” punched him in the face.

“That cracker had it coming, your honor.”

Category: Crime, Culture, Florida, Music, Racism

‘When I Was Younger, So Much Younger Than Today . . .’

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | 9 Comments

On this date in 1965, the second Beatles movie, Help! premiered in London:

Of course, I found out about this on Twitter.  Something else I saw on Twitter was this article by my young friend Chris Moody:

With the turn of a phrase, Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann seemed to sum up last weekend’s RightOnline conference, an annual gathering of conservative activists.
“The sleeping giant is awake,” she declared, drawing a thunder of applause and cheering that could be heard across the fifth floor of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, where the two-day event was held.
For years, the progressive Netroots Nation conference had monopolized the discussion about online activism. Republicans held the White House and Congress until November 2006, a reality that sparked a fury on the left and motivated them to dominate the online world.
The election of Barack Obama, however, turned much of that on its head.
For the first time ever, conservative blogs hold the top two slots in Technorati.com’s politicsl blog ranking, pushing The Huffington Post, the long-reigning champion, to the fifth slot. Conservative blogs also make up half of the top ten political blogs on the Web, while the distinctly liberal blogs only claim two spaces.

I had written a long post connecting these two thoughts, but the computer ate it. I blame Erik Telford.

Category: Blame Erik Telford, Music, Right Online, Uncategorized

The Progressive Inverted Tongue (PIT)

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Gene Lyons offers a fine outing in this English look-alike, over at Salon.

Media fooled by right-wing propaganda — again
This time, the right-wing media juggernaut went too far too fast. Sleazy tactics similar to those employed by online provocateur Andrew Breitbart against former USDA official Shirley Sherrod have been driving the national political conversation and intimidating the so-called mainstream media for the better part of a generation now.

The assault on Sherrod, however, was so mean-spirited, crass and dishonest — not to mention so astonishingly stupid — that even Fox News provocateurs like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck (after initially falling for the hoax) were pretty much forced to apologize. I expect O’Reilly actually meant it.

By inadvertently giving us a simple, compelling drama with an admirable protagonist unfairly maligned, it’s even possible that Brietbart has awakened sleepwalking Washington journalists to their responsibilities to something besides their own careers. But don’t hold your breath.

The ‘again’ in the title refers to how right-wing propaganda has been distorting everything since Whitewater.

Category: Uncategorized

Governor Dean, Keep On Pluckin’ That Chicken

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Newsbusters:

Bret Baier took on former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean for accusing Chris Wallace of lying about Fox News’s coverage of the Shirley Sherrod affair.


I’m interpreting this buffoonery to mean that, after the November election, when BHO resigns in a novel-length tantrum, and Plagiarist Joe is POTUS, that the Guv wants the VP appointment. Other theories?

Category: Democrats

Orwellian Crock, Or: We Took Control Of Health Care Away From Americans, In Order To Put Americans In Control Of Their Health Care

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | 11 Comments

by Smitty (h/t The Lonely Conservative)

In defense of President Obama, he’s only half as lame as some other political figures appearing in infomercials. I can do better than that: if giving good website meant giving good health care, we’d be liking life with this effort.

Other than the realities that these ideas are un-Constitutional, have already failed in Europe, and we can’t afford them, I really don’t see any problems here.

Maybe he truly thinks he has to destroy American health care in order to save it.

Category: Barack Obama, Health Care

Time Magazine Confesses: Rush Is Right!

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | 31 Comments

You don’t see this every day:

President Obama has called the BP oil spill “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced,” and so has just about everyone else. Green groups are sounding alarms about the “Catastrophe Along the Gulf Coast,” while CBS, Fox and MSNBC slap “Disaster in the Gulf” chryons on all their spill-related news. Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted the spill was an “environmental catastrophe.” The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill — he calls it “the leak” — is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.
Well, Rush has a point. The Deepwater explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it’s no leak; it’s the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It’s also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it’s important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. “The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared,” says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana.

The simple answer is this: The ocean is so large that even the catastrophic spill of several million gallons of oil is, by comparison, a drop in the bucket. Whatever the short-term damage done, in terms of destroyed sea life and damaged habitat, will be slowly repaired by natural processes over the course of several years.

Mother Earth is a lot more resilient than environmentalists give her credit for. I remember the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 — a horrible thing, but Santa Barbara today is as lovely a place as you’d ever want to visit and I’m not aware that there is any residual damage from that spill.

Now that Time has admitted Rush is right about the BP spill, how about some belated recognition for Undeniable Truth of Life No. 24?

Category: Environmentalism

Matthew Yglesias: ‘Got Mine, Jack’

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | 12 Comments

Harvard alumnus declares that getting into Harvard is no big deal, at least for poor white kids:

People who are plausible admission candidates at Harvard and don’t quite make the cut end up at Columbia or Penn. People who don’t get into Berkeley go to UCLA. And they all end up fine. There’s just absolutely no need to cry for someone who got into Bryn Mawr instead of Wellesley thanks to affirmative action or legacy preference or structural bias in the SAT or anything else. This is a made-up social problem. . . .
If you were to start writing a list of the problems faced by poor people in the United States of America you’d run out of paper long before you got to elite university admissions policies.

Strangely enough, I agree with Yglesia as to these facts. Why, therefore, did Jesse Jackson lead protest marches against Proposition 209? Why, as a general rule, do liberals rush to the barricades to defend affirmative action programs for minorities, if such programs are a response to “a made-up social problem” and if admission to elite universities doesn’t actually help the supposed beneficiaries?

And isn’t it strange that Yglesias is making such arguments now, when we have a black president with a bachelor’s degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard?

Category: Education
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