Prickly Liberals

Was it the magazine cover or was it the fact that Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker article about Obama’s years in Chicago politics revealed the Democrats’ presumptive nominee to be just an ordinary pol, not a messiah in the making? In any case, Lizza and The New Yorker were invited off the press plane accompanying Obama on his campaign trip (aka “fact finding mission”) to Afghanistan and Iraq, and then to Israel, Jordan, Germany, France, and the UK. This piece from The Guardian reports on liberal bloggers complaining about “retribution” for “unfavorable coverage.” But, of course, for anyone with a brain screwed on right The New Yorker cover was pro-Obama or, at least, anti-rightwing caricatures of him. Needless to say, prickly liberals don’t have their their brains screwed on right. Needless to say too, there are plenty of sound reasons to oppose Obama that have nothing to do with him being an unpatriotic secret Muslim out to wage “jihad” and/or get whitey.

Needless to say too, none of these reasons come close to reasons for hoping John McCain’s Republicans defeat him in November. Our institutions force lesser evilism upon us -- and, compared to McCain, even a turnip would be a lesser evil. But this does not mitigate the plain fact: that Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton, is, at best, a kinder, gentler and more competent proponent of the politics George Bush and Dick Cheney ought to have brought into profound disrepute. Unfortunately, thanks to a media as much in the thrall of the regime as our two semi-official parties are, those criminals have only brought disrepute upon themselves – not the politics for which, as it were, they stand.

That leaves it up to we, the people: to wean ourselves and each other away from the illusions of Obamamania and, to the greatest extent possible, to force President Obama to do the right thing (or at least not to wallow in the wrong thing, as the beneficiaries of the regime in place would like).