A story wherein a couple of pro-smart-growth types attempt to extract their feet from within their oral cavities after criticizing those eeeeeeeeevil right-wing neo-cons for driving gas-guzzling SUVs and driving up their household debt, instead of eating tofu and supporting driving up government debt and taxes. You know how it is with those bitter people: God, guns, and SUVs.
Enjoy the debate.
P.J. O’Rourke tours the Big Stick, and thinks about the presidential race. Money grafs:
Some say John McCain’s character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do–voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer’s or a half gallon of Dewar’s. I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer. There’s Ms. Smarty-Pantsuit, the Bosnia-Under-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns. And there’s the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political crèche, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: “Change, man? Got any spare change? Change?”
(snip)
A strange flight it is–from the hard and fast reality of a floating island to the fantasy world of American solid ground. In this never-never land a couple of tinhorn Second City shysters–who, put together, don’t have the life experience of the lowest ranking gob-with-a-swab cleaning a head on the Big Stick–presume to run for president of the United States. They’re not just running against the hero John McCain, they’re running against heroism itself and against almost everything about America that ought to be conserved.
Via.
Amazing how I can get started typing a short reply to something on Chizumatic, and end up with an article. Sigh. SDB wrote, about the decision to secretly re-route the Olympic Torch in order to derail the protests:
The point is that their decision, in the microscopic, defeats the entire purpose of the exercise in the macroscopic.
Well, yes, but the problem is that the macroscopic view is based on an idea that’s out of touch with the reality of the world — or, if you must be ungenerous, a lie. If you get right down to it, the whole thing is a facade. The Olympics are purportedly about the “ideal” of peace, friendship, and competition, and the torch is the symbol of the Games. (If anyone gets pedantic about the 5 circles logo, they will beaten to death with an Olympic flag)–ubu. But the Olympics aren’t about that at all; they’re really about national pride. The foundation and concept of the Olympics is that the national teams of various nation states compete. Sure, the events are scored individually, but overall, we look at a team’s success in terms of the total medals it brings home. More importantly, the teams were organized from the outset along national lines, and it was conceived as a way to bring nations together – in peace and friendship. (Though in the West we do tend to make it a matter of individuals; that’s our hero-worship and capitalistic ethics kicking in.)
There is a long history of nations using the Olympics as a showcase. *cough*1936,1980,1984*cough* (All of them, really.) In fact, thats why nations vie to host Olympic contests.
But now there’s a cost to national prestige to go with the benefits — if your nation is seen as a pariah for whatever reason (human rights, nuclear power, whaling, etc.), you risk embarrassment from protesters who no longer honor the pretty words about peace and friendship. These bold individuals bravely declare that the emperor has no clothes — as long as they can safely do so in countries that tolerate such practices, that is. I certainly see no surplus of individuals volunteering to serve as human shields in front of Tibetan monks. (Saddam must have had a better agent booking vacations for lefties on the Tiber.)
Still, it’s a black eye for Red China. What I predict will happen in a few years at most is that the whole “torch run” will be dropped in favor of “torch tours” where it will be brought to a location and shown off under tight security. The theory will be that they can control a fixed location better than a moving one. It won’t work of course, so the whole thing will be quietly dropped, and there will be no more run or tour. The USOC won’t get in the way of this, nor will most other western countries, simply because they’re as susceptible to it as anyone else; even more so where they are hosting and the torch is touring a country that can ensure large turnouts.
Imagine the shoe being on the other foot, and China actively seeking to embarrass a US-hosted Olympics with large demonstrations over Iraq. I’m sure a spontaneous incident could be arranged….
The real shame is that I don’t know whether to cheer or jeer this development. Should I cheer the failure of hypocrisy, or bemoan the failure of the ideal?
Spotted in the comments of a discussion of Starbucks (and the politics thereof):
I generally either shut out the “No one I know voted for Nixon” vibe or I eavesdrop and see how many inanities get spouted. I’ll never forget one time, at a Starbucks in Houston, I struck up a conversation with some locals and was told, point-blank, that I had no business being in the gay Starbucks when the straight one was only two blocks down.
Ah, the good ‘ol Big Tent philosophy. Funny how some people are all about inclusion…as long as it’s about you including them.