The indictment of Roger Clemens, charged with committing perjury before the United States Congress, brings a few questions to my mind:
1.) Should we be prosecuting a retired athlete for lying about using performance enhancing substances? There's a surprisingly large number who say "no", and they're not all rabid Roger Clemens fans. One argument seems is the old "he's suffered enough", i.e. he's become a pariah in MLB circles and his once-certain election to the Baseball Hall of Fame now seems extremely unlikely.
There are also those who dismiss the gravity of the offense about which he apparently lied, "it wasn't murder or treason or something". And there are those - myself included - who ask what business Congress has investigating steroid use in professional sports.
We heard many of the same arguments during the impeachment trial of President Clinton, who had certainly committed perjury himself. "it's impractical" to remove the President of the United States from office over a lie he told in a deposition regarding a rather personal matter; but this was only a small part of the argument contra impeachment. The most famous was that the offense "didn't rise to the level of impeachment", which I always found specious.
Is anyone reading this old enough to remember Alger Hiss? For the younger set, Hiss was an official in the U.S. State Department who had been at Yalta with F.D.R. and was secretary of the founding meeting of the United Nations. In 1948 an ex-Communist who was an editor at Time magazine, Whittaker Chambers, accused Hiss of being a Communist. This was a cause celebre, especially since Hiss was an member of the "East Coast Establishment", an Ivy Leaguer who'd been a protege of one Supreme Court Justice while at Harvard (Felix Frankfurter) and susequently clerked for another (Oliver Wendell Holmes). Hiss protested his innocence, and sued Chambers for libel. The events which Chambers was able to prove were beyond the existing statutes of limitations, but Hiss was eventually charged with perjury, convicted, and jailed for several years.
Men (and women, lest they cavil at my insensitivity) lie, about matters large and small, for reasons good and bad. But we need to be able to have confidence in our judicial proceedings and so the crime of perjury must be prosecuted and its perpetrators punished. And prosecutions for perjury ought not be so rare that they are reserved as a "safety net" for instances when the law provides otherwise-insuficient remedy for the deeds of a miscreant.
2.) Why is Congress investigating steroid use in Major League Baseball in the first place? On balance I suppose it might be a good thing, insofar as it keeps them from further curtailing our liberties, raising our taxes, or voting on any more legislation they haven't read! But really, how's this their business? Interstate commerce? "Equal protection"? Baseball's informal status as our "national pastime"? Or the "Imperial Congress" doing what it darn pleases? Not that any of that is germane to the plight of Clemens, for one thing he wasn't subpoenaed or anything, he volunteered to testify!
3.) There is much to be said about the effect of steroids (and H.G.H. and other stuff) on the game, far too much for this already-too-long post. But please indulge me in a modest proposal: how about a separate league for players who want to use performance-enhancing drugs? If, as the argument goes, a certain number of guys are going to do this no matter what, why not give them a venue to compete on an equal basis with their chemically-enhanced peers? Middle infielders routinely hitting tape-measure homers, "real" power hitters routinely racking-up 75 home run seasons, relief pitchers throwing 100 m.p.h. for mutiple innings on back-to-back nights, and a 5-day disabled list in consideration for the "quicker recovery" that most players caught using P.E.D.s claim as their reason for using the juice? If the "X-Games" and "Arena Football" were made for t.v., how much more the fully-juiced game of baseball? Maybe then the rest of us fans could go back to watching the game as Wiliams and Koufax played it; or at least reasonably so. (the mention of those names raises the question - how come these guys who are on the juice max-out at 100 pitches every fifth day, or need a break after a few straight games in the field?)
Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts
25 August 2010
08 May 2010
(Un)Happy (No)Birth Day
There was an AP article in the Boston Daily Worker* today about the fiftieth anniversary of the introduction of "the Pill". That's not an insignificant milestone, and all of us ought to take note of it. Fifty years of smaller families - and shorter marriages. Fifty years of women "taking control" - and dying early or suffering horribly from breast cancer. Fifty years of being free to "act like men" - and wondering why men don't treat them like ladies any more.
The author of this article, however, seems to think that it's all good. Let's take a look:
America’s favorite birth control method reaches its 50th year
US spends $3.5m on ‘the pill,’ in dozens of brands
By Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
May 8, 2010
CHICAGO — A world without “the pill’’ is unimaginable to many young women who now use it to treat acne, skip periods, improve mood, and, of course, prevent pregnancy. They might be surprised to learn that US officials announcing approval of the world’s first oral contraceptive were uncomfortable. Of course they'd be surprised - the MSM has been the captain of the cheerleading squad for the 'sexual revolution' - why would they bother to tell the other side of the story?
