From long familiarity, we know what honor is.
It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice.
It is what enables the soldier to die alone,
the political prisoner to resist,
the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street.
Mark Helprin
Congratulations to 'The Voice' Winner Javier Colon
In yesterday's post I announced my support for Javier.
On Gaffes
Maybe it's because I'm a grownup, but I really don't like the petty partisan food fights between the Democrats/progressives and the Republicans. I occasionally watch the nightly rebroadcast of Hannity, like last night when, with Glenn Beck's annoying habit of repeating the same video clip 3 or 4 times within an hour, he kept repeating time after time: the President's mispronunciation of 'corpsman' (i.e., the 's' is silent) and the famous '57 state' gaffe, not to mention other well-known Democrat politician gaffes (especially Joe Biden, e.g., asking a wheelchair-bound Missouri state senator to stand up). I myself have brought up the '57 state' gaffe a few times, but I've published over 900 posts to this blog, and it's when I think he's gotten a little too full of himself. And the same holds true on the other side: the endless recitation of former Veep Dan Quayle's misspelling of 'potatoe', former President Bush's notorious mispronunciation of 'nuclear'.
Unfortunately, Sean Hannity doesn''t have the background I have in human performance engineering not to mention having read literally thousands of research articles in applied or educational psychology. Very intelligent people make innocuous mistakes, and not all mistakes are equal in the sense Hannity and others are suggesting. Sometimes very bright people are thinking two steps ahead of themselves (of what they intend to say next) and they'll misspeak. Let me give some context: I don't know where the '57 states' came from but maybe he was thinking destinations and was clustering together some foreign states or American territories. That's different than asking Obama how many American states there are. This particular thing, moreover, is a simple question of fact, which ranks fairly low on any standard taxonomy of educational objectives. The same thing holds true of Dan Quayle's 'potatoe'; some English words ending in 'o' use 'es' as plurals, e.g., 'heroes' and 'potatoes', others use 's', e.g., photos. For a word ending in 'e', you form the plural by adding an 's'. It's possible he worked backwards from 'potatoes'. He was incorrect, of course, but to make an inference about his educational achievement based on a singular misapplication of a spelling rule is unreasonable. I myself find myself doing an occasional spoonerism which I find rather amusing--for example, I've caught myself just before emptying my sweetener packets into the trash instead of my coffee cup. The bottom line is that you need a preponderance of evidence, a consistent pattern of mistakes.
I think it's intellectually dishonest to exaggerate trivial mistakes out of context. And quite frankly, repetitious litanies of trivial mistakes are boring, and I think the fact that Hannity seemed obsessed with the pronunciation of 'corpsman' reflects his mediocrity of his mind and his contribution. This blog is unlike any libertarian-conservative blog on the Internet. I provide numerous original analyses and other original content like political humor, I often take contrarian points of view, and I explore an eclectic assortment of topics; I am not wishy-washy, and I loathe political spin and red meat politics. I don't spend a lot of time whining about the unfair liberal mass media.
What bothers me about Fox News and many of the conservative blogs is that they do not address some of the core issues and simply parrot, say, Michele Bachmann's talking points. I saw this freakish clip the other day where Bachmann is claiming that Barack Obama is running scared of her, she has a clear road to the nomination, etc. If I'm being charitable, she's engaging in unrealistic wishful thinking or lost-touch-with-reality self-promotional hype. There's no harm in a last-place team's manager saying they'll make the World Series this year, but if he really believes it, he is delusional.
A point here is that Fox News seems more interested in process than substance. For example, they are obsessed with the dubious talking point that conservative females are disproportionately being attacked. You have to wonder what "conservative women" are they talking about? The "conservative women" I've heard references are Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. I will continue that discussion below but let us review a couple of kerfuffles.
