Shortly before I left on my cross country trip, while browsing in the Barnes & Noble bookstore in the Grove, I chanced upon a book which seemed particularly relevant to the current debate on gay marriage, Elizabeth Gilbert’s, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.  The title itself sounds like a reference the gay movement’s sudden embracing of an idea which many activists, until quite recently, so passionately rejected.

Reading the dustjacket and learning how this bestselling author was “forced” to marry her Brazilian sweetheart so they could live together in the United States, I wondered if any gay marriage advocates had done what she had done, studied the institution of marriage to better understand it meaning:

Having been effectively “sentenced to wed”, Gilbert decided to tackle her fears of matrimony by becoming a student of the institution, trying once and for all to understand what this befuddling, vexing, and contradictory, yet stubbornly enduring habit of human marriage actually is. Over the next ten months, as she and Felipe wandered haphazardly across Southeast Asia, waiting for the U.S. government to permit them to return to America and get married, the only thing she talked about, read about, or thought about was this perplexing subject.

Committed tells the story of one woman’s efforts through contemplation, historical study and extensive conversation with every soul she encountered along the way — to make peace with marriage before she entered its estate once more. Told with Gilbert’s trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, the book attempts to “turn on all the lights” when it comes to matrimony, frankly examining questions of compatibility, infatuation, fidelity, autonomy, family tradition, economic realities, social expectations, divorce risks and humbling responsibilities. (more…)

This morning, I posted the piece about Eleanor Clift’s lament that Obama is just plain not blaming Bush enough largely on a lark.  It amused me that a left-of-center columnist is as obsessed with the former Republican president as is his Democratic successor such that she just makes up facts about other Republican presidents (you know, those with names beginning with “R”) she also resents.

That said, her lament does provide a wonderful window in the world view of Eleanor and her ilk.

First, her response assumes that people hate George W. Bush as much as she and her peers do.  Sure, the Republican left office with low approval ratings, but most people who, in late 2008, didn’t approve of the job he was doing don’t spend their days, in 2010, obsessing about the man and blaming him for Obama’s failures.

Second, this shows the readiness of such commentators to blame Bush in specific (and Republicans in general) for all manner of the nation’s woes.  Even though the Democrats have been in power for 18 months (longer if you count their congressional majorities as of January 2007), it just can’t be their fault that the economy has not yet recovered and jobs are not in abundance because Democrats are good smart, people who have all the right answers to all the world’s problems.  And Republicans are just bad, mean (not very bright) people neglecting the common good to coddle their corporate cronies.

They just think that when things go poorly, the buck must necessarily stop with Republicans.

Over at the Kansas City Star, Derek Donovan posts the entire NAACP press release on its resolution condemning “racism within the tea party”:

The resolution condemns the bigoted elements within the Tea Party and asks for them to be repudiated. The NAACP delegates presented this resolution for debate and passage after a year of vitriolic Tea Party demonstrations during which participants used racial slurs and images. In March, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were accosted by Tea Party demonstrators and called racial epithets. Civil rights icon John Lewis was spit on, while Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was called the “N” word and openly gay Congressman Barney Frank was called an ugly anti-gay slur.

(H/t:  Gateway Pundit)

Seems they based their entire resolution on a jaundiced view of the Tea Parties.  By their method of argument, if fringe elements of a large movement use hateful rhetoric, that rhetoric can be used to criticize the movement.

First, what the resolution is asking to be done (not sure who they’re asking given the use of the passive) has already been done.  Tea Party leaders have repudiated the handful of racist slurs at image, heart and seen at a handful of Tea Party (yet described in a plethora of media reports, blog posts and opinion columns).

Second, look at the actual “facts” cited by the organization.  Despite a $100,000 prize for video evidence of such activity, no one has stepped forward to provide the video and claim the money.  As Deroy Murdock explains:

If such comments actually were uttered, the NAACP and its leftist allies would have played them over and over and over and over and over and over and over to embarrass and humiliate Republicans, conservatives and the allegedly racist tea party movement. In fact, no one has stepped forward to collect Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 prize for any documentary proof that these supposed race bombs ever were dropped on their targets.

Perhaps, it was the serendipity of catching this headline, 3 officers plead not guilty in Katrina shootings, while pondering the media’s comparatively* kid-glove treatment of the Administration’s reaction to the Gulf Oil Spill that reminded me just how jaundiced was their coverage of Katrina.

Here we have a story of the misconduct of New Orleans police officers, individuals answerable to municipal, not federal, authorities, yet all too many media outlets covered the story as if the Bush White House and the Republican’s appointees were entirely responsible for the mayhem in The Big Easy in the immediate aftermath of Katrina:

Five former officers already have pleaded guilty to helping cover up the shootings, which happened in the midst of another of the scorching days after Katrina. Bodies floated in filthy flood waters. Shots could be heard throughout the city, and many believed they were aimed at the endless stream of helicopters, the police, the rescue crews.

This all relates to the overheated media coverage of Katrina, with many false stories making their way to the public through the media, such as at the “legend” of shot being fired at helicopters.  This is not to excuse the Administration for some of the bungled federal efforts at relief, but to point out that officials from other levels of government responded in a manner which compromised relief efforts and conributed to the chaos.

This story serves to remind us that municipal officials did not always respond in a professional manner, yet somehow, somewhere a narrative was created of George W. Bush’s almost exclusive incompetence.

