Quote of the Day (April 13, 2011)

In Defense of Sarah Palin (Again)
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Aaron Goldstein at Intellectual Conservative Blog:

“If Palin is so devoid of intellect then how come she worked her way from being a small-town councillor to small-town mayor, a state oil & gas commissioner to state governor, to vice-presidential candidate in a little over fifteen years? If Palin had no brains then how come she made Time Magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World? Sarah Palin has brains and real-world experience in spades, and both qualities will be put to use in one way or another in the 2012 election.”

- JP

Gov. Palin's caution over embracing the 'New Egypt' is justified

"We should not stand for that, or with that, or by that"
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While the left accuses Sarah Palin of not being "ready for prime time" because of her remarks about Egypt, the early signs of what a post-Mubarak society in that land may look like indicate that the caution she expressed about whether the U.S. should embrace the Egyptian revolution is justified.

In an interview with CBN's David Brody, Gov. Palin warned that we should not put America's stamp of approval on the "New Egypt" until we know who's going to fill the void:

"Is it going to be the Muslim Brotherhood? We should not stand for that, or with that, or by that. Any radical Islamists. No, that is not who we should be supporting and standing by … we need to find out who was behind all of the turmoil and the revolt and the protests so that good decisions can be made in terms of who we will stand by and support.”

Aaron Goldstein comments on the makeup of the committee the Egyptian military has appointed to draw up the country's new constitution:

While the panel includes a member of the Muslim Brotherhood there are scarcely any Coptic Christians on the committee while women have been left off the committee altogether.

The exclusion of Coptic Christians is particularly galling when one considers the New Year's Massacre of Copts in Alexandria which resulted in the deaths of 21 people. It seems the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood are determined to keep Coptic Christians even more marginalized in a post-Mubarak Egypt.

As to the exclusion of women, one must wonder if the Muslim Brotherhood would have participated in the committee had a woman been named to it.

The panel will work quickly, as it is expected to have the new constitution finished in just ten days time. The Egyptian people are scheduled to vote on it in two months.

While the left is correct in asserting that the U.S. should not expect the Egyptian idea of "democracy" to look like our own, it is missing Gov. Palin's larger point: Egyptians should exercise their right of self-determination, but the U.S. should not be obligated to endorse it, especially if the process involves giving radical Islamists a seat at the table which excluding women and the the country's principal religious minority.

The left, which has long claimed to be in the vanguard of fighting for women's rights, always seems to take the side of militant Islamists when it comes down to those radicals subjugating their women. Our leftists have been meekly silent about the treatment of women in Muslim culture, a status which is less elevated that that of horses and camels. Moreover, recent omens from elements of Egypt's revolutionaries regarding women and Israel are disturbing at the very least.

Sarah Palin was right to warn that we should be wary of throwing our support behind the the Egyptian revolutionaries until we are assured of who they are and how they will govern. The first signals the Egyptians are sending with the panel which will write its new constitution are not positive ones in any way, shape or form. Once again, Gov. Palin has proven that hers is the prudent view, while her critics on the left show themselves to be all too willing and eager to embrace all that the United States should stand against.

-JP

Aaron Goldstein: Dismissal of Sarah Palin

Olbermann knows who keeps his bread buttered
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In The American Spectator's "Political Hay" column, Aaron Goldstein writes that he was neither shocked nor surprised to see the left blame Sarah Palin for the Tucson shootings. But if they believe that she can be so easily dismissed, they have a surprise of their own in store for them:

Before the shooter was identified much less his victims were identified we witnessed the spectacle of a Nobel laureate and an Academy Award-winning actress amongst many others falling all over themselves to excoriate the former Alaska governor.

Yet perhaps the most insightful of these denunciations of Palin was that of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. Now when I use the word insightful I am not referring to the merits of his arguments. Olbermann's arguments are devoid of any, of course. But his arguments do provide us with a keen insight into the mindset of American liberalism in the early 21st century...

[...]

You would think that Keith Olbermann would know full well that all Palin was looking to do in targeting Gabrielle Giffords seat was to raise funds on behalf of Giffords' opponent, Jesse Kelly and to help Arizona's 8th District to elect a representative who would vote to repeal Obamacare. Despite Palin's efforts, the voters in Arizona's 8th opted to keep Giffords. Palin has nothing for which to apologize. You win some. You lose some. That's politics. It's something a 9-year-old girl would have understood.

