Dear Obama supporter,
First off, I want to congratulate you on an excellently run campaign. Your candidate spoke eloquently and remained focused. Obama said many things, many of which I agreed wholeheartedly. While I can’t possibly believe in his financial plan, I couldn’t believe in McCain’s either – America is in a mess as a result of unwarranted consumption and financial overreaching – we will get out of this mess by hard work, saving and investing in the future. While I bristled at Bush’s advice to the American people after 9/11 of “[I'm paraphrasing...] continue living life normally, don’t stop shopping”… I was pleased to hear both McCain’s and Obama’s message for people to come and “serve their country”.
Barack Obama is now “President-elect Obama” and while I did not vote for the man, I respect the fact that 62 million American’s did. I will support him when I agree with him, use my “pen” to try to move the discussion in ways that I can ultimately support – but I will oppose him when I disagree with him. What I will never do is “ridicule him” – he will be the President of the United States and he deserves all our respect. You will never hear the kind of poisonous, hateful words like we’ve heard over the past 8 years “Bush Lied…. Buck Fush…” that language demeans both a human being as well as the Presidency and ultimately it demeans the United States of American. That means it demeans “all of us”.
While I can congratulate Obama and his supporters on a well run campaign… I cannot, in good honesty, congratulate America on a good election. My main criticism is directed at one of the fundamental institutions of American life – the press. It is with great sadness that I make the following accusation: It was this election where the press in this country exposed themselves as blatantly partisan. Journalism used to be a craft and a skill where the practitioner worked exceptionally hard to do “reporting” – to research the facts, get them right, get them straight and report them dispassionately. This year, the New York Times looked more like Pravda or Izvestia – some news organizations like the Los Angeles Times and the San Fransisco Chronicle sat on news or actively buried news that would hurt “their candidate”.
There is obviously both bad news and good news in this. The bad news is that the profession of Journalism, which once was held in high esteem, has been tarnished greatly. The credibility of the “media” to report “the facts” is gone – one of the pillars of America’s trust – which has shown cracks in the past, has now totally collapsed. The independent and non-partisan press was the main pillar which provided important cohesion to the American people – it allowed us to see the same thing – even for a brief moment. In the past, it was easy to tell the difference between the editorial page and the news section – today it is not so. We have a word in english for “editorials masquerading as news”…the word is “propaganda”…and that is not what America is used to. This has changed….the good news is that most of America has awakened to the fact that their “press”, the pillar of their shared world view, has collapsed into dishing out propaganda – the mask is off…and this is a good thing. Commercial interests have also recognized this fact which is why Fox has prospered and grown while MSNBC and ABC have tanked. The fact that Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose could sit around the table (on TV)… a few days before the election and say things like “we really don’t know what Obama’s world view is…his universe of ideas that form his world view” – this is embarrassing…these people are paid millions to “find out” those things…to ask the questions and report the answers.
The good news is that the Internet has provided an avenue for people to get the “news” when they want “news” and get opinion when they want opinion – by enlarge, they can continue (if they choose) to spend their hard earned money on their daily newspaper for those valuable coupons and the newsprint’s unsurpassed usefulness for wrapping fish and lining the hamster cage. Yes, the “news” you get on the internet is no more reliable than the “news” you get in the paper or on a lot of cable channels – but there is easy search techniques and you can easily distill the “facts” from what you read as “news”. The danger of course is that people won’t dig deeply for the facts. This is not an accusation I level only at the less educated people… I have many friends and family with advanced degrees, well read, well educated who seem to work very hard at finding so-called “news articles” which fit their world view instead of digging to find the “facts” and letting the “facts” inform and form their world view.
A good example of digging deeply is the flurry that came up over Obama’s birth certificate and by extension whether or not Obama was qualified constitutionally to even hold the office of President. One could have read the various email threads, one could have read the various partisan “blogs” – but very quickly after Obama actually provided the physical certificate to the public – there were blogs which showed high resolution pictures of the actual document with the 3D seal and signatures. The value of a “free press” is that ultimately the truth will come out. (this is where the so-called “fairness doctrine” is misguided and dangerous – while being “fair and balanced” is a laudable goal – it is not the reason d’etre for a “free press” to exist …but that is off subject…we’ll get into that some other day).