“Our own ideas of morality had nothing to do with the case,’’ said John Harvey of the Food and Drug Administration in 1960. Because... morality is subjective?
The pill was safe, in other words. Don’t blame us if you think it’s wicked. "Safe" is not the opposite of "wicked" - this is a sort of straw man. Is the author not demonstrably sympathizing with the proponents of 'the Pill'? And do you suppose the AP - or the Boston Daily Worker - will tell us WHY anyone might think this novelty was "wicked"?
Tomorrow, Mother’s Day, is the 50th anniversary of that provocative announcement that introduced to the world what is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important inventions of the last century. The mind boggles - is the irony of 'Mother's Day' completely lost on Miz Johnson?
The world has changed, but it’s debatable what part the birth control pill played. Debatable? Perhaps for one who is used to believing what she reads in the pages of The New York Times...
Some specialists think it gets too much credit or blame for the sexual revolution. After all, sex outside marriage wasn’t new in 1960. 1.) And some "specialists" think that the Nazis got a raw deal at Nuremburg. Bravo sierra. 2.) Who could possibly think that a product that dramatically altered the rules of Nature and seemingly nullified the consequences of illicit sexual intercourse might lead to a dramatic increase of that sort of behavior.
The pill definitely changed sex, though, (she is forced to admit it) giving women more control over their fertility than they had ever had before (not quite - the option of keeping ones legs closed has always been effective) and permanently putting doctors — who previously didn’t see contraceptives as part of their job — in the birth control picture. Strange, this; but again Miz Johnson misses the irony - these days a doctor can lose his job for refusing to prescribe perhaps the only pharmaceutical which "treats" a normal, healthy organic bodily process by disabling it.
But some things haven’t changed. Now as then, a male birth control pill is still on the drawing board. Why not - at $3.5M per annum for 'the Pill' there's got to be a market for this.
“There’s a joke in this field that a male pill is always five to seven years away from the market, and that’s what people have been saying since 1960,’’ said Andrea Tone, a history professor at Montreal’s McGill University and author of “Devices and Desires: A History of Contraception in America.’’ And this is funny... why? Perhaps a 'news' article by a 'news service' published in a 'newspaper' would consider explaining the history of the attempt to develop a male version of this wondrous pill.
The pill is America’s favorite form of reversible (except for the irreversible consequences) birth control. (Sterilization is the leader overall.) Nearly a third of women who want to prevent unwanted pregnancies use it. “In 2008, Americans spent more than $3.5 billion on birth control pills,’’ Tone said, “and we’ve gone from the one pill to 40 different brands.’’
There are Yaz (I cringe every time I hear this. I hope Carl Yastrzemski sues them for every cent they've ever made), Yasmin, Seasonale, Seasonique, and Lybrel — all with slightly different packaging, formulations, and selling points.
In the 1960s, anthropologist Ashley Montagu thought the birth control pill was as important as the discovery of fire. Turns out it wasn’t the answer to overpopulation, war, and poverty, as some of its early advocates had hoped. Nor did it universally save marriages. The four big lies we heard over and over again about 'the Pill' - do you supose there will be anything forthcoming about those who opposed 'the Pill', or their predictions?
“Married couples could have happier sex with more freedom and less fear. The divorce rate might go down and there would be no more unwanted pregnancies,’’ said Elaine Tyler May, 62, a University of Minnesota history professor who wrote “America and the Pill. Married couples might be having "happier sex" but not with each other - the divorce rate has increased nearly TENFOLD. As for "unwanted pregnancies", the failure rate of artificial birth control was a primary argument in favor of legalized abortion, of which we have over a million a year.
“None of those things happened, not the optimistic hopes or the pessimistic fears of sexual anarchy,’’ she said. Huh? Nice of her to admit that the 'experts' were wrong, but insofar as the "pessimist[s]" predicted "sexual anarchy", isn't that what we have now?
And it didn’t eliminate all unwanted pregnancies either. Nearly half of all pregnancies to US women are unintended and nearly half of those end in abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which has gathered data on abortions for years. Quelle surprise.
