“Scrutiny” Is Their Business

One can almost see it now. . .

• Welcome to this latest Democratic debate, here on CNN. I’m Wolf Blitzer. Joining me in the questioning in our unique format are distinguished journalists not just from CNN, but from MSNBC and Fox News Channel. As the candidates wish to focus on substance, it has been decided with their agreement to dispense with opening statements and get directly into the questioning. Our first question comes from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, for Sen Obama:
• Thanks, Wolf. Sen Obama, not just Americans but the whole planet knows it will feel like Christmas morning, the morning after you win the election in November they think it will be the best outcome and you represent all the change and new attitude that this country wants I haven’t seen this since I worked for my old boss Jimmy Carter when there was a palpable sense of change and real happeningness out there, and out in the country everywhere, and inside the Beltway also…
• Well, Chris, we are about change. Real change. We are about not just Democrats, but Republicans, and I look forward to continuing to take our real message of renewal and hope to the American people.
• Thank you Sen Obama. Next, for Sen Clinton, from CNN’s Jack Cafferty. First, Jack, at least look like you aren’t scowling and uncurl your lip.
• Sorry Wolf. Sen Clinton…
• Hello Jack.
• Well, you won’t be smiling in a moment. I’ve got a stack of emails here. Faye in Fargo, North Dakota is disgusted by you. Mike in Sioux City wants to know how you can even think about being president, with Sen Obama walking the earth. And similarly, Wayne in Boston asks “You were the wife of a president. The Monica president. How does that make you a viable candidate?” Wayne may not speak for everyone, but I think Wayne has a point. What do you think?
• Well, I am a sitting senator also, and unlike my opponent have voted on hard issues…
• Sen Clinton, sorry, that’s all we have time for on that question. Our next goes to John Gibson, Fox News. Huh, where’s John? Excuse me, but I’m told now in my ear that with Fox so heavily invested covering Berkeley city council meetings, no one was available for tonight’s debate. So we’ll move over to Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC, for Sen Obama:
• Senator. We know you will be a strong leader who will prosecute the warrrr… Oh, um, excuse me. Whew. Wolf, Wolf, is that really him sitting there? Just ten feet away? I can’t bbbbbreathe, I feel, feel, oh, Sen Obam…
• Obviously, Mika is having another moment. While she tries to pull herself together we’ll turn next to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann instead, for Sen Obama:
• Senator, sir, you are a healer, after the current jerk. I don’t have to ask any questions, Wolf. He’s it. Our global-nator. Our Mandela. I’d be honored, Senator, if you’d autograph this piece of crumpled paper?
• Uh, Sen Clinton, you raising your hand isn’t in the format?
• Wolf, if you all aren’t going to ask Sen Obama any actual questions, may I?
• Sen Clinton, please, don’t be naive. Hey! Security, stop them before they…you can’t come up here on stage! Apologies for the benefit of our TV audience who didn’t see that off camera, while I was interacting with Sen Clinton a moment ago, about a dozen college girls swarmed onto the stage and are now kissing Sen Obama and ripping his clothes to shreds, seeking souvenirs…

[Posted 2:10 PM NY time]

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UPDATE, February 20:

I have no problem with a President Obama . . . as long as the country is happy that they have made an informed, reasonable choice, when it comes to making him a President Obama.  For I don’t think Americans as a whole believe they should be electing an “American idol”. We are choosing a politician to be president of the U.S. (someone to hold the post held previously by the likes of a Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt — both of them), not a pop star.

The Invisible Generation

Newsday’s February 12 print edition (it doesn’t seem to be in the internet edition) favored us with this astute editorial cartoon by the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Jim Borgman:

But there’s just one small problem with it:  “Generation Gap” seems an appropriate title, seeing how he managed to jump over and therefore omit an entire generation.  For the woman on the right  (Vinyl?  The Rolling Stones?  Phonebook?) is NOT generally the mother of the girl on the left.  That older woman’s usually her grandmother. 

Where are the roughly 36-50 year olds?  (Compact discs?  Nirvana?  Commodore 64?)  They are the parents of today’s 18-21 year old “Obamacrats”.  It being his cartoonist’s pencil, Mr Borgman alone evidently knows.

