Saturday, January 12, 2008

Well Said....

William F. Buckley Jr. on Barack Obama:
"Robert Taft was not to be likened to the common man, and neither is Barack Obama, who can do a great deal urging the younger generation to emulate what he, Obama, did in working to be educated, and mastering the law, and of course expressing gratitude to free American institutions that recognize and encourage advancement. But it is not unimportant to remind the voters of that generation that there is nothing, nothing that the state can do to replicate Obama’s success for a million others."

Curiously Remeniscent....

Tight Democrat Primary Sparks Fraud Allegations:
“It’s a forgone conclusion that if the race outcome defies the pollster predictions, there must have been corruption,” said an unnamed DNC source. “Just because it’s an intra-party contest, doesn’t mean we’ll subject the results to less scrutiny.”

A Test of Your Multicultural Bone Fides...

CAIR Representative Refuses to Condemn Stoning

Yet Another Bit of MSM Irony....

A Great Question:
"A leading Democratic candidate for president attends an “Afrocentric” church that bestows awards on Louis Farrakhan and practically defines itself through race-baiting. Burt Prelutsky asks, why isn’t Barack Obama's faith-based problem making national headlines and the nightly news?"

The new level of discourse

It is amazing to me what now qualifies as "progressive" . Maybe Jonah Goldberg is right....

Friday, January 11, 2008

When do words really hurt?

I am usually quite a fan of Richard Sandomir over at the Times - anyone who knows how bad Bryant Gumble is on the NFL Network broadcasts and isn't afraid to say it can't be all that bad. But today he misses the mark in a way that is particularly annoying.

The recent
dustup over on the Golf Channel during last week's Mercedes Championship, and the subsequent suspension of co-anchor Kelley Tilghman has Sandomir all in a huff; and, for him, the two week suspension just wasn't enough. Her words were just so offensive, so reminiscent of past racial brutality (he even has the total estimates of lynchings in this country in the last 200 years) that there can be no excuse for allowing Ms. Tilghman to come back on the air presumably without having her lips cortorized to her nose.

This is all just so much politically correct humbug - coming from the leading publication in the field. I have watched Tilghman for a few years now, and she has never before offended so much as a mosquito. If anything, I would criticize her for being way too measured in most of her work. She made an impromptu, incredibly dumb remark, and then compounded the issue by waiting 48 hours to apologize on the air. But even Tiger Woods - the object of her remark - accepted her apology without any fanfare.

So what's the problem here? Quite simply, we have become a nation of over-lawyered, overly sensitive cranks who can't tell the difference between being offended and really being harmed. When we say that "words hurt people" we want to promote everyone getting along and being nice to each other; but that's really not how things happen in the world - is it? Get over it, Sandomir.....