Much has been written about how people all around the world are celebrating the victory of our Hussein ”” Barack of Illinois, whose first name means “blessing” in Arabic. It is, indeed, a blessing that so many people in so many places see something of themselves reflected in Obama, whether in the color of his skin, the religion of his father, his African heritage, his being raised by a single mother or his childhood of poverty. And that ensures that Obama will probably have a longer than usual honeymoon with the world.
But I wouldn’t exaggerate it. The minute Obama has to exercise U.S. military power somewhere in the world, you can be sure that he will get blowback. For now, though, his biography, demeanor and willingness to at least test a regime like Iran’s with diplomacy makes him more difficult to demonize than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
“If you’re a hard-liner in Tehran, a U.S. president who wants to talk to you presents more of a quandary than a U.S. president who wants to confront you,” remarked Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment. “How are you going to implore crowds to chant ”˜Death to Barack Hussein Obama’? That sounds more like the chant of the oppressor, not the victim. Obama just doesn’t fit the radical Islamist narrative of a racist, blood-thirsty America, which is bent on oppressing Muslims worldwide. There’s a cognitive dissonance. It’s like Hollywood casting Sidney Poitier to play Charles Manson. It just doesn’t fit.”
But while the world appears poised to give Obama a generous honeymoon, there lurks a much more important question: How long of a honeymoon will Obama give the world?
“For now, though, his biography, demeanor and willingness to at least test a regime like Iran’s with diplomacy makes him more difficult to demonize than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.”
he could have written that in November 1976 about Jimmy Carter, and we all know where that got us…..
Obama has about 18 months, same as any president in recent history. At tht point, the election campaigning for the House of Representative and 1/3 of the Senate will be fully underway, and President Obama will start to experience the reality of the end of the honeymoon. Lower polls, whiners from the left who will wonder they didn’t get all their goodies, and attackers from the right who will wonder whether the American people are ready yet to disown “socialism.” It is always the same, business as usual, and there is no reason to imagine that anything will change this time.
I suspect it won’t be too long before our president-elect is declared by radical jihadists to be an apostate leader of an infidel nation.
After the disastrous performance of the NY Times in the recent election and over the past few years, I am not inclined to read their news reports or comment upon their columnists. If the paper goes bankrupt soon it will have only its editors and publisher to blame.
I would file this under “space-filling speculation while we wait for something to happen.”
[i] After the disastrous performance of the NY Times in the recent election and over the past few years, I am not inclined to read their news reports or comment upon their columnists. If the paper goes bankrupt soon it will have only its editors and publisher to blame. [/i]
This is the purest possible ad hominem argument (if it qualifies as an argument). Why keep repeating it?
I certainly have the right to read news sources I consider reliable and not to read those I don’t. Many sources are now so polarized that they can be regarded as opinion papers. I regard the NY Times as a left-leaning opinion paper and saying so is not “ad hominem.” It would be far more honest for the Times to admit it. The Washington Post, for instance, has surveyed its coverage and admitted omissions and bias. I wish it had corrected the problems before Nov. 4, but progress is good. Many newspapers across the country are now dropping the AP in part because of its new pricing structure but also because of protests about its new editorial policy in which news is now mixed with opinion.
[i] I regard the NY Times as a left-leaning opinion paper and saying so is not ‘ad hominem.’ [/i]
You dismiss the article because it comes from the NYT, without regard to the substance of the article. That is a quintessential ad hominem argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Yes, and I am going to continue to boycott the Times until or unless it moderates its decision to use its news pages as editorial pages. The substance of their articles is, in my opinion, suspect until confirmed by other new sources. And this item is in itself an opinion piece by Friedman. Do you not choose which opinion writers to read and which to discard without reading? Do you not also decide which sources might be reliable and which you won’t bother with? It seems to me that you are merely annoyed because other people don’t share your opinions on the validity or usefulness of news sources. I am not proposing that the NY Times or other liberal papers should be prevented from publishing or that liberal commentators should be prevented from speaking on-air. I am merely running a small private boycott against a source I consider biased. If you don’t consider the Times biased, and want to read it, then by all means do so.
National Democratic leaders are talking about censorship of speech on broadcast media. You may not agree with them, of course. There is a big difference between individuals deciding which sources to read or listen to and government action to prevent speech it decides is incorrect. There is nothing whatever illegitimate or ad hominem about deciding not to read a particular publication or deciding to turn off the radio dial when someone you don’t care for is on air.
Katherine [#10]: Kendall has repeatedly urged us to avoid ad hominem reasoning. You have chosen to dismiss Friedman’s article based not on what it says but on where it appears. I have accordingly pointed out the ad hominem character of your dismissal.
No one here is trying to force-feed you the New York Times or any other news source. But neither is anyone compelling you to post proclamations about how you won’t read the article featured on this thread.
PS: Your swipes at me (“you are merely annoyed because other people don’t share your opinions on the validity or usefulness of news sources”) are peevish and silly.
My original post was intended to let those with whom I have exchanged posts in the past, like Matt Thompson, know why I won’t be reading and commenting very much on things sourced to the NYT in the future.
Dear Irenaeus, considering your many, many ad hominem posts about our current President, I find this discussion highly ironic. Best wishes to you, and I sincerely hope that our President-elect performs better in office than I expect. Over and out.
Yes, Matt you did, and I appreciate that.
I did not mean to highjack the discussion of Friedman’s article linked to here. I merely wanted to say that I no longer consider the NYT a particularly reliable source and certainly not an unbiased source. This is based upon an evaluation of its performance in the just-completed election season. You read Kurtz and decided his arguments were inadequate. I felt otherwise. I submit that in the extremely unlikely case that our kind host here were to begin linking to articles from NewsMax or WorldNetDaily that you and Irenaeus would begin passing them by as coming from sources you don’t trust. I am simply doing the same with respect to the NYT. In one very sad case this election cycle, the Times sank below even the National Enquirer in running an unsubstantiated adultery rumor about McCain on the front page. When the Enquirer ran an adultery story on a candidate, it had independent reporting and the story turned out to be true. (I would like to make it clear that I do not read NewsMax, WorldNetDaily, or the Enquirer.)
If there is a story which the NYT breaks and seems really important, I may chime in, but I will look for independent confirmation on its reporting. I suspect I am not the only rational conservative who feels this way.
I apologize again for doing this on a thread which is not about the reliability of the NYT.