freecounterpoint: Krauthammer on target

Friday, October 17, 2008

Krauthammer on target

5 comments:

My Frontier Thesis said...: Guilt by association is endemic in Western Civilization, something Norman Mailer would disapprove of.

Hitchens recounts the pugnacious Jewish Fire Plug:

Yes, he did value risk-taking and not just for the rest of society (which was what was faintly "off" about his recommendation of murderer Jack Henry Abbott, and about some of the exorbitant things that he wrote in "The White Negro") but also and proudly for himself. Flung in the back of a paddy wagon with Noam Chomsky and an American Nazi for company: mixing it up down in the Congo waiting for the Ali-Foreman brawl; running for mayor of New York with Jimmy Breslin as a campaign manager; duking it out with the Stalinist fellow-travelers in the company of his old friend Jean Malaquais, individualist Trotskyist, as intellectual mentor; getting the point of Gary Gilmore in The Executioner's Song, and appreciating that a stone-cold killer who really wanted to die was the negation of bleeding-heart liberalism and an intuitive curtain-raiser for the Reagan years.

Link.

Way to go, Mailer. Full throttle Libertarian to the end.; 10/17/2008 12:38 PM
Tecumseh said...: Yes, Kraut is right on target. And what he identifies is rather scary. Are we really talking about America here? I'm depressed.; 10/17/2008 10:36 PM
Tecumseh said...: Yet another take: McCain did not score the points he needed because he doesn’t see himself as a traditional free-market Republican. He’s the maverick. He’s the one who takes on the Republicans. He’s the one who can work “across party lines.” Maybe that was all fine — even beneficial in this tough year for Republicans — until late September. After that, with markets in turmoil, the game changed.

This is absolutely right. As you guys know, I was never a fan of the mavericky stuff -- the very thing JJ keeps gushing about. But I was willing to suspend disbelief as long as there was some kind of plausibility Mac could make it work, and somehow get elected. But the Wall Street implosion laid bare the shallowness of his pitch. He's been rudderless -- clueless -- ever since. In all fairness, I don't know if any other of the Republicans who ran this year could have done better. But the fact of the matter is that Mac simply did not rise to the occasion -- like, say, Churchill did in 1940. Of course, Obama did not do or say anything that would make sense, either -- but the election was and still is his to lose, and by just sitting there, with Mac flailing about, he runs the clock, and wins.

Much of this comes back to an argument I remember we had back in January or February. Recall how I was dismayed by the fact that McCain clearly did not know squat about the economy -- and was even boasting about that. To which JJ would serenely reply: doesn't matter, he can pick the best economists or moneymen or whatever for his Cabinet -- why does he need to know anything about the economy? Chickens coming home to roost, JJ. Unfortunately.; 10/17/2008 11:07 PM
Mr roT said...: Or maybe not. I like Mona, but still, maybe not the right time for that.

Like Krautman says, McCain will get nailed for 'racism' no matter what. Better to stay above the fray somehow?; 10/17/2008 11:58 PM
Tecumseh said...: The game is rigged.; 10/18/2008 1:30 PM

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)