Sunday punditry! Swine flu edition (Sept. 1 is in 43 days.).
Eugene Robinson:
President Obama's speech Thursday marking the 100th anniversary of the NAACP's founding was widely reported as a "tough love" message directed at black America. "I've noticed that when I talk about personal responsibility in the African American community, that gets highlighted," Obama said in an interview Friday. "But then the whole other half of the speech, where I talked about government's responsibility . . . that somehow doesn't make news."
Fair enough, but he misses the point. The real news wasn't in the content but the visuals: the nation's leading black civil rights organization being addressed by the nation's first black president. Obama could have read nursery rhymes and the event still would have been noteworthy.
Frank Rich:
The Sotomayor show reduced the antics of Washington’s clueless ancien-régime to a spectacle as ridiculous as it was obsolescent.
Stuart Taylor: Abandoning all pretense at neutrality, let's go after the wise Latina. She's either an ultra-liberal or a liar.
As one who had hoped for a moderately liberal, intellectually honest nominee and feared the possibility of an unprincipled left-liberal ideologue steeped in identity politics, I am having trouble figuring out Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
"...feared the possibility of an unprincipled left-liberal ideologue steeped in identity politics"? You're kidding, right?
WaPo: Space, the final frontier (multiple contributors.)
Maureen Dowd:
Who can forget the glory years, when the Gipper invoked God but never went to church? When Arlen Specter accused Anita Hill of perjury to distract from Clarence Thomas’s false witness? When Newt Gingrich and other conservatives indulged in affairs with young Washington peaches as they pushed to impeach Bill Clinton?
No one had more flair than W. and Cheney, crowing about making us safe as they made the world more dangerous, and bragging about fiscal restraint while they spent us into oblivion.
Now when Republicans get caught flouting the principles they dictate, they are not able to practice hypocrisy with such impunity.
Novel influenza (H1N1), the virus formerly known as swine flu
Donald McNeil:
The swine flu will probably return in force earlier than seasonal flu usually begins, federal health officials predicted Friday, saying they expected it to erupt as soon as schools open rather than in October or November.
This is what you're supposed to be doing to prepare. And this is how to take care of yourself at home (if you prefer CDC-only, go here.)
India Knight (Times UK):
On the one hand: eh, it’s just flu. On the other: yeah, but you might die. You switch off the telly thinking: really, cheers for that. What do I do now — lie down quietly and wait for the reaper, or march around ticking people off for overreacting because "it’s only flu"? Both options seem reasonable. Which is it to be?
WaPo:
"That night we called the doctor's office, and she said, 'Sure, it's probably swine flu,' " Morris says. But the doctor did not suggest that Evan come in for testing. "She didn't think the CDC was interested in anything unless you died."
This is a camp story, since swine flu has never really gone away.
CDC:
What have we learned? This virus is continuing to cause illness and outbreaks in the summer months here in the U.S. In temperature and humidity conditions, they are not very favorable to seasonal influenza virus transmission. We′re seeing disease, including severe illness and fatalities in a generally younger population from what we′ve seen with seasonal influenza with relatively limited illness infections and serious consequences in the elderly but as we have said, there are higher attack rates of illness and hospitalization in younger adults and children. And those have been one of the reasons we have been quite concerned in the spring and continuing on into the summer. We′re particularly concerned about pregnant women, for example, both in the United States and now also from some reports in the southern hemisphere, we know of life–threatening illnesses or some fatalities that have occurred.