Walter Williams: Irksome Things

"All the evidence that I see is that academics and intellectuals have messed up the world."
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There are a great many things, both large and small, that irk Walter E. Williams, Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He discusses a few of them in his syndicated newspaper column:

One of them is our tendency to evaluate a presidential candidate based on his intelligence or academic credentials. When Obama threw his hat in the ring, people thought he was articulate and smart and hailed his intellectual credentials. Just recently, when Newt Gingrich announced his candidacy, people hailed his intellectual credentials and smartness as well.

By contrast, the intellectual elite and mainstream media people see Sarah Palin as stupid, a loose cannon and not to be trusted with our nuclear arsenal. There was another presidential candidate who was also held to be stupid and not to be trusted with our nuclear arsenal who ultimately became president — Ronald Reagan. I don't put much stock into whether a political leader is smart or not because, as George Orwell explained, "Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them."

All the evidence that I see is that academics and intellectuals have messed up the world. I challenge anyone to show me a major calamity that was engineered by a stupid, inarticulate person, but those caused by intelligent, articulate persons are too numerous to count, from the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao to Woodrow Wilson, FDR and Obama.

My vision of a good presidential candidate is a person with ordinary intelligence but great respect and love for our Constitution. Maybe Palin's and Reagan's respect and love for our Constitution qualified them as dumb in the eyes of the mainstream media, intellectuals and academics.

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We can emphasize with Professor Williams. We have our pet peeves as well. Chief among them are those newspaper editors who endorsed Barack Obama for president and now complain that the man they declined to properly vet "stinks up the joint," without admitting how wrong they were to endorse him in the first place. We find it even more irksome when they have bashed Sarah Palin for more than three years and now complain about her taking her time deciding whether to jump into the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

- JP

Bob Weir: Are We Ready for a Woman President?

No flea is she; Sarah's the iconoclast that breaks glass ceilings...
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Neither major political party has ever nominated a woman as its presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton certainly looked like she was on her way to shattering that particular glass ceiling in 2008, but the Democrats went with a backbench junior Senator instead. The parties have each nominated a woman as their vice presidential candidates only one time in their respective histories.

American Thinker contributor Bob Weir considers the barrier women refer to as the class ceiling and why no woman has been able to break it to run as a major party candidate for the presidency. The metaphor employed by the author is that of trained fleas in a jar. They will easily jump out of the jar so long as it is open at the top. But put a lid on the jar, and the fleas will on bang up against for a short while. Soon they will learn to only jump so high as to avoid a collision with an immovable object. People, Weir submits, are like fleas in a jar. They will not strive for success beyond that point where they have been trained to limit their horizons:

It's my contention that women will continue to face perceptual roadblocks in the presidential area of politics until one of them becomes the role model for others to follow. Currently, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann have popular support for 2012. My choice is Palin because she has demonstrated her executive ability as Governor of Alaska and was the most exciting candidate in the election of 2008.

Although she hasn't decided if she'll run next year, we constantly hear that she has too much baggage. What baggage? Anyone who knows anything about her record in Alaska would have to admit that she exhibited all the traits that make up the building blocks of leadership. Her rise to prominence is well-known and doesn't need to be restated in its entirety here. Suffice to say that she took on a corrupt system within her own political party and rose to the governorship after throwing the bums out of office. Certainly, a résumé like that should be viewed as the perfect recipe for a country in need of a moral renaissance. Aha, therein lies the problem! How many in this country want to return to the days when politicians weren't sending their nude photos on the Internet, fathering children with their housemaids, or having sex with interns in the Oval Office?

I suspect that all decent people want to go back to a time when their children had better role models than Weiner, Schwarzenegger, and Clinton. The culture shift in the last few decades is more than mildly alarming; it is downright frightening! Every aspect of our lives has eroded. From education to entertainment to politics; we have seen a value system that was once the envy of the world, slowly, insidiously corrupted by a philosophical framework that is inimical to any concept of a great nation. Today, we have a country whose people have almost given up on the idea that morality has value.

What has all this to do with Sarah Palin? She's a threat to those who have become addicted to the titillation of a callous and uninhibited lifestyle, free from compunction or responsibility. She represents the wholesome values and patriotic spirit that have been all but lost in the violent maelstrom of social and political engineering that has distorted our sense of right and wrong. No flea is she; Sarah's the iconoclast that breaks glass ceilings and shatters the lids on jars.

