SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
March 2007
Volume 14, Number 3
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
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CONTENTS
Features
-> Mighty White of You, Hillary!
-> The End in View
The Sobran Forum
-> Jonah Jumps the Whale -- for Giuliani
Cartoons (Baloo)
"Reactionary Utopian" Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
Mighty White of You, Hillary!
(pages 1-2, 6)
Writing about politics these days takes a lot of
tact, like being introduced to the Elephant Man. How to
begin? "Nice suit you're wearing there, Mr. Merrick.
Who's your tailor?"
Women and minorities never have a nice day, as we
all know, and I certainly don't want to give offense; but
candor also has its claims, so I feel compelled to say
that Hillary Clinton, the aging, Geritol-swigging Queen
of the Boomers, increasingly reminds me -- and I'll bet
I'm not the only one -- of Cathy Bates in MISERY. This
bodes ill, as they say, for her 2008 presidential hopes.
Yet that isn't the end of it.
Let me say up front that much as I distrust Hillary,
I prefer her to most of the other hopefuls so far, if
only by default, as I'll explain later.
Because the candidates are so numerous this time,
it's easy to forget that the elected president (and for
that matter every presidential nominee of the two major
parties) has always been the last man standing. That is
to say, a white male. Hillary is a white female.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, the current
American Idol of American politics, is a half-white male.
But "half-white" still means nonwhite (in diverse,
multiracial, multicultural America, the word "mulatto" is
taboo, like the more recent "macaca"), yet there is
grumbling that he is "not black enough" from the sort of
people who think Sidney Poitier should have been more
like Superfly. If that's normative for blackness, Obama
should carry a switchblade (assuming he doesn't already)
and address Hillary, when she tries to bully him, as
"bitch" and "ho." His campaign rallies could also feature
the theme from SHAFT.
No, I haven't forgotten that Hillary is from
Illinois, too. So was Abe Lincoln, though he was born in
Kentucky, technically. Obama is stressing his Lincoln
parallels, as in his choice of Springfield to declare his
candidacy, but he seems unaware that the Great
Emancipator opposed letting blacks vote in Illinois.
True, Lincoln opposed slavery, after a fashion, as long
as freed blacks could be induced to leave the continent.
He didn't call them "African Americans," which he'd have
thought a contradiction in terms; he called them
"Africans" (or, more privately, "niggers"), giving their
"physical difference" from whites as the compelling
reason to deny them "social and political equality."
Though he said repeatedly that "all men are created
equal," his dream of an all-white America differed
somewhat from the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. It was
more like the dream of George Lincoln Rockwell.
Today Abe Lincoln, barring some metamorphosis, would
have been most at home among neo-Nazis. No wonder
Frederick Douglass called him "pre-eminently the white
man's president." In our world he'd be known as Skinhead
Lincoln.
Not that I'd urge Hillary to stress these easily
ascertainable data. That might cost her more than it
would gain her. When it comes to Lincoln, even historians
know enough to dummy up. In mass politics the prudent
rule is simple: Get real. Stick to the beloved imaginary
Abe. Abe the apostle of colorblind equality and
brotherhood.
The old Obama -- the Obama of yesteryear, 2006 --
needs a makeover. The electorate might respond well to a
newer, funkier Obama. Yet in today's volatile atmosphere,
that approach might backfire. Hillary has her own
well-paid black hirelings, who point out, reasonably
enough, that a black at the head of the ticket could drag
down all other Democratic candidates.
This is a powerful argument, but it cuts both ways.
A woman at the head of the ticket, particularly the most
hated woman in America, could also drag her whole party
down. Even if she wins.
To make matters worse, Hillary may also be the most
hated woman in the Democratic Party! After years of
trying to soften her liberal image, guess whom she has
infuriated: liberals. Her positions on the Iraq war, gay
marriage, the flag-burning amendment, and even abortion
-- all these have alienated some of her strongest friends
and supporters of yore, notably in the movie industry,
only recently a Clinton stronghold. Few think she has
reached her new positions out of sincere conviction:
always a bitch, she is now arguably a ho.
The Hollywood bellwether David Geffen of DreamWorks
has told Maureen Dowd of the NEW YORK TIMES why he is
switching to her rival: Obama is "inspirational," whereas
the Clintons are such liars that "it's troubling" (and,
for good measure, Geffen hints that Bill hasn't changed
his randy ways). The spreading conviction among Dems is
that even with 100 percent name recognition, Hillary
can't win. And lots of them won't forgive her for backing
the war at first, even though she has repented. She has
been virtually Bushified. Serves the bitch right. Ho, ho,
ho.