The pill is often associated with the women’s movement of the 1970s. Because it IS associated with it. That's like saying that Babe Ruth is often associated with baseball!
But the two feminists behind the pill, the ones who provided the intellectual spark (like Hitler provided the "intellectual spark" for The Holocaust?) and the financial backing, were born a century earlier, in the 1870s.
As suffragists worked for the vote, renowned birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger distributed pamphlets with contraceptive advice and dreamed of a magic pill to prevent pregnancy. It is amazing to me that Margaret Sanger is still uncritically held up as a paragon of virtue - personally she was a libertine, and her "Birth Control League" was a eugenicist organization seeking to limit childbirth amongst the "inferior" races, e.g. blacks. (Her sentiment, not mine!)
Katharine McCormick, a philanthropist with a science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ("science" automatically = good) bankrolled the work of Gregory Pincus, the man Sanger convinced to develop the pill. “It was my grandmother’s idea and Katharine McCormick’s money,’’ Alex Sanger said, now chairman of the International Planned Parenthood Council. And we all lived happily ever after. What this article omits is mind-blowing, it just goes to show that media bias need not consist of slanted assertions or opinion masquerading as news, omission can be just as powerful.
*In fairness, its publishers refer to it as "The Boston Globe". What, exactly, would be different about its content and positions if it were published by the Communist Party I cannot discern.
The author of this article, however, seems to think that it's all good. Let's take a look:
America’s favorite birth control method reaches its 50th year
US spends $3.5m on ‘the pill,’ in dozens of brands
By Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
May 8, 2010
CHICAGO — A world without “the pill’’ is unimaginable to many young women who now use it to treat acne, skip periods, improve mood, and, of course, prevent pregnancy. They might be surprised to learn that US officials announcing approval of the world’s first oral contraceptive were uncomfortable. Of course they'd be surprised - the MSM has been the captain of the cheerleading squad for the 'sexual revolution' - why would they bother to tell the other side of the story?
“Our own ideas of morality had nothing to do with the case,’’ said John Harvey of the Food and Drug Administration in 1960. Because... morality is subjective?
The pill was safe, in other words. Don’t blame us if you think it’s wicked. "Safe" is not the opposite of "wicked" - this is a sort of straw man. Is the author not demonstrably sympathizing with the proponents of 'the Pill'? And do you suppose the AP - or the Boston Daily Worker - will tell us WHY anyone might think this novelty was "wicked"?
Tomorrow, Mother’s Day, is the 50th anniversary of that provocative announcement that introduced to the world what is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important inventions of the last century. The mind boggles - is the irony of 'Mother's Day' completely lost on Miz Johnson?
The world has changed, but it’s debatable what part the birth control pill played. Debatable? Perhaps for one who is used to believing what she reads in the pages of The New York Times...
Some specialists think it gets too much credit or blame for the sexual revolution. After all, sex outside marriage wasn’t new in 1960. 1.) And some "specialists" think that the Nazis got a raw deal at Nuremburg. Bravo sierra. 2.) Who could possibly think that a product that dramatically altered the rules of Nature and seemingly nullified the consequences of illicit sexual intercourse might lead to a dramatic increase of that sort of behavior.
The pill definitely changed sex, though, (she is forced to admit it) giving women more control over their fertility than they had ever had before (not quite - the option of keeping ones legs closed has always been effective) and permanently putting doctors — who previously didn’t see contraceptives as part of their job — in the birth control picture. Strange, this; but again Miz Johnson misses the irony - these days a doctor can lose his job for refusing to prescribe perhaps the only pharmaceutical which "treats" a normal, healthy organic bodily process by disabling it.
But some things haven’t changed. Now as then, a male birth control pill is still on the drawing board. Why not - at $3.5M per annum for 'the Pill' there's got to be a market for this.
“There’s a joke in this field that a male pill is always five to seven years away from the market, and that’s what people have been saying since 1960,’’ said Andrea Tone, a history professor at Montreal’s McGill University and author of “Devices and Desires: A History of Contraception in America.’’ And this is funny... why? Perhaps a 'news' article by a 'news service' published in a 'newspaper' would consider explaining the history of the attempt to develop a male version of this wondrous pill.
The pill is America’s favorite form of reversible (except for the irreversible consequences) birth control. (Sterilization is the leader overall.) Nearly a third of women who want to prevent unwanted pregnancies use it. “In 2008, Americans spent more than $3.5 billion on birth control pills,’’ Tone said, “and we’ve gone from the one pill to 40 different brands.’’
