You can go ahead and think the worst, on strong evidence, about the President, the Lunatic Liberal Left, and Maureen Dowd, but please try not to make a fool of yourself while you’re at it.
Michael Ledeen, and, via Ledeen, Rush Limbaugh, as well as assorted bloggers, were taken in by an apparent hoax today regarding the young Obama’s “missing thesis.” Credible reporting has the subject of that thesis being US-Soviet relations and nuclear arms, but Ledeen somehow ran across a late August post by Brian Lancaster at the “Jumping in Pools” blog claiming that the thesis instead focused on the US Constitution as a document that was “inherently flawed” in its failure to address economic democracy. The source was supposedly Joe Klein, who had supposedly been given privileged access to the thesis. Klein has denied the story.
Ledeen has since confessed that he was “taken in.” Lancaster’s failure to link to any supporting evidence – such as the post he claimed to be quoting – should have been a tip-off.
Meanwhile, over at PowerLine, Scott Johnson has gotten himself annoyed enough with use of the obscene “tea-bagger” epithet to describe Tea Party protesters, that he’s gone searching for other offenses as well. In the second of two (so far) posts on “A dirty mainstream,” he moves from teabagging investigations to a Maureen Dowd column (the one I nominated last week for the eternal Hall of Lame), and he pieces together an, in a word, ridiculous case that the title of the column, “A Daisy Chain of Cheneys,”amounts to a crude reference to another sexual practice.
Frankly, I don’t think the charge is worth much discussion: “Daisy chain” is (or was, or should be) a perfectly respectable expression, with a sexual connotation only in the minds of those looking for sexual connotations wherever they can find them (i.e., anywhere).
There’s also a lot of discussion on “teabagging” over at The Corner today – an embarrassment to both Jay Nordlinger and Rich Lowry, in my opinion. It’s the kind of thing that teenage boys brag and snicker about, not something for polite or would-be respectable discussion – and, no, I don’t care and don’t think it matters whether or not the Tea Party protesters attempt to “own” the intended insult.
Obama is ideologically suspect. He has spent much of his life and career rubbing elbows with radicals, and his earliest political forays were conducted in association with Democratic Socialists and fellow travelers (ACORN, the New Party, et al). That all might have made the thesis hoax more plausible, but it doesn’t excuse leaping at a dated and amateurish blog post to gild the leftwing lily. Instead, like Birtherism and Autobiography Trutherism, such exercises make any discussion of the President’s ideological background, connections, and orientation just a little more suspect, a little easier to laugh off and dismiss.
And the whole “teabagger” affair is a standing embarrassment for the likes of Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, and Janeane Garofalo, as well as for (even) lesser lights on the left. Their intention to ridicule instead underlines just how narrow and degraded their own experiences, social circles, and values are, and every smirk and chortle etches the underline deeper. The NYT and Maureen Dowd have embarrassed themselves over and over again. What they clearly intend to be understood in their editorial content provides ample material to critics – no need to stretch for an indictment – or play Beavis-the-blogger looking for something “dirty.”
Comments 23
I can’t prove that Dowd intended the use of “daisy chain” in an obscene sense. But from what I know about Dowd I would consider it the default assumption.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
@ Peter Shalen: I would think that she meant it mostly as a closed loop of Cheney and not at all a reference to lesbianism
http://blogs.chron.com/tubular/archives/Ouroboros.png
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:54 pm
@ Peter Shalen:
Think about it, Peter, before you invite a discussion of what she would really have to be implying, and assuming of a newspaper audience, if that was her intention.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 pm
@ CK MacLeod: Did anyone else run the thesis hoax as shocking truth? Beck or any of the other Foxes?
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:18 pm
A few bloggers picked it up, sis, but Rush had already retracted and apologized a couple of times before his show was over.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:23 pm
@ CK MacLeod: He apologized?
I haven’t heard him on this, but the reports I can find say that after finding out it was a hoax, and saying so, he went on to make remarks to the effect that was believable because it was the kind of thing that reflected Obama’s views.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 pm
The hoax sounded like the kind of comments, Obama has made about ‘negative rights’, on NPR as well as other sources. about flaws in the original
constitution, how the civil rights struggle was too court focused, to encompass questions of redistributive change, about ‘fundamental transformation of the United States of America. So it was ‘fake but accurate’ his actual thesis, was a meditation
on thefailed arms control strategies, of the late 70s, which is echoed in that Youtube to that Iowa peace group, and we see that pattern to day
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
@ narciso:can you point me to anything that Obama has actually said or written that mirrors the stuff in the hoax thesis?
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
To some ears it sounded a lot like some of this:
Obama defenders have suggested that he was really more concerned about the Civil Rights movement’s strategies, not elements lacking in the Constitution or the Supreme Court’s historical interpretation of it. IMO he still comes across as strongly in favor of “redistributive justice,” and as bemoaning the lack of a constitutional avenue for enforcing it.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I stopped the video when Obama finished speaking and the screen showed something saying that Obama was bemoaning the failure of the Constitution to be radically reinterpreted to produce redistribution of wealth or some such shirt.
Tain’t what he said and taint really in his words or intonation.
What he did say wasn’t even anything that anybody should find controversial.