* (more…)

Democrats attack Wall Street while prominent Democrats rake in case from the financial sector, their allies in the media continue to trash the GOP as the party of big business, even as the big-government policies more readily favored by Democrats (and all too frequently by all too many Republicans) do seem to help big businesses (and big banks) maintain their size and increase their market share.  They have crafted this narrative of a big business/big bank/Republican axis.

And Katrina vanden Heuvel, “editor of the liberal Nation magazine,” has become the latest pundit on the left to repeat this notion.  After she accused Missouri Republican Roy Blunt of standing “with the insurance and drug companies against health-care reform“, the Washington Examiner‘s Timothy P. Carney set the record straight and took his leftist counterpart to task:

It’s a knee-jerk reaction for many liberals — they hate industry and they love government, and so they just assume that big business is against big government. But they’re wrong. Sometimes, they’re very wrong.

It seems this liberal “narrative,” like the notion of “racist” Tea Parties (as if racism must needs be behind every popular movement on the right) is based on prejudice rather than evidence.

Just contrast the two writers.  Ms. vanden Heuvel fails to marshal any facts to buttress her accusation about those who stood with Mr. Blunt (not, I might add, against health care reform per se, but against the Democrats’ massive health care overhaul.)   Furthermore, she provides no evidence whatsoever to support her contention that Republicans “have served as the guardians of entrenched corporate interests, as opposed to the common good.”  I wonder if she has even the faintest understanding of the ideas undergirding Republican opposition to the bill what she deems reform.

That she would suggest they aren’t interested in the “common good” betrays her real prejudices against her ideological adversaries.

Carney, on the other hand, provides abundant links to show just how the drug lobby did double time to move the passage of Obamacare.

UPDATE: (more…)

Former President George W. Bush has long been the all-purpose bogeyman of Democratic Party and their various echo chamber in the mainstream media and left-of-center blogosphere.  They blamed all manner of woes on him during his tenure his office, ran against him in 2008 (even though he wasn’t on the ballot) and his successor continues to blame his difficulties on him.

Now, Newsweek columnist Eleanor Clift tells us, he just  ”isn’t blaming George W. Bush enough.”

Obama inherited a big mess, and people are frustrated that he hasn’t fixed the economy. Counseling patience together with a show of resolve and determination helped President Reagan weather the storm in his first midterm election under conditions remarkably similar to today. Unemployment stood at 10.8 percent when voters went to the polls in November 1982, and Reagan’s numbers were 49-47, almost identical to Obama’s (50-47).

One key difference: Obama hasn’t done as good a job as Reagan of blaming his predecessor. Jimmy Carter for years served as the GOP’s version of Herbert Hoover while Obama let George W. Bush slip away into the ether, a former president so invisible that he might as well be in a witness-protection program. Bush’s upcoming book, Decision Points, won’t be released until a week after the November election, reinforcing the GOP’s decision to keep the unpopular president out of the mix in the midterms.

(H/t: CampaignSpot.)

Seems Ms. Clift is using the poll most favorable to the president and she’s forgetting that we’re not yet in November.  Polls could still go down.  Also recall this, Ronald Reagan’s economic plan, while enacted in 1981, didn’t kick in until 1983.  The Gipper never promised us unemployment would remain below 8% within six months of the passage of his tax cuts.

And then there’s this and let me quote Ms. Clift again to emphasize something she said:  ”Obama hasn’t done as good a job as Reagan of blaming his predecessor.”  Emphasis added.  Please, Eleanor, please show us where after January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter for the mess he inherited.  Indeed, see if you can find him blaming his the then-defeated incumbent between November 4, 1980 and his inauguration ten weeks later.

Folks like Ms. Clift really can’t let go of their obsession with George W. Bush nor their misunderstandings of Ronald Wilson Reagan.  So fixated have they become on the immediate past president that they think all will be made well (in their psyches at least) if they keep reminding themselves people how horrible, no good and very bad he really is was.

Saw something on CNN while I was doing my cardio yesterday about how Democrats intend to use the near unanimous Republican opposition to the 2000-plus page financial overhaul bill against them. Guess they feel that running against Wall Street will burnish their populist credentials. Trouble with this narrative is Wall Street seems more pleased with the legislation than do small banks on Main Street.

Even if Democrats do succeed in peddling their narrative that Republicans are tools of Wall Street (while Democrats have recently been the party raking in the most Wall Street cash), I don’t think they’ll find voter paying them much heed.  They have different concerns this year.  Bashing Wall Street may earn accolades on left-wing blogs, but it won’t change people’s opinion about the Democrats’ record since Obama took office.

Two new polls show that the top issues for American voters are jobs and the national debt. And the president’s inauguration, his party hasn’t done a very good job of enacting policies which allow for the the creation of more jobs, but they have passed legislation which, will lead to a trebling of the national debt.

According to the latest Pew Research/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll:

The public overwhelmingly views the job situation as a major priority for Congress during the coming months. Fully 80% say it is very important for Congress to pass legislation to address the job situation, which is virtually unchanged from May (81%).

Somewhat fewer (70%) say it is very important for Congress to reduce the federal budget deficit.

A CBS News poll found that Americans had similar concerns:

The county’s most important economic problem, Americans say, is jobs, volunteered by 38 percent of respondents. Coming in a distant second was the national debt, the deficit and spending, cited by 10 percent in the poll, which was conducted between July 9th and 12th.

(CBS Poll via Instapundit.) (more…)