Obama is also chipping diligently into Hillary's
once-strong black support. When both of them spoke on the
same day in Selma, Alabama, he could thank the civil
rights movement of the Sixties for paving the way for a
black president; Hillary could hardly match that! If
elected, would Obama show up for his inauguration wearing
an Afro and an oversized zoot suit?
All of which brings us back to the question, If
Hillary and Obama cancel each other out, who will be the
last man standing? The likely answer is the cute little
Disney cartoon rodent John Edwards, who has hinted,
despite some pro forma griping about the Iraq war, that
he would not be totally averse to nuking Iran. ("All
options are on the table," he told an Israeli audience.
"Repeat: =all= options.") And being a slick white guy,
Edwards would probably crush any Republican in November.
After eight years of Bush, a GOP victory would be a
miracle. And considering the choices, not a very nice
sort of miracle; though we must also take into account
the Democrats' genius for losing apparently sure things.
For some reason, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani
is now leading the Republican pack. Pro-abortion,
pro-homo, =and= pro-war, with a marital record that would
scandalize ever-decadent Tinseltown, not on speaking
terms with his own children, Giuliani's chief claim to
fame is having struck doughty poses after the 9/11
attacks (themselves the result of the sort of pandering
Middle East policy he espouses). His other qualifications
to be national duce escape me.
Trailing Giuliani slightly, and only slightly less
odious, is Arizona's senator John McCain, a pathological
hawk who, even before 9/11, was telling Jewish audiences
that the United States should go to war for Israel even
if it wasn't in America's interest to do so. Hillary may
be the only bitch in the race, but she's far from being
the only ho.
Far behind this sorry pair (whose fading glamour
appeals chiefly to neoconservatives) are such hopeless
curiosities as Governor Mitt the Massachusetts Mormon
Romney, who, as NATIONAL REVIEW's Kate O'Beirne points
out, is the only solid monogamist of the three. Like
Giuliani and McCain, he is a white male; like Hillary, he
has a record of kaleidoscopic conviction, only more
dizzying. He's counting on conservative voters to trust
that the views he has adopted this week are for keeps,
rather like Giuliani's latest nuptial vows. We need not
detain ourselves with such also-rans as George Allen and
Newt Gingrich, except to congratulate ourselves on their
futility. It's hard to imagine conservatives turning out
enthusiastically for any of the soggy GOP options.
Given this appalling field, is there any hope for a
dark horse to surge to the fore and rescue us? You may as
well pine for party bosses to settle everything in a
smoke-filled room, if such a room is still legal anywhere
in this great land of ours. Financial realities have made
the dark horse extinct, unless a Ross Perot decides to
give it another go.
Still, all things considered, it looks as if only
Hillary can raise, and has raised, the awesome amount of
money now needed by any little white boy who dreams of
growing up to be president. And no Republican can win,
unless the Democrats can actually blow it again. Sure,
Obama and Edwards and the nation's comedians can make
Hillary look bad, but so what?
I've about given up on Delaware's Joe Biden --
clean, articulate, and white, mildly silly but affable
and charming, too moderate to be perniciously liberal --
so I'm resigned to Hillary. What more harm can she really
do? It's not as if we had any hope of a president who
took the oath of office literally. Anyway, the next
president, whoever it is, will arrive at the Oval Office
with an agenda already decided by fate: coping with the
Bush aftermath. That doesn't leave much room for
innovative action.
Most Americans, in their basic decency, complain
that because of "partisan bickering" the government can't
"get things done." Would that it were so! The real
problem is that it gets a lot done. Way too much, in
fact. Legislation means coercion, and anyone who is
serious about freedom would want to repeal laws and
programs, not make more of them.
So the most desirable presidential candidate is the
one least likely to succeed in piling more legal
obligations on us; one who would be too cautious to rush
into war and foreign adventures, one unlikely to mobilize
Congress into overweening action. My guess is that that
would be the hated Hillary. George W. Bush has made a
difference; she won't. That's all I ask of a president
now.
Only active, volcanic hatred of Hillary can spur a
sufficiently large turnout to produce a Republican
victory next year; hatred is the only force strong enough
to counter the power of money in politics. But how potent
will lingering Hillary-hatred be by November 2008? Won't
most voters see her as a symbol of the good old days
before Bush? And after all, she has morphed into the
candidate liberals loathe most. That has to count for
something, doesn't it?
I hate her too, but she has my vote. So to speak.
Jefferson Davis isn't running this year.
The End in View
(page 2)
THE VERDICT: The Scooter Libby trial is over, pending
appeal, but don't look for closure soon. The minute he
was convicted, the neocon chorus was demanding a
presidential pardon; obviously this trial hadn't done the
War Party (or Dick Cheney) any good. All I know is that
Valerie Plame is one foxy lady!