What I heard was pretty much that the civil rights movement focused on insuring legal barriers were taken down but black people were still relatively poor.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
But I think that you have a point, CK. If someone has the idea that Obama means to enact socialistic redistribution, they would likely misinterpret his remarks to conform to their expectation.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:47 pm
sister cluck, anyone who uses the term “redistributive justice” un-critically and imagines it as occurring through “redistribution of wealth” has already fundamentally opted out of American capitalism. The idea of redistribution implies some static quantity of wealth in existence at any given time whose unequal distribution equates with injustice. Though BO’s tone in that interview is professorial and academic, I think it’s clear on what side of the issue he sees himself – the use of the word “tragedy” being among the clearest signals – though it’s not necessarily clear that he’s thought his stance all the way through to its implications. However, the fact that, as I mentioned in the main post, he came up in the world among authentic capital-C and -S Communists and Socialists justifies at least the suspicion that he knew exactly what his words implied.
As I’ve argued before, it doesn’t really matter much what narrative he recites to himself about what he’s doing. I don’t think it’s “What would Madison do?” but even if it is, what matters is what he does. He’s done little or nothing to relieve suspicions that his centrist act was a disreputable con job.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:27 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Nuts.
When I was a serious sprout, it was anyone using the phrase “substantive due process” that was too dangerous to be allowed loose.
Before that, we had some yutzes mouthing “preventive detention”.
People opt out of our society when they do things that are unjust, not when they theorize about what is just.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Mister Peanut is a bullshiter surrounded by bulshiters. They fortify each other’s bullshit, and, after a while, they actually believe it.
Thus, liberals become like Vedic Flyers in the TM Movement. They really believe they are flying.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:56 pm
You mean a tad?
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:56 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I would say it’s even more the concept of limited constitutional government that the advocate of “redistributive justice” and “redistribution of wealth” is opting out of.
Of course, Smidge merely reveals his own predilections by concluding that what OSlash did say wasn’t anything that anyone should find controversial.
Obama didn’t merely say black people were poor, he conceptually linked their being poor with the failure of the civil rights movement to advocate “redistributive justice.” He explicitly puts all this together with the practice of viewing the Constitution as a document that guarantees what government can’t do to us, rather than reimagining it as a document that guarantees government doing things for us.
I have to say I wasn’t even aware of the thing with the Obama thesis hoax. But the hoax was plausible based on what CKM has cited here. That said, given OSlash’s organizational involvement in the nuclear freeze movement, it’s equally plausible that it was about nuclear arms and US-Soviet relations.
It’s surreal that there has to be all this speculation about it. What possible reason could there be for it not being available to the public as a research document? The normal thesis is made available for just that purpose.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:59 pm
@ Peter Shalen:
I hop corrected.
October 24th, 2009 at 12:02 am
@ Peter Shalen:
I don’t know. The “daisy chain” innuendo doesn’t seem to have much to do with women not aging as well as men, and it all being so unfair. That, it seems to me, is the default proposition with MoDo.
But I guess it can be hacked around to if Mary Cheney is dragged into the reckoning. Following in John Edwards’ sly, smarmy footsteps — now there’s pursuing a high standard.
October 24th, 2009 at 12:05 am
@ J.E. Dyer:
Will you send me an autographed copy of your thesis?
October 24th, 2009 at 12:07 am
@ fuster:
You can purchase it at this link, Smidge:
http://www.stormingmedia.us/21/2187/A218763.html
I believe you can also buy it directly from CARL at Fort Leavenworth.
October 24th, 2009 at 12:22 am
I agree, and I should have used a broader and more political formulation than “American capitalism.”
I found the reporting on the thesis being about nukes and the Soviets – complete with a picture of the professor – persuasive. That said, I agree that the failure to produce the thesis and other writings and records is suspicious – bound to provoke suspicions.
…just one of many things about this president that make his political opponents more than usually distrustful of a leader they never wanted.
October 24th, 2009 at 12:24 am
The term quoted from the alleged thesis was “economic freedom”, not “economic democracy,” which when I heard it seemed to me to be such an inappropriate categorization of compulsory. wealth redistribution as to reflect some weird species of pre-fascist Mitteleuropische or Islamo-Germanic philosophical idealism , ie the notion that true freedom emanates only from submission and obedience to authority. You don’t suppose this was another stunt by LaRouchies do you? If anyone would be familiar with the jargon….
October 24th, 2009 at 9:37 am
@ Seth Halpern:
I used the term “economic democracy” to summarize the gist of the phony quotes. A closer reading would have raised other questions, but the awkwardness of the writing may, at first glance anyway, have made them seem more authentic as supposedly a college student’s work.
I’ve taken a longer look at Jumping in Pools, and it reads like a fairly typical blog that’s been around for a while. The “hoax” piece can be found with other “Satire” pieces: Maybe it was intended to be a fake news item a la Scrappleface. If so, the main problem is that it isn’t funny.
It’s interesting that the incident has generated an unusually large number of comments and trackbacks, as well as several news articles, and public comments by Klein, but the blogger hasn’t – as of the moment – yet commented on it. Instead, he’s just gone on with typical blog fare – comments on political races, a feud with with the infamous Charles Johnson of LGF, and so on.
October 24th, 2009 at 11:34 am
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