There are Yaz (I cringe every time I hear this. I hope Carl Yastrzemski sues them for every cent they've ever made), Yasmin, Seasonale, Seasonique, and Lybrel — all with slightly different packaging, formulations, and selling points.
In the 1960s, anthropologist Ashley Montagu thought the birth control pill was as important as the discovery of fire. Turns out it wasn’t the answer to overpopulation, war, and poverty, as some of its early advocates had hoped. Nor did it universally save marriages. The four big lies we heard over and over again about 'the Pill' - do you supose there will be anything forthcoming about those who opposed 'the Pill', or their predictions?
“Married couples could have happier sex with more freedom and less fear. The divorce rate might go down and there would be no more unwanted pregnancies,’’ said Elaine Tyler May, 62, a University of Minnesota history professor who wrote “America and the Pill. Married couples might be having "happier sex" but not with each other - the divorce rate has increased nearly TENFOLD. As for "unwanted pregnancies", the failure rate of artificial birth control was a primary argument in favor of legalized abortion, of which we have over a million a year.
“None of those things happened, not the optimistic hopes or the pessimistic fears of sexual anarchy,’’ she said. Huh? Nice of her to admit that the 'experts' were wrong, but insofar as the "pessimist[s]" predicted "sexual anarchy", isn't that what we have now?
And it didn’t eliminate all unwanted pregnancies either. Nearly half of all pregnancies to US women are unintended and nearly half of those end in abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which has gathered data on abortions for years. Quelle surprise.
The pill is often associated with the women’s movement of the 1970s. Because it IS associated with it. That's like saying that Babe Ruth is often associated with baseball!
But the two feminists behind the pill, the ones who provided the intellectual spark (like Hitler provided the "intellectual spark" for The Holocaust?) and the financial backing, were born a century earlier, in the 1870s.
As suffragists worked for the vote, renowned birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger distributed pamphlets with contraceptive advice and dreamed of a magic pill to prevent pregnancy. It is amazing to me that Margaret Sanger is still uncritically held up as a paragon of virtue - personally she was a libertine, and her "Birth Control League" was a eugenicist organization seeking to limit childbirth amongst the "inferior" races, e.g. blacks. (Her sentiment, not mine!)
Katharine McCormick, a philanthropist with a science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ("science" automatically = good) bankrolled the work of Gregory Pincus, the man Sanger convinced to develop the pill. “It was my grandmother’s idea and Katharine McCormick’s money,’’ Alex Sanger said, now chairman of the International Planned Parenthood Council. And we all lived happily ever after. What this article omits is mind-blowing, it just goes to show that media bias need not consist of slanted assertions or opinion masquerading as news, omission can be just as powerful.
*In fairness, its publishers refer to it as "The Boston Globe". What, exactly, would be different about its content and positions if it were published by the Communist Party I cannot discern.
27 March 2010
The Years That the Locust Hath Eaten
Unfortunately I'm not as familiar with the Old Testament as I am with the New, but thanks to my abiding interest in my distant cousin Sir Winston Churchill I have long been able to quote the passage from the Prophecy of Joel, "And I [The Lord] will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten" (Joel 2:25 - OK, I admit it, I prefer the King James translation to the Douai in this instance).
Churchill used the phrase, to great effect, in one of his memorable pre-war speeches in Parliament at a time when he stood practically alone in attempting to rouse the government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to the imminent danger posed by the rebirth of Germany under Hitler. His use of "the years that the locust hath eaten" referred to the period prior to 1936 when England and France, alone or together, could easily have stopped Germany's re-arming had they not lacked the will.
I've often thought of that phrase in the context of the catastrophe which has befallen the Church in the wake of the Council.
Fr. Raymond de Souza has a good column in Canada's least-bad newspaper, The National Post, contrasting what the media and the popular culture want the Church to be with what She must be to be true to Herself and Her spouse. The occasion of the media's sudden interest in the Church is of course the recent exposure of the cover-up by the Irish bishops of their own clergy's homosexual and pederast scandals, as well as a particular incident in the Pope's old diocese. They have tried mightily to indict the present Pope with culpability after the fact in these instances and others, but as Fr. de Souza points out the blame for the mishandling of these cases resides with the individual bishops, not the man who currently sits in the Chair of Peter.