Finally, while I can (and have) criticized Obama for his long associations with people like Ayers, Khalidi, Rev. Wright and Rezko and while I have said that I might be able to support Obama (even with his past) after a few decades of defining himself in public life apart from these shady elements of his “erroneous youth”…it appears I won’t get that chance – he is our President-elect and I won’t have the ability to see decades of good work, decades of service to our country… I won’t have decades of written and spoken words to be able to inform my opinion of him.
My criticism of the Americans who voted for Obama is that they knew all of Obama’s baggage – but were sold on his words. His deeds meant nothing. While it is wonderful that an American of African descent has risen to the Presidency of the United States, I cannot in good honesty say that Martin Luther King Jr’s dream “…that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” … has been fulfilled. Maybe it is just my upbringing – I was taught that deeds are more important than words – that your character is determined by what you “choose to do” and not solely by what you “choose to say”.
The facts still are that Obama chose to associate with the likes of Ayers and Khalidi – that somewhere in his character, he found it – in himself – to accept dinner invitations to Khalidi’s family home. Yassar Arafat was a terrorist, Bill Ayers was a terrorist. That made Khalidi a supporter of a terrorist (Arafat), someone who raised funds for a terrorist. During his period when he befriended Khalidi, Obama would most likely have read in his copy of the Chicago Tribute about the latest carnage inflicted by Arafat’s PLO butchers blowing up pizza parlors and city busses…and then maybe later that day, or later that week or month…. Obama seemed to think it was ok to accept dinner invitations from Khalidi who worked for Arafat….just what was it about Obama’s character that made it possible for him to do that? Just what was it in Obama’s character that made him think it was “ok” to go to a farewell dinner for Khalidi and laud the man and his work?
Ok…so that makes Obama someone who would accept dinner invitations of someone who supported Arafat…I can accept that.
What I can’t accept, what is painful to admit is that 62 million Americans voted for a man who had this character flaw – someone who could find in his set of morals the justification and motivation to sit at that dinner table, someone who could toast and laud such a person as Khalidi. The fact that 62 million Americans who, on 9/11/2001, got a first class message about the evils of terror – 7 years later, those Americans voted for a man who has that breathtaking character flaw. My view is that those 62 million Americas have just made it more likely that we will get the “9/11 message” redelivered…. and that makes me ill.
So we now have a President-elect Obama. I will be wonderfully pleased if his deeds in the future match his words and lofty visions that he spoke on the campaign trail. I will be pleased to see whether his deeds enhance our security, enhance our liberty and enhance our welfare. I will be the first to laud (or criticize) him for his actual deeds.
As President, he will simply not have the opportunity to vote “present” – we will see his deeds.
I will be watching. I hope that America will be watching too.
- Robert Light
5 responses so far ↓
1 Jim // Nov 9, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Hello, Robert. I won’t wait for part II to offer a quick comment on your thoughts about President-Elect Obama’s character flaws. So I’ll go backwards and start with Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. As you probably know, John McCain served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI) which provided grants worth $500,000 to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, a center that was co-founded by Khalidi. Since you say deeds are more important than words, this must be troubling to you. But if words are of interest, there are these from Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic: “I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute. And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered…the Israelis are trying to live cooperatively and in peace with Palestinians whose unrelenting positions make Khalidi almost appear like a Zionist.”
It looks as if you’ve made up your mind on this matter, but I don’t think he is as radioactive as you see him to be.
About whether the media is biased, I think we have an unbridgeable gulf on that, since I understand you to point out Fox News as a paradigm of neutrality. It’s as far right as MSNBC is left. I have no problem with that, but I would not look to either place for unspun news. I know right now that it is the latest talking point of the right to say the MSM is hopelessly in the tank for Obama – I listened for a couple of minutes to Jay Severin rant incoherently but vigorously on the topic last week. But what I would like to know is what single important story was not reported, what news was suppressed, what couldn’t someone find out if they wished? I regularly read the WSJ and did squint at Drudge from time to time, and I just can’t find anything game-changing that was overlooked.