First, there was the kerfuffle about Sarah Palin's convoluted gaffe involving Paul Revere. This is no 'potatoe' or '57 state' kerfuffle. In elementary school I knew that Revere's ride was to warn the patriots about the approach of the British, not to warn the British. Then she was talking about the Second Amendment nearly 15 years before it was ratified. By any objective analysis, Palin was wrong (I decisively refuted this in a post several days back). What was amusing was seeing historians coming out of the woodwork for their 15 minutes of fame trying to rationalize Palin's incorrect revisionist history. Clearly, Palin isn't even qualified to teach history in K-12, never mind run a country. What really bothered me was that fact that instead of cutting her losses and saying she misspoke, she dug in her heels, insisting she was correct. I mean, for instance, Obama did not continue to insist there are 57 states and Quayle didn't continue spelling 'potatoe'. This is a key point Hannity and other Fox News contributors repeatedly ignored (or were too incompetent to realize) in discussing this issue: the inescapable conclusion is that Sarah Palin has a difficult time admitting when she is wrong. And that enough is reason enough to question her emotional fitness to be President.
Then there was this similarly bizarre revisionist discussion by Michele Bachmann about the role of the Founding Fathers in terms of abolition, making reference to slavery. In particular, she referenced John Quincy Adams, the son of the second President and whom served as President in the mid 1820's: 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. Adams did work towards abolition as a Congressman in the 1830's-1840's. Again, Bachmann simply should have cut her losses and admitted her mistake. The problem here is if you can't admit you were wrong on little things, how can we trust you with the big issues?
And for the main point: I think there are conservative women like Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), whom don't attract the same type of media attention. Palin and Bachmann are largely responsible because of their provocative red meat politics and personalities.
The Palin/Bachmann Resumes
You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. What bothers me among most of my fellow conservative bloggers is that they are more interested in process instead of substance. There are legitimate issues being raised by the other side, even though there's a lot of uncivility too.
I don't like hype in resumes or other claims. Let's briefly discuss the 2008 campaign. Palin was ludicrously saying that she had foreign relations experience between Alaska is between Russia and Canada. And she was referencing the Alaska National Guard and an Air Force Base in Alaska in citing military policy experience. This goes way beyond dubious political spin and hype. As for the "conservative" credentials, who is looking at Palin's state spending increases, her use of federal earmarks, her oil company tax hikes, etc.? And let's not forget we are talking about someone whom resigned two-thirds of the way through her first and only term as governor.
Then there's Bachmann's resume fluff: she repeatedly references 23 foster children. Let us remember, however laudable it might be to host another family's children, foster parents are paid for each child's expenses by the government. She is also dubiously hyping her educational credentials. Most people at the university level understand the difference between an academic doctorate (requiring original scholarship) and a professional doctor degree (e.g., medical or law). Her credentials are simply not comparable, say, to Romney's Harvard law degree and MBA. Much of her tax attorney experience has been with the IRS (and I've seen some sources suggest perhaps she was the beneficiary of affirmative action policies in qualifying for the gig). Her husband is a clinical therapist whom operates a clinic which I believe takes in government subsidized patients and there is also an inherited farm property which takes in government subsidy income.
Now some of the progressives discussing Bachmann's business dealings are uncivil, suggesting that Bachmann should be a patient in her husband's clinic. But it is legitimate to question her dubious business credentials, her overhyped academic credentials, her lack of executive experience and legislative accomplishments, and why an alleged principled Tea Party conservative has been unduly reliant on government money.
Now I'm not a voice for progressives, and I was looking for alternative conservative analyses that critically examined Bachmann's background versus simply reproduce Bachmann's public relations information. I'm not making any factual claims regarding the nature and extent of government-based income. I would like to see a more independent analysis from other bloggers whom have relevant evidence to bear. But when you claim to be a Tea Party spokesman, you should be held to a higher standard. And certainly Bachmann's support of the Patriot Act is not supported by many, if not most Tea Party members (including myself).
Political Humor
"President Barack Obama said Wednesday that if lawmakers can't reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling by the end of the week, they should consider canceling congressional vacations." - CNN, 6/29/11
[Instead of vacations, Congressional leaders will follow President Obama's example of playing golf and doing fundraisers during a crisis.]
Chris Wallace at Fox News asked Michele Bachmann if she is a flake. I think that’s an insult to the fine folks at Kellogg’s. - David Letterman
[Jeff Flake (R-AZ) says he is unaware of any family connection to Michele Bachmann.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Chicago, "Show Me A Sign"