[Posted 8:24 PM February 12, NY time]

About This “Endless War”…

In the Niagara Falls Reporter, one Bill Gallagher — “a Peabody Award winner” and “former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News“:

…When it comes to filthy campaigning and fear-mongering, President George W. Bush has no rival. Giving us a preview of the general election, Bush trumped Romney’s “surrender to terror,” telling the CPAC gathering, “This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance.” We are sure to hear more of this cr*p from the man who drained our national prosperity and brought us endless war…

Apparently, Peabody Awards are now handed out for inventiveness in English.  In any event, curiously, on the very same February 12 that the above scholarly inquiry appeared, the Associated Press also told us:

Danish police said Tuesday they have arrested three people suspected of plotting to kill one of the 12 cartoonists behind the Prophet Muhammad drawings that sparked a deadly uproar in the Muslim world two years ago…

Incidentally, it’s fine that he is Muslims’ Prophet.  And he may well also be the A.P’s.  However (with all respect, of course), he’s not yet everyone’s.

That said, debating Republican economic and defense policies is certainly reasonable; but, sadly, the award-winning Mr Gallagher doesn’t choose to expand on his take on the expression “endless war”.  For given that it is a phrase currently leaned upon heavily by some, as well as his own encyclopedic grasp of President Eisenhower’s worldview — …The faux conservatives at the CPAC meeting would boo off the podium any speaker who would dare advance Eisenhower’s view on fiscal responsibility… — and thoughtful erudition as to why we are where we are now, it is a great loss he did not delve into how this so-called “endless war” seems to have roots rather older than either this President Bush, or President Eisenhower, or even the existence of these United States of America.  Or would that have been just too much additional cr*p to have fit in? 

[Posted 8:10 PM February 12, NY time]

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UPDATE, February 13: Newsweek writer Andrew Romano talks one matter, but doesn’t mention another:

Can the Muslim Smear Hurt Obama?*

Oh, boy. Since when did noting an adherence to a global religion constitute a smear?  Wait, allow Mr Romano to try to explain, as he does in this update at the bottom:

…if it wasn’t clear from the article, let me make it clear now–there’s nothing wrong with a Muslim candidate. The problem is, a lot of Americans (sadly) disagree–and as long as they think Obama’s father’s Muslim childhood somehow makes the Illinois senator suspect–or even just less “anti-Jihadi” than McCain–he may have a problem…

So being a Muslim isn’t a problem. Good. But Sen Obama isn’t a Muslim.

However, a “problem” for Mr Romano is that some think that, because of his upbringing, Sen Obama has “more” Muslim about him than usual. But Mr Romano’s ruling that it is a “problem” some might have the nerve to observe so, doesn’t in itself seem to invalidate the plain reality that . . . well, a President Obama would.  For he does.  (Confused enough yet?)

…I’m starting to worry that there are national-security swing voters out there who will be suspicious of someone who has ANY links to the Muslim world–as irrelevant as those links may be. I wish it wasn’t true, but over the past two months, I’ve had at least a dozen people respond to my rote question–What do you think of Barack Obama?–by worrying aloud about his “Muslim background.” I’m always quick to tell them that he’s not a Muslim, but it rarely makes a difference…

Interestingly, it is somehow everything from evidently inappropriate (shush, don’t mention the Islam) to “irrelevant” to refer to ANY links. Certainly one is not to note how Islam — due to its being the birth faith of both his father and his stepfather — would have had, by default, a far greater impact on President Obama’s personal outlook on life than that faith had had on any previous U.S. president.  Such fingerwagging is a good example of how we are apparently not to be allowed to critique this (frankly, rather unique) candidate fully — except on those grounds carefully staked out for us. 

Predictably, Mr Romano is suitably horrified that certain “national security” voters might see ANY such “links” as a “national security” problem. However, that other Americans (like, perhaps, Mr Gallagher) unfamiliar with Islam, and weary of jihadism, might well also believe electing a president named Barack Hussein Obama as nebulously constituting some sort of “peace” offering to jihadists in “the Muslim world”? Also predictably, we don’t get any thoughts in that post from Mr Romano on that latter possible “national security” perspective.