McCain lost because he ran a very poor campaign, made an embarrassingly and humiliatingly insupportable choice for VP, and because his policies, except on the environment, were indistinguishable from Bush’s.
I like progressive taxation. I think wealthy people can afford to pay more taxes, and should. Since Obama carried the folks making over $200K, I guess they think so, too. Joe the Plumber, who is not a plumber and not named Joe, will get much more in tax breaks from Obama than from McCain – after he pays his tax lien.
You may not have decades of votes to review for BHO, but you do have two books – both of which he actually wrote himself – not our fellow Davenport, Iowa guy, Mark Salter. What you find there is the embodiment of excellent judgment and a first-rate intelligence, and the campaign itself revealed Obama to have a first-rate temperament. (If experience were a wonderful thing, Cheney and Rumsfeld would have been brilliant successes rather than criminally inept.) He’s going to be a wonderful president.
In 1961, one year after the closest election in modern history to that time, almost 65 percent of Americans recalled themselves as having voted for JFK. I predict something similar for BHO.
2 light // Nov 11, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Your comment on Khalidi seems to indicate that you are comparing a relationship of a non-profit organization (that McCain was a director of) giving money to another non-profit organization (that Khalidi was a director of) vs. Obama’s multi-year personal relationship with the Khalidi family – to the extent that he ate at the Khalidi family table and most troubling, he lauded Khalidi at a “going away party” (read fundraising event) for one of Khalidi’s “causes”. This is what makes me want to vomit: the image of the future candidate for the U.S. Presidency sitting and respectfully listening to speaker after speaker spewing hate and venom at Israel…and then Obama quietly getting up and speaking eloquently about Khalidi – while I can’t prove that this is what happened, I would be amazed if it didn’t.
With respect to your reference to Peretz’ statement about Khalidi – where I’ve seen tons of references on the web that Peretz said those words, I cannot find any reference to those words on “The National Review” website. I’ve written Peretz to validate that he indeed said those words and to get a reference as to where those words were said or published so that we can get a context around those words. Even if that quote is accurate, Peretz is/was not running for President of the United States and if he was, those “kind words” he spoke of Khalidi – a man who supported Yassar Arafat during a time when Arafat was presiding over a “reign of terror” inside Israel…those words “should” disqualify Peretz from being elected President (notice I can no longer say “would”).
Your comment that “[Fox is] as far right as MSNBC is left” makes it clear to me that you and I have a difference of opinion as to what the limits of the “spectrum” are – I would put Fox in the center, MSNBC on the “left” and the John Birch society or the Klan on the “right”.
You ask “what single important story was not reported, what news was suppressed, what couldn’t someone find out if they wished?” I offer you the following list:
a) Under-reporting and soft peddling the Rev. Wright, Flager, Farakhan, Ayers, Khalidi stories.
b) Few (if any) forceful requests made on-air for the LATimes to release a transcript of the Khalidi “farewell dinner”.
c) Almost no coverage of the “spread the wealth” issue…with tons of poison dumped on “Joe the Plumber”
d) Almost no coverage of the SFChronicle’s interview where Obama claimed that under his administration he would bankrupt anyone trying to build a coal fired power plant and “under his administration, electricity prices would skyrocket”
But there were plenty of glossy “pin-up” type coverage of Obama – just what a publicity agency would want.
I suggest you check out the “admission after the fact” from Chris Matthews here – this is his line now…with Bush his line was “he had to hold the government accountable” or some such garbage..
I would agree with your statement “I think wealthy people can afford to pay more taxes, and should”…but I draw the line at paying more for the upkeep of our shared security and physical plant of the nation. There is no reason whatsoever that I should have my money “redistributed” unless it is in the form of disaster relief, educational aid to deserving students, safety net for disabled citizens or other similar goals. For my money to be taken out of my pocket just to give it to others who make less than me – that is a violation of the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which proscribes unreasonable seizures of private property (as well as seizures of persons). The fact that I can afford to give someone money does not make it right to steal it from me.
