Click on WORD or PDF below for full content
Pickerhead’s particularly proud of today’s practically perfect Pickings. It is a bit long because of an expanded humor section. The cartoonists were busy, and Borowitz hit one out of the park.
Abigail Thernstrom starts us out on an upbeat note by reminding us how far we have come since the Democrat party in the American South kept its collective boot on the necks of black Americans. Pickerhead’s favorite story from “America in Black and White’ written by Abby and husband Steve, was about one county in Georgia facing a dilemma when automobiles came into widespread use. They considered having two sets of roads; one for whites and one for blacks. (I think it was Georgia. Abby can correct if she wishes.) (Abby says it was Macon County, Georgia)
If you think Pickerhead is unfair to Dems, do you remember Bull Conner, the quintessential southern sheriff in any black person’s nightmare? He was a member in good standing of the Democratic National Committee. Now, back to Abby’s piece.
… Black electoral exclusion had made all other forms of racial subordination in the Jim Crow South possible. Mississippi was the worst of southern states, with fewer than 7 percent of blacks allowed to register to vote. Today, the state has more than 900 black elected officials. Blacks serve on school boards and county councils, in the state Legislature and the US House delegation.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery yesterday was a reminder of just how far we have come. He was a leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, a colleague of Martin Luther King. Today, he is the voice of yesterday – still depicting blacks being told to go to the back of the bus, whites still not ready to “embrace what is right.”
Most blacks today see an altered nation. A recent CNN poll found that 69 percent of blacks believe that the vision of which Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech has been fulfilled. In a similar poll taken just last March, only 34 percent of blacks expressed such a belief. Black spirits have been rising at a remarkable pace.
There is still much work to do on the road to racial equality. But, by unleashing imagination and energy, dreams come true. Already, Barack Obama is changing black America.
Then we get back to the task at hand. Spengler comments on the inauguration activities.
Barack Obama “signaled a commitment to pragmatism not just as a governing strategy but as a basic value”, according to unintentionally hilarious inauguration dispatch by the New York Times’ Washington bureau chief David Sanger. Pragmatism, of course, is not a value, but rather the triumph of expediency over values. To call pragmatism a “basic value” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, like “studied ignorance”, or “impassioned apathy”. Obama had plenty of that today, too.
“[Obama's] appearance on the Capitol steps was so historic that the address became larger than its own language, more imbued with meaning than anything he could say,” added Sanger, which is to say that Obama said nothing memorable. Just what was historic?
This half-Luo tribesman from Hawaii whose African father had no connection whatsoever with the West African ancestors of American slaves, was not imbued, but rather hued, with significance. His melanin carried the meaning, which is to say that he was judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character, in a precise reversal of Martin Luther King Jr’s famous phrase. …
David Harsanyi wants to know if dissent is still patriotic.
… Obama challenges Americans to have “a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.” So if you find massive concentrated power in Washington a turn-on, you’ve found your higher purpose.
But surely, most of you have found meaning in something greater than yourselves long before some politician demanded it.
To require such fealty to power in the name of patriotism was once repugnant to the left. Now, with the right guy in charge, apparently it can once again be embraced.
Change, indeed.
David Warren, another of our favorites, thinks something was amiss in DC on Tuesday.
… Journalists who followed the U.S. presidential campaign — including several very Democratic journalists — remarked on how accessible, friendly, and helpful the McCain staff were, and by contrast how contemptuously they were treated by Obama’s entourage. But we expect to be treated contemptuously, and lose all respect for a man who is presented as our equal.
That was John McCain’s tragic flaw, as it was also George Bush’s to some considerable degree. Both benefitted from aristocratic birth and disposition; both remain noble spirits; but each also became a compassionate “man of the people” — and how sad for their political legacies.
Mr. Obama had the royal jelly, as the journalists soon determined, and while Americans at large were skeptical at first, they finally came around. More than two million assembled themselves yesterday to salute His Majesty (according to an early estimate), a notable improvement on the 400,000 drawn to the last inauguration of King George. For whether before the masses in Berlin’s Tiergarten, or along Pennsylvania Avenue and in Washington’s National Mall, the people have recognized “Our Leader.”
And Juan Williams reminds us of something we should all know.
… If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else — fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism — then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.
Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.
