During the Samantha Power controversy* and when watching or reading the news, I had a hard time keeping my temper. I was furious with Hillary for making an issue out of it, and furious with Obama for allowing Hillary to decide what should be done about it. Hillary, I thought, was either genuinely upset or she wasn't. If she wasn't genuinely upset, she was being opportunistic. Leaping on a mistake by someone in the opposing camp. If she was, she was being a baby. Children run to someone and whine, "Why, he called me a bad name!", grownups do not.
As for Obama, I was disappointed when he accepted Power's resignation. Here was a case of Obama letting Hillary decide what he ought to do with one of his staff. Whether that last is fair, I don't know; he may have wanted, or accepted, her resignation had Hillary never complained. I suspect not but we will never know. An apology---perhaps a phone call from Power to Hillary---should have sufficed.
Both upset me for another reason, a more important one. It's about plain speaking, and how we as citizens and voters and are learning to fear it. You can see it in connection with the 2008 election, but in connection with many other things too. Our exchanges are, now and then, becoming vapid, with many checks and stops---we now weigh our words as if each one is a lit fuse. Lest we be charged with racism or sexism or islamaphobia or homophobia or with just not being very nice, we must weigh each word. It shows everywhere, and it shows in this election. In all three camps, I want to add. Daniel Henninger, of the Wall Street Journal,** writes a good article on how the candidates have become prisoners of this clamp down on free speech, and casualties if they try to escape. He writes:
They're strewn all over the battlefield. Geraldine Ferraro (killed for bringing up if Obama weren't black), Samantha Power (Hillary's a "monster"), the intrepid if foolhardy Rev. Wright (multiple offenses), James Hagee (Catholics as the "anti-Christ"), Bill Cunningham ("Barack Hussein Obama"), Bill Sheehan (for bringing up Obama's drug use). All gone. Anyone working for or in support of a political campaign these days is entering a free-fire zone.
Some say the high casualty rate in the campaigns is the result of indiscriminate political correctness. Campus speech codes were put in place to monitor people who said the "wrong thing" about favored groups, often categorized as holding "minority status" by dint of race, gender or sexual preference. Now the Democratic campaigns are using the toxic PC gas on each other.
An apology is just a peep. Reprimands are too private. The Screaming won't end until the campaign silences the source of the problem. Damage control for dummies: Terminate them.
One result is that political speech will be self-censored, from the candidate on down. However high the stakes, speech by the candidates themselves has become increasingly bland. The primary debates for the most part were artificially civil. When a Romney, Clinton or McCain said something with bite, they got hammered. Why be real? It's too dangerous.
The irony in all this is something to behold. On the one hand, people have become so hypersensitive, so trite, so easily wounded by a bad name or a charge clearly-put, they nearly collapse from the stress of it all, you picture them languishing on a sofa with a cool rag draped across their eyes, distraught...only to suddenly recover, leap up, and then go after the person who did it like something out of hell. Killer victims. The victim thing seems so staged and the killer thing so swift, that I suspect falsehood. And opportunism taken to a new level. For those who are too stupid to know they've been victimized, we have the media. With its very own self-serving agenda. Just today, CNN is reporting that Jeremiah Wright has insulted the entire Italian race. They said they would do a special on it. Others are picking up the story.***
More controversial comments from Senator Barack Obama's former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright have come to light.
The comments are in an article published in the Trumpet magazine. Wright is listed as the magazine's chief executive officer, and his daughter is listed as publisher.
In the December 2007 issue, Wright describes the crucifixion of Jesus as a public lynching Italian style. He also writes about the "garlic noses" of Italians.
The Italian American Human Relations Foundation of Chicago condemned the comments.
Phone the lawyers! Alert the Pope! He's done it again! Jeremiah has expressed a personal opinion about the Italians, going so far as to use the G word, dare I say it? Garlic!!! It would be funny if it wasn't such a good example of the death of plain-speaking. We used to be tough, sane, grown up. Nowadays, you'd think that plain speaking is homicide, the way some people carry on.
It's too bad, because the real casualty, especially in an election, is the individual. When the candidates can't speak plainly, we don't get all the facts; and when we don't get those, we aren't sure how to vote. Much has been made of Obama wanting a new kind of politics. Something more positive. Fine, provided it doesn't cheat the voter. I believe that, just sometimes, going negative is necessary. I believe one candidate ought to be able to say something negative about another candidate, provided (a) what he says is true and he can back it up, and(2) what he says is something the voter ought to know before he votes. The truth should not be locked up in a safe in the name of a new kind of politics. Lest someone get his feelings hurt. For God's sake, we are fighting two wars, we have vicious, islamic extremism breathing down our necks, we're in a recession, we have poverty, Pakistan's about to erupt, there is Darfur, you name it, it ought to be an issue in this election---and we're worried about name-calling...and a bit of garlic? I know. He said more than that. And I say that the more that he said is not grounds for what CNN---and FOX?---will do to him. Just to get at Obama. CNN doesn't care about the Italians, the garlic, or the death of Jesus. Or about Jeremiah, for that matter.
I want the plain speaking Samantha to come back.
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*
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...
** http://online.wsj.com/...
*** http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blog...