TRUE (I THINK) STORY: Apart from the ever-vigilant Joke
Police, I'm always having run-ins with the law. The other
day, pulling up beside a police cruiser, I yelled,
"You'll never take me alive, copper!" I quickly
explained, "I've always wanted to say that." In reply, he
told me of an old woman in traffic court. The judge told
her, "This court finds you guilty of speeding and orders
that you be hanged by the neck until dead. (I've always
wanted to say that.)" Sometimes the taxpayer almost gets
his money's worth from government.
LOOKING BACK: Speaking of Cheney, 'twas he who told us
five years ago, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now [!] has weapons of mass destruction." Sounds absurd
now, doesn't it? "Downright goofy" would be putting it
mildly. If Saddam had had even a single nuke, would he
have dared use it against us? He wasn't suicidal, and in
the end, as I recall, he didn't die by his own hand. Yet
this was the line we heard from Cheney, Bush, Rummy,
Condi, and, yes, Colin. The worst lie, as I observed at
the time, was not WMDs, but "no doubt." Seldom has such
audacious mendacity been combined with such lunatic bad
judgment.
MAKING BABIES: If it weren't for the lesbian clergy, the
Episcopalians might not be reproducing at all. This is
the church that was launched by the heterosexual (rather
spectacularly so) Henry VIII.
AFTERTHOUGHT: And by the way -- aren't the Cheneys
Episcopalians?
JUDGES GONE WILD: Mirabile dictu, a Federal appeals court
has struck down Washington, D.C.'s gun control laws on
grounds that they violate the Second Amendment. If that's
the case, what's the point of having a Living Document?
CONSOLATION: The best thing about the Bush years has been
the Bush jokes. (To take one of a thousand, Conan O'Brien
says of Bush's warnings on Iran, "He just got out his old
Iraq speeches and changed all the Qs to Ns.") But if
anything happened to Cheney, who would explain them to
the president? Or is that part of the Secret Service's
job?
THE SOBRAN FORUM
Jonah Jumps the Whale -- for Giuliani
by Paul Gottfried
Having already seen ample evidence that the neocon
Evil Empire is wild about Rudy Giuliani and supports him
enthusiastically for president, last week I encountered
further proof courtesy of Jonah Goldberg, who is
syndicated in the Lancaster New Era. Although our evening
paper pretends to be on the center-right, in contrast to
its equally narcoleptic morning counterpart, which is
Democratic, most of the items in both papers come out of
decidedly leftist news services. The featured columnists
every evening are unfailingly neoconservatives, so much
so that after several nights of the assorted maunderings
of that predictable Bushite windbag Cal Thomas, I eagerly
await Jonah's relatively peppy prose.
In Jonah's latest offering, "Romney, Giuliani:
Canaries in Coal Mine of Conservative Politics," one can
locate the party line already laid out by Richard
Brookhiser, Dennis Miller on FOX, John Podhoretz, William
Kristol, the NEW YORK SUN, and the NEW YORK POST about
which presidential hopeful we best appreciate. What makes
Jonah's presentation less programmed than the other
endorsements, however, is that he takes his time
approaching the big issue. He talks about Romney's
tactical about-turn on abortion and why this candidate
just can't cut it with real conservatives. Then he gets
on to the good guy, who is becoming apparently
irresistible to voters: "Of course, Giuliani's national
profile expanded enormously because of 9/11. And while
the press harps on that point, the more interesting part
of the story lies elsewhere. The war on terror hasn't
just changed Giuliani's profile as a crisis leader; it's
changed the attitude of many Americans, particularly
conservatives, about the central crisis facing the
country." Moreover, "It's not that pro-lifers are less
pro-life or that social conservatives are suddenly OK
with homosexuality, gun control, and other issues where
Giuliani's dissent from mainstream conservative opinion
would normally disqualify him. It's that they really,
really believe the war on terror is for real."
There are three questions, although there may be
more if I think longer, that this implied endorsement
occasions. One, why don't those who notice Giuliani's
leftist social views bring up the one that has been most
on display: his exuberant support of illegal immigration?
A review essay of mine, printed in the spring 2006 issue
of the Australian NATIONAL OBSERVER, which starts and
finishes with remarks on Pat Buchanan's recent
bestseller, STATE OF EMERGENCY: THE THIRD WORLD INVASION
AND CONQUEST OF AMERICA, points out Giuliani's shocking
public positions on illegals. For those who are
supposedly concerned about what is usually interpreted as
a wedge issue for Republicans, the fact that Rudy has
called for increased social services to illegals should
influence their electoral choices. One wonders whether
the media, and particularly Rudy's neocon boosters, have
not been keeping this burning issue out of the public
discussion.
