November 27, 2009

Utter contrast...

I thought last year that the 2008 presidential election was really between Obama and Palin, with McCain and Biden just place-holders in nice suits. Everything that has happened since just seems to confirm that. And the pattern is always that Obama is given every possible advantage, and ought to simply outshine Governor Palin...... and yet it never happens! If someone had written this story as a novel it would be dismissed as "too contrived."

In the story below there is a line about how the press didn't fact-check Obam's books because "they likely feared what they would find" Wow, isn't that just the pattern of so much we see on the Left? Isn't that exactly why they keep insisting that the "science is settled?" Wasn't that the Bush-Kerry military service clash? The Left lives in fear. We need to understand that. That's what "political correctness" is; a whole bunch of "don't go there signs." Don't discuss, don't fact-check, don't criticize. Fear.

I recommend this piece by Jack Cashill in American Thinker, The Competing Narratives of Barry and Sarah:

...In 1992, while an anxious Obama dithers in an office that the University of Chicago has given him to write Dreams, half of his $150,000 advance already cashed, Palin is pulling her babies, Track and Bristol, along on a sled as she goes door-to-door seeking votes in her run for Wasilla city council.

Not yet thirty, Palin settles upon the philosophy that will guide her political career: reducing taxes "and redefining government's proper role." Like few Republicans this side of Ronald Reagan, Palin will adhere to these principles throughout her political ascent.

Not surprisingly, Palin's tenacity makes enemies among those who have cashed in their Republican heritage for the perks and power of office. Palin's perseverance in the face of this resistance makes for compelling political drama. That she is a woman challenging the good old boys of backroom Alaska heightens that drama.

Yet despite pushing the boundaries of female accomplishment throughout her career -- as sports reporter, as commercial fisherman, as councilwoman, as mayor, as oil and gas commissioner, as governor, as vice-presidential candidate -- Palin never loses her sense of the feminine. Having five children surely helps. So does living in an environment where manly virtues still matter.

An exchange with the larger-than-life Todd helps clarify Alaskan reality. Todd is a four-time winner of the Iron Dog competition, a 2,200 mile snowmobiling marathon. One night, Sarah expresses interest in competing. Says Todd:
Can you get the back end of a six-hundred-pound machine unstuck by yourself with open water up to your thighs, then change out an engine at forty below in the pitch black on a frozen river and replace thrashed shocks and jury rig a suspension using tree limbs along the trail?
When Sarah answers "Nope," Todd replies, "Then go back to sleep, Sarah." Todd lives his Eskimo heritage. He does not just dream about it, let alone exploit it...
...While Palin is slugging through Alaska's political morass like a determined Iditarod musher, Obama is cruising through Illinois politics on skids greased by his Chicago cronies. In his 2004 run for U.S. Senate, both his chief primary opponent and his expected general election opponent are undone by damaging personal information leaked to the media. Obama wins both elections easily.

The combination of his black genes and white upbringing makes the famously "articulate and bright and clean" Obama an irresistible choice to keynote the race-conscious 2004 Democratic convention. "I mean, that's a storybook, man," alleges the inimitable Joe Biden.

The story told in Dreams will become a huge bestseller in the wake of the 2004 convention. The lofty, lyrical style of the book will seal the Ivy-educated Obama's reputation as a genius, and its much-celebrated narrative would serve as a foundational myth for Obama's ascent to the White House.

Said NEA chairman Rocco Landesman just last month, reiterating the accepted wisdom of the chattering classes, "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln."

The establishment will not be so kind to Palin. In the week of Going Rogue's release, the New York Times house conservative David Brooks will call her "a joke." Dick Cavett, the Norma Desmond of TV talk, will dismiss her as a "know-nothing." Ex-con Dem fundraiser Martha Stewart will brand Palin "a dangerous person." And literally thousands of lesser liberal lights will deride her as "stupid," an "idiot," or a "moron" (8.5 million Google hits and counting for "Palin" "moron").

In that same week, Chris Matthews was worrying out loud that Obama was "too darned intellectual," and author Michael Eric Dyson was celebrating Obama's "sexy brilliance." But while the Associated Press was sending a platoon of reporters to fact-check Palin's book, neither the AP nor any other media outlet dared check either Dreams or Audacity of Hope.

They likely feared what they would find -- namely that Obama's genius depends solely on his willingness to lie about it. "I've written two books," Obama told a crowd of teachers in Virginia last year. "I actually wrote them myself." He did no such thing. He had massive help with both books....
Posted by John Weidner at November 27, 2009 9:04 AM
Weblog by John Weidner