But in the crazy world of Keith Olbermann, Sarah Palin must be dismissed from politics. She must be excised from our public discourse. Her thoughts have been deemed impure and thus they cannot be heard in polite society. This is at the heart of Olbermann's real agenda. The same can be said for Paul Krugman and Jane Fonda. So devoted are they to banishing Sarah Palin from the public square that they are willing to say anything, no matter how untrue, to make it happen. The end justifies the means. So it doesn't matter if Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a deranged man who was angry with her before Palin became a national public figure. It is still Palin's fault. If liberals could they would blame Palin for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. Liberals believe these things because they want to believe them. And as long as liberals want to believe that Sarah Palin bears responsibility for the murder of six people and for the attempted murder of Congresswoman Giffords, then there is no hope for elevation of our public discourse.

If Olbermann and other liberals are somehow successful in expunging Palin from public life as a result of this horrific tragedy, it will embolden them to dismiss the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the whole Tea Party Movement and anybody else they deem to be undesirable.

[More]

- JP

Quote of the Day (December 18, 2010)

Has Krauthammer gone all David Brooks on us?
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Aaron Goldstein at the IC Blog:

"The prospect of a Palin presidency has Krauthammer so troubled that he is now prepared to cast Obama as another Bill Clinton and have four more years of Obama in the White House. How else does one explain Krauthammer concluding his article by comparing Obama to Ronald Reagan?"

- JP

Aaron Goldstein: Palin's Pioneering Path to the Presidency

She is using social networking the way Reagan used television
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Sarah Palin's political enemies are deployed against her on three flanks. The progressives of the Democrat Party are lined up on one flank and the progressives of the GOP -- the ones we call Vichy Republicans and others refer to as RINOs occupy another. But standing against her on the third flank are the condescending conservatives also known as conservative elites. If she decides to run for the White House, she will have to fight on all three flanks. Even to make the Republican Party the party of Reagan again, she must fight forces opposed to her on two flanks, while those on the third flank cheer on the enemies of their enemy.

Aaron Goldstein, in today's Political Hay column at American Spectator, takes on two of Gov. Palin's conservative critics, both of whom have written op-eds which read like they were written by liberals Maureen Dowd or Bob Herbert. But elitists of both the left and right share that air of condescension. One of the two, Mona Charen, wrote at both NRO and Townhall.com that Sarah Palin's Alaska is "another cheesy entrant in the reality-show genre." The other, Matt Labash at the Weekly Standard describes it as "tacky" and claims that the show is just an act of Sarah's "self -love." Nonsense, counters Goldstein:

Alas both Charen and Labash miss the point. Having watched the first two episodes of Sarah Palin's Alaska I'd say it is neither cheesy nor tacky much less an exercise in vanity. Rather it should be seen as a series of extended home movies. Now not everyone likes home movies, especially those who are unwilling participants. But for the open-minded among us we now have an opportunity to view Sarah Palin and her family on their own terms. It also gives us an extended look at a part of our country that is seldom given a second thought.

Let's face it. Most Americans have never been to Alaska and this show is probably the closest a lot of us will get. Of course, one could make the case that if one wanted to see the wonders of Alaska on television one could tune into a PBS program like Nature. But it is one thing to see bears fighting in a river; it's another to see it as it is being observed by the Palin family.

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Alas Charen and Labash find the proceedings more than a tad undignified. They certainly don't find it presidential. Why else would they both complain about Palin's Twitter use? Let them sneer at reality television and social networking to their heart's content. The fact of the matter is these things mean a great deal to people. Whether we like it or not, who wins Dancing with the Stars means more to people than our monetary policy. Whether we like it or not, people define themselves by their Facebook status. All Palin has done is to tap into this new reality. She is merely using the social networking medium the way Ronald Reagan used television when he hosted General Electric Theater. While Palin espouses traditional values she is not taking a traditional path to the presidency. The question is whether she can carve out her own path to electoral success.

Assuming Palin decides to take a run at the White House, she will undoubtedly do so with the knowledge that she will encounter enormous barriers along that path led by a liberal media (with a little help from some condescending conservatives) determined to keep President Obama in office. In fact, she should expect them to be a thousand times more arduous and vicious than those she faced in 2008. The difference now is that no one will stop her from clearing the brush. With her pioneering spirit, this time she gets to do things her way.

[More]

- JP

Aaron Goldstein: Tina Fey Isn't Funny

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Aaron Goldstein writes at The American Spectator that when he heard The Kennedy Center had named Tina Fey the 2010 recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor last week, his first thought was, "Are they kidding?":

In 2009, the award was bestowed upon Bill Cosby. The idea of honoring Tina Fey the year after Bill Cosby is kind of like the Baseball Hall of Fame enshrining "Marvelous" Marv Throneberry the year after inducting Mickey Mantle. The Mick and Marvelous Marv were both baseball players but the similarities end there. Cosby and Fey are both comedians but there too the similarities end.