He does not pull punches in identifying the cause of their laxity, and what the Holy See (including the former Cardinal Ratzinger) have done to combat it.
Years that the locust hath eaten, indeed.
[UPDATE - I should have realized that the Churchill speech I was thinking of was available online (isn't everything these days?) Not to distract from the point of this post, but do go and read it if you are unfamiliar with it. Good heavens, could that man write. And imagine it being delivered in that unique Churchillian style: the psalm-like cadence of his delivery, the slightly high-pitched voice rising and then descending to a near-growl as he punctuates a point, and the rest.]
Churchill used the phrase, to great effect, in one of his memorable pre-war speeches in Parliament at a time when he stood practically alone in attempting to rouse the government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to the imminent danger posed by the rebirth of Germany under Hitler. His use of "the years that the locust hath eaten" referred to the period prior to 1936 when England and France, alone or together, could easily have stopped Germany's re-arming had they not lacked the will.
I've often thought of that phrase in the context of the catastrophe which has befallen the Church in the wake of the Council.
Fr. Raymond de Souza has a good column in Canada's least-bad newspaper, The National Post, contrasting what the media and the popular culture want the Church to be with what She must be to be true to Herself and Her spouse. The occasion of the media's sudden interest in the Church is of course the recent exposure of the cover-up by the Irish bishops of their own clergy's homosexual and pederast scandals, as well as a particular incident in the Pope's old diocese. They have tried mightily to indict the present Pope with culpability after the fact in these instances and others, but as Fr. de Souza points out the blame for the mishandling of these cases resides with the individual bishops, not the man who currently sits in the Chair of Peter.
He does not pull punches in identifying the cause of their laxity, and what the Holy See (including the former Cardinal Ratzinger) have done to combat it.
Years that the locust hath eaten, indeed.
[UPDATE - I should have realized that the Churchill speech I was thinking of was available online (isn't everything these days?) Not to distract from the point of this post, but do go and read it if you are unfamiliar with it. Good heavens, could that man write. And imagine it being delivered in that unique Churchillian style: the psalm-like cadence of his delivery, the slightly high-pitched voice rising and then descending to a near-growl as he punctuates a point, and the rest.]
26 February 2010
A Tasty Take on the Ember Days
You know the Japanese style of frying vegetables and seafood, lightly battered, known as Tempura? According to my dictionary the word is derived fron the Portuguese tempêro (seasoning). Sounds a bit dubious, I mean to batter and fry something isn't to season it, and it's not like the Portuguese language lacks for words describing various methods of preparing foodstuffs, is it?
As usual, the real story is much more interesting. Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in the mid-Sixteenth Century introduced this style of cooking meatless meals on days of fast and abstinence. Apparently the locals loved it and it caught-on bigtime. It took its name from a Latin name for the Ember Days, Quatour Tempora, i.e. "Four Times". How's that for a little inculturation?
So you can tell that story to your friends next time you enjoy some shrimp or vegetable tempura at your favorite Asian restaurant and they'll marvel at your mastery of odd knowedge!
I meant to include this little tidbit in Wednesday's post but completely forgot. Fortunately Fr. Z. had a mention of it today so I'm posting it now while it's still timely.
As usual, the real story is much more interesting. Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in the mid-Sixteenth Century introduced this style of cooking meatless meals on days of fast and abstinence. Apparently the locals loved it and it caught-on bigtime. It took its name from a Latin name for the Ember Days, Quatour Tempora, i.e. "Four Times". How's that for a little inculturation?
So you can tell that story to your friends next time you enjoy some shrimp or vegetable tempura at your favorite Asian restaurant and they'll marvel at your mastery of odd knowedge!
I meant to include this little tidbit in Wednesday's post but completely forgot. Fortunately Fr. Z. had a mention of it today so I'm posting it now while it's still timely.
19 February 2010
The importance of identity...
In addition to my oft-sounded theme of the importance of a "Catholic Identity" I would note that America has of late been suffering an "identity crisis". While multiculturalism has been pushed for years, and there have been efforts to make America subject to the World Court, this crisis (as have so many others) has deepened since the inaguration of our first "post-partisan", "post-racial", "post-American" president. (Did I miss any?)
