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Spengler speculates on how Obama’s background may guide his time in office.
It is technically correct, but misleading, to label president-elect Barack Obama an “African American”. His father’s Luo tribe in Kenya has less in common with the West African ancestors of American blacks than a medieval Laplander had with an Anatolian Turk.
Until the middle of the 20th century, no Luo had ever met a West African, much less visited West Africa. No road today connects Kenya with West Africa. There is no link of language or culture, in fact, nothing in common but a concentration of melanin.
This might benefit the United States in crises to come. Obama is close enough to the life of actual Africans to know what the pre-Christian tribes of primitive society always knew: that the life of every ethnicity is finite. In a world full of dying peoples, this knowledge is beyond price. It is something that Americans have forgotten, as surely as if the River Lethe girded their continent, and it has become taboo to contemplate, much less pronounce.
Extinction of whole peoples is unthinkable to Americans, but routine in Obama Sr’s part of the world. If you want someone to consign a whole people to the dustbin of history, ask an African. Of Africa’s 2,000 spoken languages, 300 have fewer than 10,000 living speakers, and 140 have fewer than 500 speakers. There are 3 million Luos alive today, but they suffer from an HIV infection rate variously estimated at 18% to 26%, among the highest in East Africa. The president-elect lives with the knowledge that disease and deracination might erase his father’s ethnicity from the Earth before his grandchildren grow up. …
… Sentimental attachment to Third World cultures, though, is a Western phenomenon; in the Third World as it actually exists, one encounters other cultures, and kills them. It remains to be seen whether the president-elect is a Western sentimentalist, or a Third World anthropologist who has talked his way into the leadership of the United States. In the latter case, it is likely that he will deal with America’s enemies with a harder hand than Bush ever would have employed. Governance in Africa is not about ideology, but about the raw exercise of power. Confronted with multiple crises that threaten the power of the United States, this clever Luo from Hawaii by way of Indonesia may defend his prerogatives more ferociously than anyone expects.
Camille Paglia is here with her quarterly reader’s column. Her answers sizzle.
…And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC’s “Today” show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric’s small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric’s TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There’s many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizzazz. …
… The usual tranquil transition period between an election and inauguration has certainly been overshadowed by the murky Blagojevich scandal, but I think most reasonable people would give Obama a pass on it. Any new president must learn crisis management the hard way. No evidence to date directly implicates Obama in Blagojevich’s follies. But Obama’s future chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, the arrogant Chicago scrapper who was reportedly a conduit to the governor, already seems like an albatross who should be thrown overboard as soon as possible. Nobody wants a dawning presidency addicted so soon to stonewalling, casuistry and the Nixonian dark arts of the modified limited hangout. …
… but Harry Reid is a cadaverous horse’s ass of mammoth proportions. How in the world did that whiny, sniveling incompetent end up as Senate majority leader? Give him the hook! …
… We should all be concerned about environmental despoliation and pollution, but the global warming crusade has become a hallucinatory cult. Until I see stronger evidence, I will continue to believe that climate change is primarily driven by solar phenomena and that it is normal for the earth to pass through major cooling and warming phases. …
…We should all be concerned about environmental despoliation and pollution, but the global warming crusade has become a hallucinatory cult. Until I see stronger evidence, I will continue to believe that climate change is primarily driven by solar phenomena and that it is normal for the earth to pass through major cooling and warming phases. …
Abe Greenwald with a great example of media bias.
Contentions post tells us how things are going in the land Jimmy Carter wanted Robert Mugabe to lead.
Anyone can become a billionaire . . . if they move to Zimbabwe. Yesterday, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the country’s central bank, unveiled a new $50 billion note, worth a little more than one greenback. In August, Harare knocked ten zeros off its currency. After the maneuver, a newspaper cost $10. Now it takes a little more than $15 billion to buy one. Good luck trying to find someone willing to accept Zimbabwe’s money.
The currency is not the only thing disintegrating: Since Robert Mugabe won the election in June-he was the only candidate-the country itself has fallen apart. Famine, disease, government failure, societal collapse-Zimbabwe has got it all. Now citizens, due to various factors, are dying in large numbers. Douglas Gwatidza, chief of Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights says, “The whole country is turning into some kind of giant mortuary.” …
Jennifer Rubin comments on Geithner’s tax problems.
… Is he toast? If he were a Republican the answer would surely be yes. We’ll have to see whether he and the Obama team can get away with it. (The blogspheric cheerleaders are already assuring us it is but a “hiccup.”) This, of course, brings us to the bigger issue: what the heck is wrong with the Obama vetting process?
One strike on Bill Richardson. Two strikes on this — the transition team found the housekeeper problem and the “error” for additional years of nonpayment and arranged for the tax repayment back on December 5. But they seemed not to have appreciated the impact tax nonpayment would have on the confirmation prospects of a Treasury Secretary. (Actually this sounds strangely similar to the Richardson case, in which the problem really was or should have been known.) Why do we get to the eve of the hearing (now canceled) without this fully surfacing? …
Contentions post on Hillary’s “smart power.”
… So why was Clinton championing smart power as if it were a revolutionary concept? What I read between the lines is that she has nothing new to offer, but must assure her party’s base that the Obama administration will overhaul foreign policy somehow. Since Bush is universally characterized as stupid in the Left’s collective imagination, Clinton touts the word “smart” to distance the new administration from his policies.
There was never a president, including Bush, who didn’t want to be smart about using power and who repudiated feasible diplomatic solutions in order to pursue foreign-policy goals militaristically instead. Everyone is for smart power. The open-ended issue concerns finding the ratio of soft to hard power needed to yield optimal results.
The Obama-Clinton team — believing, in Clinton’s own words, in “principle and practicality” and not “rigid ideology” — can talk about smart power as the magic wand that will “persuade both Iran and Syria to abandon their dangerous behavior.” The question is whether this new combination they propose — specifically relying more on soft and less on hard power — can achieve the practical goal of persuading these countries to curb their destructive ambitions. Or maybe Tehran actually understands American smart power — as used by the new administration — as less power, and thus finds no reason to even consider concessions or behavioral changes.
NFL Nation at ESPN with a story about retiring Indianapolis Colts’ coach Tony Dungy.
TAMPA, Fla. — Forget for a second the Super Bowl victory and all the great players he coached. If you want to know what truly set Tony Dungy apart from other football coaches — really, apart from a lot of human beings — there is a story you need to read.
It sums up Dungy, who is retiring from the Indianapolis Colts and the National Football League today, as a person and a coach. It’s the story of a man with a vision and the courage to stick to it quietly, no matter how much the world outside was banging on the windows.
The year was 1997. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in Dungy’s second year as head coach, were showing some signs the lowly franchise might be ready to escape the so-called Curse of Doug Williams. With a young cast that featured Derrick Brooks, Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Warrick Dunn, Mike Alstott and Trent Dilfer, the Bucs got hopes up with a 5-0 start.
Then, it all seemed as if the season was about to fall apart because of one man. Well, make that two men because Dungy could see the problem as clear as the rest of Tampa Bay. But that stubborn streak that would become a part of his legacy was keeping him from, outwardly, doing anything about it.
The Bucs had a talented young kicker named Michael Husted who all of sudden started missing kicks. Not only was Husted missing field goals, but even extra-point attempts were flying badly off target.
The fans and the media were up in arms. It seemed Husted had to go or else the whole season would spin out of control. It was obvious to everyone, it seemed, except Dungy. …