This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise. …
Ye of little faith, there’s hope. Obama’s Nielsen ratings were second to Reagan’s first inauguration.
Here’s another way Barack Obama’s inauguration made history.
Nielsen Media Research says 37.8 million TV viewers watched Tuesday’s coverage — the largest inaugural audience in decades.
Obama’s viewership is bigger than any presidential inauguration in 28 years. It’s 27% higher than Bill Clinton’s in 1993 and 30% larger than George Bush’s in 2001. Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration in 1981 drew a larger tally, however, with 41.8 million. …
Ever wonder if Garrison Keillor is an idiot?. Jonah Goldberg and Yuval Levin have answers.
Jonah, the Garrison Keillor comment you cite is really an astonishing display of ignorance and puppy love, of the sort I suppose we should now expect from the cult of Obama. …
Mark Steyn noticed some bad news from Holland. And from France.
… The latest jurisdiction to get way too “comfortable with the regulation of opinion” is the Netherlands. As Andrew noted below, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal has ordered prosecutors to put the politician and film-maker Geert Wilders on trial for “making anti-Islamic statements”. …
Jennifer Rubin leads us to the Caroline Kennedy dénouement.
If it happens in Albany, Fred Dicker is the best.
… Kennedy’s entrance into the bidding for Clinton’s seat was intended to have the effect of clearing the field, forcing other contenders to see her as the inevitable choice for the seat once held by her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy.
Bloomberg privately backed her and publicly praised her abilities. His top deputy, Kevin Sheekey, worked the phones aggressively on Kennedy’s behalf, and set her up with powerhouse consulting firm Knickerbocker SKD.
But the rollout of her Senate bid received stiff criticism, as she ducked press questions during her first trip upstate and fared poorly in her initial round of media interviews. Several critics said the 51-year-old novice politician lacked a clear rationale for her candidacy.
The decision leaves a crowded field of about 15 people, mostly elected officials, vying to replace Clinton – including Cuomo, Rep. Steve Israel of Long Island, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, upstate Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, Manhattan Rep. Carolyn Maloney and teachers union President Randi Weingarten. …
We have a correction of sorts to make. Two days ago we had a post on the number of government employees in the country passing the number of people employed by manufacturing companies. Turns out there is another way to look at those numbers. Mark Perry at Carpe Diem does the honors.
… But before getting too depressed about that trend, I decided to check something else: Government employees as a percent of total nonfarm employment, and the interesting results are presented here: …
Another correction that is important. This from Contentions’ Jim Kirchick on Pete Seeger. Once a Stalinist stooge, always …..
One hates to dampen the feelings of national euphoria that have taken hold over the past few days, but there’s one moment from the week’s festivities that still sticks in my craw: the worshipful attention heaped upon Pete Seeger, icon of American folk music and lapsed Stalinist.
Seeger was a prominent campaigner in the struggle for African-American civil rights, and his legacy there ought be applauded. But racial equality was not the only cause to which Seeger committed himself. International communism, and in particular its Stalinist variant, was an equal, if not more, significant cause in Seeger’s public life. He was “Stalin’s songbird,” as David Boaz describes, writing about how Seeger zigged and zagged, with the rest of American communists in the 1930’s and 1940’s, in blind obedience to orders from Moscow. Seeger’s vaunted opposition to American “militarism” has persuaded him to oppose U.S. military intervention wherever and whenever it has occurred, including, for instance, the mission to displace the Taliban. …
Borowitz reports Obama has sent Biden on a mission to Antarctica.
… While some witnesses to the scene said that Mr. Biden seemed surprised by the news, his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, offered another version of events during an appearance later in the day on “Oprah.”
“Joe was given a choice of places to go and he picked Antarctica,” she said. “President Obama said he could also go to the moon or Mars.”
Dr. Biden’s remarks were cut short when President Obama appeared on the set and unplugged her microphone.
Other than the Biden news, Mr. Obama’s day went as planned, meeting with senior staff, drawing up a budget, and being sworn in as President for the third time.
And in England News Biscuit reports….
The government has announced an extensive package of measures to help Mr Bob Warner of Shrewsbury after he admitted losing £300 in an online poker game this weekend. Alistair Darling said that the measures were in place to restore confidence in the local black economy. With a £10 scratchcard win on Monday morning there is already talk of ‘green shoots of recovery. …