Yesterday, in his comments at CPAC, Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio accused the Democrat party of "...use[ing] a severe economic downturn, a severe recession, as an excuse to implement the statist policies that they have longed for all this time. In essence, they are using this downturn as cover not to fix America, but to try to change America -- to fundamentally redefine the role of government in our lives and the role of America in the world." and stated that "2010 is a referendum on the very identity of our nation".
I think he's right.
And I think that a healthy and traditional "American Identity" grounded in our nation's history and founding principles is vital to the welfare of our nation in the 21st century.
Yesterday, in his comments at CPAC, Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio accused the Democrat party of "...use[ing] a severe economic downturn, a severe recession, as an excuse to implement the statist policies that they have longed for all this time. In essence, they are using this downturn as cover not to fix America, but to try to change America -- to fundamentally redefine the role of government in our lives and the role of America in the world." and stated that "2010 is a referendum on the very identity of our nation".
I think he's right.
And I think that a healthy and traditional "American Identity" grounded in our nation's history and founding principles is vital to the welfare of our nation in the 21st century.
12 February 2010
Get Well, Bubba!
Not everything is relative, but some things are.
By 2000 the nation seemd to have Clinton fatigue. Enough of Bill's lip-biting and infinitely-parseable sentences, enough of Hillary's smartest-woman-in-the-world schtick. After eight years of the whole honky-tonk show, it was a breath of fresh air to have a plain-talking, straight-shooting man in the Oval Office, even if he sometimes seemed to be taking public speaking lessons from Dan Quayle.
Everyone has their own opinion of the presidency of G.W. Bush, and it may be impossible to look objectively at the man and his administration until a few years have passed. I, for one, think that history will be much kinder to him than the pundits and the editorial pages have been. But I digress.
During his presidency a fascinating phenomenon occurrred when he tapped his predecessor and his (own) father, Clinton's predecessor, to lead fundraising efforts after the tsunami which devastated regions of Asia and Africa in late 2004. A funny thing happenned: the two ex-presidents, as different in background and temperament as possible, and who had said some not-very-nice things about each other during the 1992 presidential campaign, hit it off. So much so that for months afterward the pair were practically ubiquitous, appearing together on television many times. The pair reprised their efforts after Hurricane Katrina, and now we have a further Bush-Clinton collaboration in the cause of relief for Haiti (although it seems as though the younger Bush has supplanted his father on this one)
Thanks to efforts like this, and due in no small part to the fading memories of 'Slick Willy', Clinton's image has been largely rehabilitated, and some people seem moved to sympathy for him by reason of his marital attachment to Lady Hillary(!)
I must confess that the passage of time has indeed dulled some of my personal distaste for the perjurious former philanderer-in-chief, but it wasn't until recently, as "Year One" of the new era of hopeychange came to an end, that I found myself experiencing an emotional response I'd never expected: I'm nostalgic for Clinton! Bring back the Arkansas snake oil, and the bimbo erruptions, and the now-you-see-em-now-you-don't billing records from the Rose Law Firm. Compared to the present administration ol' Billy Blythe looks pretty good right about now.
Relatively, at least...
By 2000 the nation seemd to have Clinton fatigue. Enough of Bill's lip-biting and infinitely-parseable sentences, enough of Hillary's smartest-woman-in-the-world schtick. After eight years of the whole honky-tonk show, it was a breath of fresh air to have a plain-talking, straight-shooting man in the Oval Office, even if he sometimes seemed to be taking public speaking lessons from Dan Quayle.
Everyone has their own opinion of the presidency of G.W. Bush, and it may be impossible to look objectively at the man and his administration until a few years have passed. I, for one, think that history will be much kinder to him than the pundits and the editorial pages have been. But I digress.
During his presidency a fascinating phenomenon occurrred when he tapped his predecessor and his (own) father, Clinton's predecessor, to lead fundraising efforts after the tsunami which devastated regions of Asia and Africa in late 2004. A funny thing happenned: the two ex-presidents, as different in background and temperament as possible, and who had said some not-very-nice things about each other during the 1992 presidential campaign, hit it off. So much so that for months afterward the pair were practically ubiquitous, appearing together on television many times. The pair reprised their efforts after Hurricane Katrina, and now we have a further Bush-Clinton collaboration in the cause of relief for Haiti (although it seems as though the younger Bush has supplanted his father on this one)
Thanks to efforts like this, and due in no small part to the fading memories of 'Slick Willy', Clinton's image has been largely rehabilitated, and some people seem moved to sympathy for him by reason of his marital attachment to Lady Hillary(!)
