The Left
Obama and hip-hop
Jonah Weiner has an interesting assessment. One apparent outcome: the complete and well-deserved marginalization of dead prez. I’ve had occasion to comment before on this Castro- and Chavez-loving rap duo, a propaganda outlet for the African Peoples Socialist Party and its cult-leader chairman, Omali Yeshitela. At last, it isn’t taken for granted that the president needs to live up to
Helen Thomas, albatross
[Cross-posted at Z Word.] I take no pleasure from the fact that right-wing pundits are lashing Helen Thomas over her two-part question to President Obama last night. And yet Thomas deserves to be upbraided. The fact that she’s held up by liberals as a paragon of courage is an embarrassment. Drifting further toward the fringe every day, she certainly doesn’t
“We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt”
A fitting economic metaphor for our times, from the famous 1963 speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the great moral teacher of the American 20th century. Black Power icons such as Assata Shakur, so hallowed by today’s politicized hip-hop artists and others, have worked hard to discredit King’s vision as a course of meekness, of do-nothing, of turn-the-other-cheek. It’s
A concluding thought
As I’ve said, there’s little point to debating a moral illiterate like Gabriel Ash, who writes fan letters to the Iranian Supreme Leader. But his take on Iraqi sanctions requires a brief comment. Anyone who states, as Ash does, that “the U.S. led sanctions regime consisted in murdering children as a policy tool,” and who holds Saddam’s regime not one
Rosen PPS
I hadn’t seen Norm’s dissection of Nir Rosen before I wrote mine. It’s worth reading, and this line sums it up: [Rosen] has a moral argument he wants to make on the subject of attacking civilians and he makes it, but under cover of denying the resources of moral argument on that subject to everyone but the weak. His argument
Rosen PS
My post on Nir Rosen has provoked the sputtering wrath of antizionist blogger Gabriel Ash, who ridicules me as a liberal (that is exactly correct) and alludes to a previous disagreement we once had. That disagreement, in case you’re wondering, was over Palestinian suicide bombing. Ash refused to condemn it, on grounds similar to Nir Rosen’s, as it happens: we’re
Part of the problem
I’m putting up this photo [via] to drive home the reality: the excellent singer Annie Lennox, near a banner that reads “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza,” is marching next to a man, George Galloway, who has venerated Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao’s regime, Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah and of course Saddam Hussein. “Stop the Genocide”? George Galloway praised Saddam in person,
First principles
Marc Cooper has posted some New Year hopes and reflections, one of which touches on a theme dear to my heart: why it’s important for staunch liberals to attack authoritarian thinking on the left, and not care about the grief they catch for it. And so, dear reader, the question is not why I expend time and energy railing against