What does [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.
Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.
David Ignatius describes the president's about-face on torture photos as a "Sister Souljah" moment. The MSM cannot see the question of torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions as a matter of right and wrong, of law and lawlessness. They see it as a matter of right and left. And so an attempt to hold Bush administration officials accountable for the war crimes they proudly admit to committing is "left-wing." And those of us who actually want to uphold the rule of law ... are now the equivalent of rappers urging the murder of white people. And the authorization of torture is reduced, in David's words, to "controversial Bush-era issues such as interrogation."
There is truth and power. In this town, you know what side the MSM is on. Just keep on walking. And let's have no more curiosity about this bizarre cover-up ...
Too bad it takes more than a pretty face to rebrand America.
UPDATE Al-Jazeera has this video:
Yeah, branding....
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This is the thing about Sullivan, IMO
Is he truly seems to be a man who has a problem with women*, so it was more important that the Republicans and that woman** were defeated, than anything else this previous election(not that he'd admit it). So any and all of Sully's justifications for supporting Obama are suspect, including the one above.
It was all just word soup, designed to appeal to people who wish that this world's problems are so easily solved. And Sully was not the only person who fell victim to this mindset. A lot of the justifications for Obama are being revealed as nothing more than the smokescreen they always were, something that most peddlers were also aware of, IMO.
*I base this observation on watching him many times on Real Time, a show I watched religiously when I had HBO, and could now care less to ever watch again. It's also for this reason I buy his anger now over Obama's treatment of torture and rule of law, since these are things he has advocated since he defected from Bush. But that still doesn't let him off the hook, for blowing smoke about Obama, when the left needed to work to move Obama during the election, as GQM said on another thread.
**Lest I be accused of being a Hillary dead-ender, I will admit I have no fucking clue if she would be any better on these issues. Obama is mainly going along to get along on torture, so as not to upset Versailles
, and part of me understands why. He is hamstrung by his over reliance on Versailles
good graces. Clinton, OTOH, wouldn't be so much, if she had defeated Versailles
in the primary. But, in all likelihood, she could have been willing to also, go along to get along, just to avoid getting crippled in her first term with imaginary scandals(not that it would work). I do know, however, that the leading blogs would be more likely to work against it. Let's just say I can't imagine the DU, rolling over like this for a hypothetical President Clinton.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
+1000, Aeryl
I've got enough to deal with, given all that's exploding in my face right now, to worry about hypotheticals.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
To badly paraphrase David Bowie
Who needs HBO when you've got BHO?
I like a lot of stuff Bill Maher does, but the misogyny and disappointing fits of truthiness just got to be too much for me.
That's what is despressing about him
Is that Maher claims to be on the side of women's rights, but really what he supports is a woman's right to be a fucktoy. He supports reproductive rights, because it enables women to fuck him. He supports getting rid of rigid gender roles, because it enables women to be more available sexually. He expects all women who come on his show to be available to his groping(watch him when he greets his guests at the beginning), and if they aren't, they are not taken seriously as a member of his panel.
Look at the difference in how he treat Ann Coulter, whom he agrees with nothing about, but plays up the sextoy image, vs Hillary Clinton, whom he actually does agree with about many things, but has the temerity to be a Public Woman While Old, i.e. unfuckable.
I loved Religulous, and cheered him at many times when he made these "holy" men confront their own misogyny, but then I remember his own misogyny, and then I'm just sad.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
This is the thing about
Aeryl, I can't thank you enough for noticing this. I unsubbed from the Atlantic way back in the mid-eighties, when I noticed the letters section had adopted the bizarre format of listing all the letters from men first, followed by all the letters from women. Plus, other than Jane Jacobs, the number of articles by women became vanishingly small.
It still boggles my mind how oblivious most of those who considered themselves aware were to the asymptotic rise of sexism during those years.