I must confess that the passage of time has indeed dulled some of my personal distaste for the perjurious former philanderer-in-chief, but it wasn't until recently, as "Year One" of the new era of hopeychange came to an end, that I found myself experiencing an emotional response I'd never expected: I'm nostalgic for Clinton! Bring back the Arkansas snake oil, and the bimbo erruptions, and the now-you-see-em-now-you-don't billing records from the Rose Law Firm. Compared to the present administration ol' Billy Blythe looks pretty good right about now.
Relatively, at least...
05 February 2010
To quote J.F.K...
(...and I don't mean John Forbes Kerry...)
John F. Kennedy famously dismissed Richard Nixon in 1960 with the remark: "no class". His late little (well, younger) brother's support for Barack H. Obama notwithstanding, does anyone have a doubt that he'd pass a similar judgment on our 44th president?
Earlier this week, at the National Prayer Breakfast, the President mispronounced the word 'corpsman' as "corpse-man" - not once, but twice. (according to some sources he's done it more than twice, but that's all I saw on t.v.) My five-year-old makes mistakes like this when reading unfamiliar words, but my eight- and eleven-year olds manage to handle the word "corps" - as in "Marine Corps" or "Peace Corps"without breaking a sweat.
Question: What kind of adult (reading something relating to the freakin' military for heaven's sake) mispronounces that word?
Answer: Someone who is far too ignorant to be President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. Exclamation point.
Question: Where were you people when he was running for president in 2008?
Answer: Bush lied, people died. BusHitlerChimpy is stupid, and he's an evil genius. And Cheney too. And the Halliburton hurricane machine blew away New Orleans. And we needed to have a black president. And he went to Harvard. And he's way cool. Etc.
Right.
I remember how many of my friends in the military were agonizing about re-enlisting during the Clinton years. They are - and I am - thoroughly nostalgic for the Clinton presidency these days! And if you feel the same way the foregoing will only make you even more nostalgic for the salad days of "Slick Willy":
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-She-insisted-shes-going-to-be-buried-in-an-Obama-t-shirt-83645132.html
Again - no class. What kind of man talks like this, never mind the President of the United States? As an American I'm just plain ashamed. And for those amongst my friends who invested so much of their own emotion in the idea that this guy was either one of them, or someone who transcended politics, race, and everything else that invariably divides us, or was just a superior candidate to that grumpy old maverick-moderate sorta-kinda-conservative war hero; my condolences.
And I hate to say it, but I told you so!
John F. Kennedy famously dismissed Richard Nixon in 1960 with the remark: "no class". His late little (well, younger) brother's support for Barack H. Obama notwithstanding, does anyone have a doubt that he'd pass a similar judgment on our 44th president?
Earlier this week, at the National Prayer Breakfast, the President mispronounced the word 'corpsman' as "corpse-man" - not once, but twice. (according to some sources he's done it more than twice, but that's all I saw on t.v.) My five-year-old makes mistakes like this when reading unfamiliar words, but my eight- and eleven-year olds manage to handle the word "corps" - as in "Marine Corps" or "Peace Corps"without breaking a sweat.
Question: What kind of adult (reading something relating to the freakin' military for heaven's sake) mispronounces that word?
Answer: Someone who is far too ignorant to be President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. Exclamation point.
Question: Where were you people when he was running for president in 2008?
Answer: Bush lied, people died. BusHitlerChimpy is stupid, and he's an evil genius. And Cheney too. And the Halliburton hurricane machine blew away New Orleans. And we needed to have a black president. And he went to Harvard. And he's way cool. Etc.
Right.
I remember how many of my friends in the military were agonizing about re-enlisting during the Clinton years. They are - and I am - thoroughly nostalgic for the Clinton presidency these days! And if you feel the same way the foregoing will only make you even more nostalgic for the salad days of "Slick Willy":
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-She-insisted-shes-going-to-be-buried-in-an-Obama-t-shirt-83645132.html
Again - no class. What kind of man talks like this, never mind the President of the United States? As an American I'm just plain ashamed. And for those amongst my friends who invested so much of their own emotion in the idea that this guy was either one of them, or someone who transcended politics, race, and everything else that invariably divides us, or was just a superior candidate to that grumpy old maverick-moderate sorta-kinda-conservative war hero; my condolences.
And I hate to say it, but I told you so!
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