Showing posts with label Washington D.C.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington D.C.. Show all posts

Friday, September 6, 2013

See, On One Side Is Uncle Sam, But On The OTHER,...




Ha - He gotcha!


Yep - Uncle Saul's done it again.


I've been telling you our politics have been juvenile on the Right. The Right's been trying to keep up with the neener, neener, neener bullshit on the Left. Everybody from Rush on down said to do so, and now they've O.Ded on it. Anybody should be able to see what's making them sick:
...Partisanship. 
That’s the conclusion that emerges from a recent study by professors at the University of Michigan and Indiana University. Evaluating surveys of more than 5,300 anti-war protestors from 2007 to 2009, the researchers discovered that the many protestors who self-identified as Democrats “withdrew from anti-war protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success” in the 2008 presidential election. 
Had there been legitimate reason to conclude that Obama’s presidency was synonymous with the anti-war cause, this withdrawal might have been understandable. But that’s not what happened — the withdrawal occurred even as Obama was escalating the war in Afghanistan and intensifying drone wars in places like Pakistan and Yemen. The researchers thus conclude that during the Bush years, many Democrats were not necessarily motivated to participate in the anti-war movement because they oppose militarism and war — they were instead “motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments.” Not surprisingly, this hyper-partisan outlook and the lack of a more robust anti-war movement explain why political calculations rather than moral questions are at the forefront of the Washington debate over a war with Syria. 
In that Beltway back and forth, the national media has focused as much on the horserace (will an attack politically weaken the president?) and political tactics (should the president have submitted to a congressional vote?) than on whether an attack would actually make things better in Syria. Similarly, a top Democratic strategist told CNN that potential Republican opposition to a Syria attack “will coalesce Democrats around the president” in support of a military strike. Confirming that dynamic, Democratic Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton said a war resolution will pass not because of the supposed merits of an attack on Syria, but simply “because of loyalty of Democrats” who “just don’t want to see (Obama) shamed and humiliated on the national stage.” 
This is red-versus-blue tribalism in its most murderous form. It suggests that the party affiliation of a particular president should determine whether or not we want that president to kill other human beings. It further suggests that we should all look at war not as a life-and-death issue, but instead as a sporting event in which we blindly root for a preferred political team. 
An anti-war movement is supposed to be a check on such reflexive bloodlust. It is supposed to be a voice of reason interrupting the partisan tribalism. When it, too, becomes a victim of that tribalism, we lose something more than a political battle. As the distorted debate over Syria proves, we lose the conscience that is supposed to guide us through the most vexing questions of all.

Our chattering class, Right and Left - and no matter what the subject - are just really, really, mature.


Isn't it amazing how worked up they can get?

   

 How much time is wasted. How much of our lives. For nothing

Really - I don't say that lightly:


How many lives - both here and abroad?


You know, the big issue.

Absolutely nothing constructive is being done for anyone, no new ideas being introduced or tried, or a way out foreseen of any kind, while morons are running before the cameras - and blogs - screaming, "Oh yeah? Well I know what I am but what are YOU?" On every level, this is the same silly crap in the foster homes - even our enemies know it:



I'd rather watch a fight - any fight - than this candy ass madness:


At least then, I'd know somebody truly gives a damn,...

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Self-Serving? (Why, If That's The Case, I'll Take Two) III


This piece on Dave Chappelle sounds so familiar to TMR it almost physically hurts to read it:
Theories for why he quit abound. Some say he had a mental breakdown, others presume he suffered from being “the one righteous man in a world of corruption”, as Jason Zinoman, a comedy critic for the New York Times, writes in his e-book “Searching for Dave Chappelle”. Though Mr Chappelle has never fully explained his reasons for leaving, in interviews he has said that he worried his comedy was becoming socially irresponsible. He mentioned hearing a white TV-crew member laugh during the filming of a sketch in a way that made him uncomfortable. 
Race is an important theme in his work. When Mr Chappelle first started out, playing to racially mixed audiences in Washington, DC’s largely segregated comedy scene in the 1980s, he caught flak for “not being black enough” (a concern over racial fidelity that white artists never have to face). His TV show dealt with race frankly and often surreally: one sketch concerned a blind white supremacist who did not know he was black; another featured a “racial draft”, in which American ethnic groups “drafted” biracial or culturally hybrid celebrities (the Jews took Lenny Kravitz; the blacks took Tiger Woods; the Asians got the Wu-Tang Clan). In Austin a particularly funny (and unprintable) bit involved him hiring as his personal chef Paula Deen, a white Southern cookbook author who was recently fired from the Food Network for using racial slurs. 
It is not clear what is next for Mr Chappelle when this American tour ends in late September. Despite his long absence, he seems at home on stage. If there were fewer roll-on-the-ground laughs than the audience may have expected, there was also the sense that a restless innovator is pushing the bounds of his art.

Yep - I know the feeling: 

That's just what some of us do,...
 

Thursday, August 15, 2013

I'm Trembling As I Compose This (I Need To Be Held,...)


Look - we can fix this race thing. We've just gotta prepare! Like, whenever minorities get invited to appear on TV and yell, "Y'all's CRAZY!" have a scrolling translation for white folks ready, like this:
"If America’s bipartisan establishment is agreed on something, you can be pretty sure it will be a disaster. That is my reluctant conclusion, after nearly three decades of involvement in politics and journalism, in Washington and New York. 
I say 'reluctant' because I am not a populist by temperament. I respect academic training as well as expertise based on personal experience. I think that institutions are, or should be, less likely to make mistakes than individuals. I detest people who pose as “contrarians” for the sake of controversy. I would happily be an establishmentarian, if there were a U.S. establishment worth belonging to. 
But the track record of what passes for the bipartisan elite in the U.S. in the last generation has been pretty poor. Instead of sober, dispassionate analysis of long-run trends, considered from the perspective of the nonpartisan national interest, the conventional wisdom among America’s movers and shakers has consisted of one hysterical fad after another."

See? Huh? Viola! I'd go from an "Angry Black Man" to a guy who doesn't waste a lot of words.


BTW - if the networks ever decide to call me - better amend that translation to say it's no accident the NewAger's favorite question is "What are you afraid of?"


What's an accident is, whatever we fear, we can find out - fast - at The Drudge Report. 

I'm never getting on TV, am I?