Two, how seriously can one take Jonah's assurance
that "social conservatives" (whatever the heck that
means) are not less conservative than they used to be, if
they have abandoned their protection of innocent life and
the sanctity of heterosexual marriage to back a swinging,
out-of-work, former New York mayor who is as far to the
left on social issues as, and even farther to the left on
immigration than, his likely Democratic presidential
opponent? I've no trouble believing that this change of
position has happened for nonmoral reasons, namely, that
self-proclaimed conservatives and the entire
"conservative movement" have had their minds or arms
twisted to vote for a leftist who is "good" on Israel and
foreign crusades for democracy. What is unlikely,
however, is that the enthusiasm for Giuliani has anything
to do with prioritizing deeply held convictions. It
merely shows the undiminished power of the
neoconservative media in handling small minds and
opportunistic placeholders. Or else the pressure placed
by Republican operatives, who are afraid of losing
patronage if Hillary wins and who are pushing their local
organizations to back a left-leaning Republican
politician, that is, someone who may be able to wrest the
presidential election from the Democrats. As the French
say, d'autres temps, d'autres moeurs. Unless I'm
mistaken, those who ceaselessly yakked about Clinton's
lechery are now rejoicing over the manliness of their
preferred lecher of the hour. Two weeks ago, the onetime
Pecksniffs at the NEW YORK POST placed on their front
page a tasteless photo, which was meant to impress, of
Giuliani French-kissing his latest spouse. And this from
a paper that has sounded like Billy Sunday preparing for
the Apocalypse when it comes to highlighting Bill
Clinton's affairs.
Three, why doesn't Jonah offer any better evidence
for his weighty judgments than what he picked up at the
"NATIONAL REVIEW conservative summit last month"?
Supposedly Romney laid an egg there as a speaker by
addressing the pro-life issue. Those assembled registered
"disappointment" that Romney proceeded to discuss social
issues and failed to stress the war against terror. It is
hard to imagine what the reader is supposed to learn from
this "disappointment," however "palpable" it was
according to Jonah. The gathering to which Jonah refers
would have had the spontaneity of a meeting of the
geriatric Soviet Politburo or, to find an even more
dramatic example of obedient consensus, a meeting of
Heritage Foundation staffers called to discuss Middle
Eastern policy proposals. I'm not sure that one can learn
much about opinions in the American heartland by
schmoozing with Rod Dreher, Ramesh Ponnuru, and David
Frum. Who cares that they say the obvious, that they
agree with the neocons' presidential choice, and that
Israel and exporting democracy are the key issues for the
next presidential race! Although Jonah would not very
likely be persuaded to do anything quite so
intellectually honest or daring, he might, for the sake
of a fuller view of political reality, pay attention to
those who write for and read this website [i.e.,
www.takimag.com]. There are at least as many of us around
here as those who attend NR "conservative summits," and I
imagine that our median intelligence is considerably
higher -- or at least less constrained.
For the sake of full disclosure, in a two-way race
between Hillary and Giuliani in which I was required to
vote, I would reluctantly give my ballot to the less
dangerous and less radical candidate from New York, the
former first lady. I could not imagine a candidate whom I
as a Taft Republican would find less agreeable in the
White House than Giuliani, and not only for his positions
on foreign affairs. His stated views on illegal
immigration are at least as execrable as those of Teddy
Kennedy.
Paul E. Gottfried, Ph.D., is the Raffensperger
Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College
(Elizabethtown, PA) and a Guggenheim recipient. He is an
adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute. He is the author
of numerous articles and eight books, including, AFTER
LIBERALISM: MASS DEMOCRACY IN THE MANAGERIAL STATE
(Princeton University Press), THE STRANGE DEATH OF
MARXISM: THE EUROPEAN LEFT IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
(University of Missouri Press), and MULTICULTURALISM AND
THE POLITICS OF GUILT: TOWARDS OF SECULAR THEOCRACY
(University of Missouri Press), and of the forthcoming
BASELESS CONSERVATISM: MAKING SENSE OF THE AMERICAN RIGHT
(Palgrave Macmillan).
This article originally appeared at www.takimag.com.
It is reprinted with permission.
CARTOONS (Baloo)
http://www.sobran.com/issue_cartoons/2007-03/2007-03-
cartoons.shtml
REPRINTED COLUMNS ("The Reactionary Utopian")
(pages 4, 7-12)
* Ms. President? (January 29, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070129.shtml
* A Better Tyrant? (February 1, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070201.shtml
* America after Anna Nicole (February 12, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070212.shtml
* Rated FDR (February 15, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070215.shtml
* Fine Filed Phrases (February 22, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070222.shtml
* How to Make a Great Movie (February 26, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070226.shtml
* The Fun of Falstaff (March 1, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070301.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All articles are written by Joe Sobran, except where
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