I’m sorry but I found the most comical statement of yours: “You may not have decades of votes to review for BHO, but you do have two books – both of which he actually wrote himself.”….wow!! That’s scary…first off, we don’t even have a few years of votes…and most of those votes were “present”..Obama hasn’t taken a single political stand that was his own in his entire career…and wow!! You mean it was really “HIM” who wrote his book?….well that is an incredibly important feat and golly wiz I should have voted for him because those books were sure good. Pardon my sarcasm but you have to admit that writing two books but not a single piece of legislation is not a reason to elect a person with 4 years of national service (2 of which he was running for President).
I’m sorry, what I see in Obama is an incredibly intelligent, eloquent, charismatic, stunningly naive and inexperienced statesman but a absolutely brilliant “politician”. Remember that Obama was elected by 52% where the 48% that voted for McCain – the vast bulk of which were voting primarily against Obama – there was no “mandate”. I would love it if Obama could become a leader in the mould of JFK or Reagan – it looks like we’ll have some time to see what he can do.
Since you teach english, you will be happy about one thing – that I’m absolutely and positively thrilled that my future president will have english as his native language.
3 Jim // Nov 12, 2008 at 11:57 pm
1) I asked you to mention one story that could have been in some way determinative that wasn’t covered. If Khalidi is the best you can do – and it was covered, by the way: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,3025411.story – or Wright, Farrakhan, or Ayers, or spread the wealth or Joe the plumber, there isn’t much to talk about. They were covered amply and everywhere, including in lots of ads, speeches, and robo-calls. And if all of the 78 percent of the Jews who voted for Obama had decided to vote against him, he would have lost Florida and still won the election in a landslide. No game changers there. The coal story emerged in January and Palin picked it up three days before the election, bizarrely claiming suppression: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/03/MNTL13SU6S.DTL These stories could have been reported ten times more than they were, and the outcome of the election would have been the same. People were worried about bigger things, and they still are.
2) You say on the ground rules for this site that being respectful is required. I think it is disrespectful of you to be sarcastic about my point that one can find out a great deal about Obama – including that he is a superb writer and far from naive – if you read his books. I urge to do so. I also urge you to treat my ideas as respectfully as I treat yours. McCain’s books, as he acknowledges, are written by Mark Salter. Obama voted over 4000 times in Illinois, 130 of which he voted present – a very common act among legislators there and something often done to protest legislation. It is preposterous to say, as you do, that “he hasn’t taken a political stand that was his own in his entire career.” His experience before being elected president is identical in every way to another candidate from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. (A lawyer and an Illinois state legislator who lost an election to represent Illinois in the U.S. Congress and who spent only two years in the U.S. Congress before running for President.)
3) About Fox news. That you see it as centrist is part of the overwhelming and probably insuperable problem you will have seeing outside the media echo chamber of the Republican right, which is why many things will continue to baffle you politically. As far as news is concerned, at least, you need to get out more. You are now where Pauline Kael famously was many years ago when she said she couldn’t believe that Richard Nixon was elected president: “No one I know voted for him!”
4) Obama was not elected with a four point margin, 52 to 48. According to CNN, he won by 53 percent to 46 percent, with a margin of over eight million votes.
5) You conclude on an odd note, and I’ll try not to take personally your failure to capitalize English. Would you truly object to a candidate for president whose first language was not English? Why?
6) I’m not clear where we’re going here, but I’m thrilled about your future president, too.
4 light // Nov 13, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I agree with your statement “These stories could have been reported 10x … and the outcome of the election would have been the same. People were worried about bigger things, and they still are.” The nation was somehow in the grip of some kinds of “irrational exhuberance” to use a phrase by our previous Fed Reserve Chairman. I think we’re about to wake up and find ourselves in a deep deep depression – all those people looking for “fairness” will find themselves having a so-called “fair tax code” but will also find themselves out of work.