If Fey is being honored for creating humor from her uniquely American experience, then the best that I can tell it is because of her imitation of Sarah Palin. Not that I object to her impersonation because Palin certainly doesn't. Of course, Palin was such a good sport about it that she went on SNL to meet her mimic. In Going Rogue, Palin recounts dressing up as Fey during one Halloween. Palin writes, "I was Tina Fey before she was me."

But let's not kid ourselves. When Fey receives the prize in November, a week removed from the midterm elections, the ceremony will turn into little more than yet another opportunity for the so-called sophisticates from D.C., New York and Hollywood to pillory Palin. If not for the former Alaska Governor, would Fey have been honored this year? In which case, it would merely confirm that Fey is being honored for all the wrong reasons.

[...]

By this point, some of you might accuse me of not finding women funny. While I generally find women less funny than men the argument doesn't apply here. Because if anyone should be honored with the Mark Twain Prize it ought to be Carol Burnett, a woman who with the tug of her ear could tug at your heart. How can she not be recognized for her contributions to American humor? She was the first amongst equals on one of the greatest shows in the history of television. How can she not be recognized for her contributions to American humor? Granted, Burnett was presented with the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003. However, this hasn't prevented Bill Cosby, Steve Martin and Neil Simon from receiving both the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize.

Humor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I am well aware there are many people who consider Tina Fey to be funny. But the idea of honoring Tina Fey for her humor seems like a bad running joke in a comedy sketch that just won't end. As Mark Twain wrote in one of his many letters, "Humor unsupported rather hurts its author in the estimation of the reader." It might only be one man's opinion, but Tina Fey just isn't funny.

No, it's not just one man's opinion...

- JP

Liberals slam Sarah Palin's book, but refuse to read it

In a post on Intellectual Conservative's IC Blog, Aaron Goldstein tells the story of what happened when he and his roomie went to the roomie's home for the holidays. Surrounded by liberals, Goldstein says conversation around the table soon turned to politics and then more specifically to Sarah Palin:

Sure enough the Palin bashing could be put off no longer. I momentarily retreated from the room only to return with a copy of Going Rogue which I had just completed on the bus en route to Hartford. I didn't need to say a word. The book itself was provocation enough. My roomie's father (who works for a TV station in Hartford) asked me if I actually bought the book while his mother insisted that Palin didn't write a word of it. Those gathered at the table began shooting out questions they didn't want answered. They asked why Palin should be considered for higher office but didn't want to hear her accomplishments in Alaska.

I challenged them to read the book but none of them would. What are they so afraid of? Hey, I read Obama's The Audacity of Hope. But so much for the liberal capacity for openmindedness. They accused Palin of racism and homophobia, and I challenged them to cite me examples. Naturally, they couldn't come up with any examples of her own behavior other than to say that she appealed to white people and that her rhetoric was "divisive." Whatever that means?

The best anyone could come up with was the alleged behavior of some people at Palin's rallies. I countered that the Secret Service had debunked that anyone had threatened to kill Obama at the Palin rally in Pennsylvania last October. The fellow who formerly worked for Dean contended that people at the townhalls had compared Obama to Hitler. I reminded him that Bush had been compared to Hitler for eight years. He wisely ceded my point.

Golstein's experience reminds us of how Ana Marie Cox, assigned by the Washington Post to review Going Rogue, admitted in her Palin-bashing review that she didn't even bother to read the entire book! Moonbattery nailed it:

"Pretty typical for a lefty. They already know their opinions, don't annoy them with facts or expect them to actually investigate the things they bash. (And I would reckon the truth is she only skimmed the first 150 pp and completely blew off the rest) Showing another typical leftist trait --- complete lack of self-awareness --- the blogger who achieved 'fame' by writing a blog consisting of nothing but sexual innuendos about political figures accuses Palin of being 'all flash and no substance.'"

 Oh well, at least liberals are consistent about one thing: By their words and their deeds, they have proved that they are the last people on earth who should presume to pontificate about "substance." All they have are the talking points they get from the corrupt DNC and conspiracy freaks of Andrew Sullivan's caliber.  

- JP

Quote of the Day (October 21, 2009)

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Aaron Goldstein:

"If the Obama Administration is scared of the Fox News Channel then they will be terrified by Sarah Palin."

- JP