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The former Wasilla Warrior point guard knows a thing or two about jumping. Every time, she will leap as high as she possibly can, no matter how hard her political opponents try to block her vertical ascent.

- JP

K-Lo: Newsweek Cover Story Is a Caricature of Christianity

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Kathryn Jean Lopez is the latest to take on Newsweek's “Saint Sarah" cover story, which the NRO editor and nationally syndicated columnist roundly criticizes in an opinion piece for the National Catholic Register:

You’d think she were one of the mysteries of our faith, all the writing that has gone into trying to grapple with the political career and attraction to and hatred for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

In the case of the recent Newsweek cover portraying Palin as “Saint Sarah” — in a backhanded canonization not quite the same as the Vatican approach — the quandary isn’t all that mysterious. The Newsweek story, written by a writer who fashions herself as an expert on religion, once again has the magazine betraying an ignorant caricature of Christianity in its newsroom.

Take, for instance: “Many Christian women loathe Palin, of course, and many men love her, but a certain kind of conservative, Bible-believing woman worships her.”

I’m not so sure that was just a cute stylistic maneuver. The pro-life Christian conservative woman is an exotic creature in this particular venue. To the outsider, devotion to saints would be far from the strangest thing a Catholic does. Further, in a country where Barack Obama has, at times, been likened to a deity, why wouldn’t someone worship Sarah Palin too?

Newsweek recounts her honesty about her most recent pregnancy. She had a dark thought. This, in Christianity, according to this newsmagazine, is anathema. Christians as human? Dark thoughts and temptations? How can that be? Never mind that perfect people would have never been in need of redemption and salvation.

These few excerpts are just the opening stanzas. You can read the full KJL article here.

- JP

Lori Ziganto Eviscerates Chris Matthews' MSNBC Batumentary

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When moonbats try to put together a documentary, like a committee setting out to design a horse and delivering a jackass instead, they produce a moonbatumentary, or batumentary for short:

Last night, MSNBC aired a Chris Matthews special, labeled a documentary, called The Rise of the New Right. I decided to take a quick break from my radical right wing extremist acts like bitterly clinging to my guns and my Bible, whilst fiendishly drawing Hitler moustaches on Obama photos, to watch it. I know. Apparently, I’m a glutton for punishment. However, while absolutely infuriating, it was simultaneously hilarious and almost took my mind off the distressing shortage of windmills in this country.

Almost immediately, two things became rather apparent. Firstly, MSNBC’s NewSpeak definition of “documentary” is evidently “blatant fallacies and pure propaganda”. Secondly, it’s quite clear that Chris Matthews’ leg ‘tingle’ has moved into his brain, or what passes for some semblance of one. Either that, or he’s merely decided to embrace his cuckoo pants. Plus, he’s a big, fat liar. I feel no qualms about saying that, since Matthews spent a full hour demonizing me and people like me as violent, irrational racists. In fact, the entire show could be summed up like this:

Racists. Birthers. Guns! Evil scary militia groups that have the same “Don’t Tread on Me” flag!!! Chanting “USA, USA” and being fond of the Constitution and, you know, liberty is super scary and ominous. Also, racist. And violence fomenting. Plus, racist.

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It must be horrifying, as the entire show was scored with super spooky music. A video clip of Ronald Reagan? Cue ominous horror movie music! A Sarah Palin segment? Dun dun dunnnn. Matthews, of course, portrayed Sarah Palin as a dum-dum “failed candidate”, yet also somehow ominous and fiendish, accusing her of putting those who voted for Obamacare “in the cross-hairs.” Get it? She’s totally fomenting violence. From her facebook page.

Read the highly entertaining, complete skewering of Moonbat Matthews and his batumentary here.

- JP

Lisa Miller, Newsweek's Religion Rebel Without a Clue (Updated)

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Cathy Lynn Grossman at USA Today offers a short and sweet summary of Sarah Pulliam Bailey's takedown of Lisa Miller's ridiculous "Saint Sarah" feature in Newswreck:

Ow! Ow! One of the crew of media critics at Get Religion has whacked Newsweek's Saint Sarah Palin cover by Lisa Miller to smithereens.

By the time Sarah Pulliam Bailey, an editor for Christianity Today and one of the writers for Get Religion, was done laser highlighting massive holes in Miller's reporting, unfounded assumptions in the writing, and the lack of authoritative sourcing all around, you almost felt sorry for Miller.

Almost.

Update: Lisa Miller was a guest on "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday night and discussed her Newsweek piece with host Bill O'Reilly. A transcript of that segment is here.

- JP