It’s just very unfortunate that people are jumping from the frying pan into the fire (notice how the stock market has tanked in the week after the election). People who have money at risk are putting their money in safer places, why take risks when we can rely on “Uncle Sam” to bail us out.
Note that my scorn is directed in this regard both to Bush and his financial bailout as well as to Obama on his desire to bail out the Big-3 and now the credit card industry. These companies (financial companies included) need to go into bankruptcy, have their business model readjusted for reality and then emerge from bankruptcy a stronger entity. Bankruptcy (Chapter-11, not Chapter-7) is the means by which companies which have a revenue stream but a bad business model get re-organized to become a viable business entity again. The reality is that the Big-3 don’t have a business model that will make them healthy and pouring in “bailout money” won’t help that. Likewise pouring in “bailout money” into the financial services industry when the executives are using it for their spas and luxury junkettes…is rediculous too!
As to your point about my sarcasm, I appologize if I offended you, I guess sarcasm is only useful if you are listening using a sense of humor – but you have to admit that “writing a book”…even an excellent book is by no means a qualification to be President of the United States. The fact that McCain had his book
written by somebody else should be a credit to him – he was busy doing what the people of his state pay him to do: be a Senator.
Your use of Abraham Lincoln as something to shore up your argument is also difficult to understand – maybe in 4 or 8 years when/if Obama shows his abilities and greatness to the level that Abraham Lincoln did…maybe then you could draw some kind of parallel…but to say that “X did wonderful things after spending Y years in the state senate and look, Z also spent Y years in the senate…therefore Z can also be great”… I have a logic problem with the part that comes after the word “therefore”. Believe me, I’m not “baffled politically” as you may suggest and I don’t expect that you will necessarily see how Fox could represent the “center” of the political spectrum but if you look at ratings alone, it appears that the vast bulk of Americans seem to agree that Fox is fairly centrist….oh, and believe me, I know many, many, many people who voted for Obama and it would be
my most thrilling moment if after 4 years of seeing what he’s able to accomplish that I too will want to vote for Obama – I just couldn’t this time around.
Whether it was 53:47 or 52:48, I really couldn’t care less…you should know that I’m thrilled that Obama won by a good margin – it would be the ultimate horror if the voted ended with a slim victory with the amount of “suspicious activities” going on via folks like Acorn. The fact that Acorn didn’t swing this election is a very, very, very good thing.
As far as my “odd note” remarking that I was happy that our President-elect’s first language was “English”…and your bristling back “Would you truly object to a candidate whose first language was not English”… shows that you are checking your “funny bone” at the door. I was making the point that I indeed have voted for a person who’s 1st language was most definately not English – I voted for Bush in 2004.
5 Jim // Nov 13, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Agreed in ideal world that the Midget Three should read Chapter 11 – but only if they lost their grossly incompetent management in the process. Which they won’t – just their labor agreements, which will punish the little guys, the usual victims in such events. Management has demonstrated pretty convincingly that they can’t be trusted not to screw it up. Their getting to press the reset button will just reboot them with the same stupid operating system. An ideal outcome would include some government loans or investment that will make them do what they should have been doing for the last 20 years – compete with Toyota. (Just bought a Mariner Hybrid, so I do put my money where my convictions are.)
My point? Obama is just as inexperienced as Lincoln was when he was elected president. This is a fact, and I did not say “therefore” anything. I know McCain tried hard to turn Acorn into an oak tree – “the worst fraud in the history of the United States,” a distinction that actually belongs to the Supreme Court decision awarding the presidency to Bush – but it was just an acorn the whole time.
About “English.” I definitely misunderestimated your sense of humor. (I’d thought perhaps you’d drunk some of the rabidly anti-immigrant Kool Aid that characterizes “the base” of the Republican party.) I know that the Bush administration has wrecked almost everything it has gotten near, and, alas, until he and his VP leave office, my sense of what is or isn’t risible will probably continue to be one of the casualties. Nine weeks to Jan. 20th.
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