[Vision2020] Frank Rich NY Times op-ed

No Weatherman no.weatherman at gmail.com
Sun Oct 5 15:37:32 PDT 2008


Ms. Mix,

You should apply for a job with Rolling Stone because your skill at
isolating quotes out of context to set the speaker in a false light is
matched only by their skill at air brushing.

You wrote this:

"These are serious times for this nation, and I pray that truth will
overcome deception, obfuscation, and lies of omission and commission.
And I'll add that I'm especially dismayed that Palin saw fit to
suggest that Obama 'doesn't see America like you and I do,' which is
more Right-speak for 'See? He ain't one of us!'"

But the critical context that you left out was that Palin was speaking
to a partisan crowd of donors in a closed-door fund-raising event.
Here are her words without your interpretation:

"Our opponent . . . is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so
imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists
who would target their own country. . . . This is not a man who sees
America as you see America and as I see America."

And here's the complete article that you interpreted in a false light:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93JSBFO0&show_article=1

The correct interpretation of this quotation is that Sarah Palin
appealed to her political base's sense of patriotism and its sense of
national security by pointing out the unnerving fact of Barack Hussein
Obama's close personal friendship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers,
which is a subject I may have mentioned before.

I seriously doubt she would try to make this appeal at Rev. Wright's
church, or at a Weather Underground reunion, or at a Black Panther
meeting, or on Vision 20/20 because it's only an effective argument
with right-wingers who find Obama's associations disturbing.

By comparison, Obama made the following remark at a private fundraiser
and not on the stump because this kind of rhetoric brings in large
sums of cash from his political base, though it torpedoes votes rather
quickly:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of
small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years
and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton
administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive
administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna
regenerate and they have not.

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or
religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or
anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain
their frustrations."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0408/Obama_on_smalltown_PA_Clinging_religion_guns_xenophobia.html

If you ask me, you come off as bitter though I don't see you toting
guns around town.



On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:01 PM, keely emerinemix <kjajmix1 at msn.com> wrote:
> I don't know how to do the hyperlink thing, so I'm going to have to hope I
> type this correctly: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05rich.html
> This article by Frank Rich, who I usually find to be dead-on, is brilliant.
> It's troubling, yes, but it's the kind of thing we all need to hear and
> reflect on, especially those of us surrounded by Palin cheerleaders who find
> no misstep in her race for VP and no discordant note in her soundbites and
> speeches. I'll blog more on this later, but here's a particularly
> significant quote from Rich: " . . . But there's a steady, unnerving
> undertone to Palin's utterances, a consistent message of hubristic
> self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks
> she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon.
> She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from
> the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right GOP
> base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House
> place holder." (Frank Rich, October 5, 2008) These are serious times for
> this nation, and I pray that truth will overcome deception, obfuscation, and
> lies of omission and commission. And I'll add that I'm especially dismayed
> that Palin saw fit to suggest that Obama "doesn't see America like you and I
> do," which is more Right-speak for "See? He ain't one of us!" Locally, we've
> heard way too much of that -- against a U.S. citizen and professing
> Christian whose use of lofty rhetoric is consistent with what we expect from
> Presidents and those who hope to be, but who also -- and this is more rare
> -- backs it up with hard data, clear plans, workable policy, and a
> commitment to learning more that I think we can all agree is seriously
> lacking in our current administration. We talked about "truth" in church
> today, and I was blessed. I don't offer Rich's article as an example of
> truth, but as an invitation to think long and hard about what a Palin-McCain
> ticket (that's what it's looking like) would be. I can truthfully say I'm
> frightened at the prospect. Keely Keely
> http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/
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