December 2007

I wrote my old buddy, Babe the Blue Ox, recently, saying: Hilary loses to Huckabee or McCain in a heartbeat. But Obama can beat him.

Babe had some interesting things to say, so I share them with you here:

Huckabee—It’s interesting. I fear the Christ-power, but in most ways, he’s a weak candidate. I know that we have a born-again president right now, but this really is an aberration. The genius of the Bush branding strategy is that he won over %100 of the white trash evangelicals, while normal right-wingers missed the crazy christian stuff, and just saw the good-guy/frat-boy/cowboy act. The strength of Bush, such as it is, is that he truly is an empty vessel. He just never says anything, and his deepest bloody-jesus talk is all in code. Some people see him as hard and vengeful, some as charming and fun, some as a holy-blood-guzzling Christian, and all that and barricading black neighborhoods in Florida added up to just enough votes.

But with Huckabee, its all right out front and center. He and his whole family are white-trash monsters. He’s a crazy preacher who talks to god from the podium. His son is a glock-toting dog-killer, and looks like he may really be a sociopath.

I mean this is real christian stuff, cult of death and sexual inversion. This is not Alkie George grabbing the phony born-again lifeline cause it’s the only way to save his Yankee Yalie ass. There’s a lot of people who will be seriously repulsed by hick like Huckabee. Yeah I know Bill was a charming musician outsider hick from Arkansas, but I don’t think that lighting strikes twice

Still, Hillary could lose to anybody. Her campaign must have the same moles in it that Kerry’s did. I don’t know if she’s fucking up in oversight, or if it’s her idea, but her campaign is earning a reputation as petty, hyper-manipulative and vicious. I want to like her. I’m trying. But I don’t. I hate her.

Please let us have us Obama.

There was a story in the Post recently where it was very hard to tell if the Post was saying that Obama was a Muslim or saying that there was a rumor that he was a Muslim. The Editor, a guy named Hamilton (!), responded in a way that struck me as quite lame. There is not a single statement in the followup to the article that takes any ownership of what the Post did. You don’t really need to read the Post story to get it from the following, but Politico did a good job of following up. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7193.html

The paper’s intention, Hamilton said, was “to write a story about the kind of rumors that are out there,” and added that “saying something is a rumor is not saying it’s true.”

“We didn’t say it was a false rumor,” Hamilton added. “To me, a rumor is not true.”

In the Post article, the madrassa story is described as “an early rumor,” rather than a “false report,” which is how CNN summed it up in Jan. 2007.

“I don’t mean to be immune to criticism,” Hamilton said. “Obviously we did something that we should have been careful about.”

However, he added, “Not every imperfect story generates this type of controversy.”

Accepting internal criticism, Hamilton said that the Post “is a big family, and families have lots of disagreements.”

“We’re not a hierarchical organization that promotes message discipline,” he added.

Each of these sentences is empty. And the premise – that simply to say something is a rumor is to say it is false – is surely weak. If this kind of thinking or explanation from an editor at one of the world’s biggest newspapers is not ingenuine, it is at least unforgiveably naïve. The guy sounds like a putz.