Right Wing Nut House

I didn’t think it was possible but I’m beginning to feel sorry for Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. His speech of introduction on Monday for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has created a vicious backlash on the left over his use of some rather colorful metaphors to describe Ahmadinejad’s anti-intellectual, anti-humanist ideas.

A backlash against the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, who on Monday delivered a harsh rebuke to President Ahmadinejad, is coming from faculty members and students who said he struck an “insulting tone” and that his remarks amounted to “schoolyard taunts.” The fierceness of Mr. Bollinger’s critique bought the Iranian some sympathy on campus that he didn’t deserve, the critics said, and amounted to a squandered opportunity to provide a lesson in diplomacy.

What this is really all about is that the left can’t stand it when one of their own is being praised by the right for doing anything. In their universe, Bollinger could have hung Ahmadinejad in effigy and as long as no one on the right took notice, it would have been perfectly acceptable.

For you see, Bollinger did nothing and said nothing that wasn’t absolutely, 100% true and documented. He threw the tyrant’s words back in his face and challenged him to justify them. He highlighted documented incidents in the Islamic “Republic” of Iran where homosexuals were executed. He quoted Ahmadinejad’s thoughts on the Holocaust and called him a dunce - which describes exactly the intellectual acumen of someone who believes the murder of 6 million Jews “needs further study.”

His manners? I’m not sure here what the left is criticizing. I thought “manners” were superfluous when speaking truth to power. Isn’t that what Bollinger was doing? Who cares about superficialities when the important thing is to be authentically outraged?

And does the supreme irony of criticizing someone for the way they confront the opposition totally escape these clueless buffoons?

It’s odd to invite someone and then deal with the objections to inviting him by insulting him before he gets to talk,” a professor of political science at Columbia, Richard Betts, said during an interview in his office yesterday. “He’s having it both ways in a sense, honoring the principle of free speech by not choosing speakers on the basis of how nice they are, but being sharp to him before he speaks.”

Mr. Betts said a more appropriate introduction would have been to make clear that an invitation to speak at Columbia did not qualify as approval of the content of the speech. He said the message should have been delivered as a “less in-your-face assault.”

Jesus Lord! How many times have we heard the left praising those who get “in the face” of people like George Bush or Rumsefeld or any number of conservative pundits like Ann Coulter or Jonah Goldberg? Stephen Colbert ring a bell? Or war protestors who shout like maniacs wherever Bush shows up to speak? Or on college campuses where conservative pundits are regularly confronted in the most insulting, vulgar manner?

I guess “manners” and avoiding “in your face” confrontations only count when you’re trying to spare the feelings of a terrorist supporting scumbag like Ahmadinejad.

And then there’s this bit of obtuseness that I would guess to be a widely held belief on the left:

The professor of history and Iranian expert who had a role in bringing Mr. Ahmadinejad to campus, Richard Bulliet, said that if Mr. Bollinger led a mission of faculty and students to Iran, which he has expressed interest in doing, he would likely receive a more courteous welcome than was provided to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Yes, I have no doubt that is true. The Iranians are a polite people and follow all the normal customs of civilized humanity. Except the left largely rejects those customs as either representative of bourgeois thinking or artificial cultural constructs created by white males to oppress freedom loving lefties. Rejecting polite behavior allows one to justify getting up in the middle of someone’s speech and trying to shout them down - a favorite tactic of the left for 40 years.

How about practicing what you preach here, fellows? How about criticizing Code Pink every time the witches interrupt Congressional hearings or speeches from people they disagree with? How about wagging a disapproving finger at Mama Sheehan when she tries to disrupt the State of the Union?

Instead, all we hear is praise for such rude, boorish behavior. “Speaking truth to power” is great - as long as the right people are doing the speaking and the wrong people are in power.

Bollinger has little about which to feel proud. Not because of what he said but because of the moral blinkers he put on in order to accede to Ahmadinejad’s visit in the first place. Academic freedom is a fine and noble concept, one I support wholeheartedly. But judging by the worldwide reaction to Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia, it appears that Bollinger and the University were nothing more than props in the Iranian president’s propaganda performance. He was warned that this would happen and indeed it did.

In that sense, academic freedom is meaningless when it is used in the cause of promoting the agenda of America’s enemies.

UPDATE

Malkin picks up where I left off yesterday with the bedwetting meme by linking to this idiotic post from a lefty who accuses conservatives of destroying the American “character” and wonders if we’ll ever “recover:”

Here’s a big question that I want to start addressing in upcoming posts: what is conservative rule doing to our nation’s soul? How is it rewiring our hearts and minds? What kind of damage are they doing to the American character? And can we ever recover?

So: what is the American character? Hard to say, of course. But I daresay we know it when we see it. Let me put before you an illustrative example: one week in September of 1959, when, much like one week in September of 2007, American soil supported a visit by what many, if not most Americans agreed was the most evil and dangerous man on the planet.

Nikita Khrushchev disembarked from his plane at Andrews Air Force Base to a 21-gun salute and a receiving line of 63 officials and bureaucrats, ending with President Eisenhower. He rode 13 miles with Ike in an open limousine to his guest quarters across from the White House. Then he met for two hours with Ike and his foreign policy team. Then came a white-tie state dinner. (The Soviets then put one on at the embassy for Ike.) He joshed with the CIA chief about pooling their intelligence data, since it probably all came from the same people—then was ushered upstairs to the East Wing for a leisurely gander at the Eisenhowers’ family quarters.

This guy is accusing conservatives of being bedwetters while wringing his hands like an old woman over whether or not we can “recover” from conservatism?

What an idiot.

And I’d like to briefly address this idea that Iran and Ahmadinejad should be seen as no more of a challenge - even less of one - that the old Soviet Union.

It isn’t that the Iranians are suicidal (I am not entirely convinced that they aren’t but I think there are enough rational heads in the Iranian government to prevent anyone from going off the deep end) and it isn’t the fact that we are dealing with mystics and religious fanatics. There were some pretty fanatical communists we had to deal with over the years - including Kruschev himself who firmly believed in the “science” of Marxism which posited the theory that capitalism, like feudalism, was destined to fail and be replaced by Soviet Style “scientific” socialism. It was his religion and he truly believed that he would see this collapse in his lifetime.

Later Soviet leaders were much more cynical about Marxism, having no illusions about its ability to compete with capitalism in any real way. Their concern was simply to maintain their positions of privilege in a rotting system.

But the real danger in trying to deal with Iran lies in the fact that we have literally no common frame of reference when it comes to history, or culture, or a way to view the world. Ahmadinejad made that quite plain in his speech before the UN General Assembly. At least the Soviets and the west had a common history stretching back a thousand years. We had familiar touchstones that allowed a dialogue where both sides were reasonably certain that misunderstandings about intent could be kept to a minimum.

But where do you find commonality with someone who denies something so elemental as the Holocaust ever took place? How do you find reasonable accomodation when the person across the table believes in a history that never happened (or has twisted the facts to the point that history is unrecognizable)? How do you avoid misunderstanding when the very basis of your opponent’s worldview is derived from a 1500 year old holy book?

I suppose (I hope) there are ways to overcome these monumental difficulties but I trust my point is clear; using our relationship with the Soviet Union as a template for dealing with Iran is idiotic. There is no basis in fact to believe that. And using examples of how we dealt with the Soviets to “prove” that conservatives are a bunch of bedwetters is absurd.

Ezra Klein, saying it nicely:

I genuinely don’t understand the quaking fear over Ahmadinejad’s interview at Columbia. When did America become so weak, so insecure, that we mistrust our capacity to converse with potentially hostile world leaders? Do we really believe the president of Columbia is so doltish as to be outsmarted by a former traffic engineer from Tehran? Do we really see no utility in publicly grilling prominent liars in such a way that their denials lose credibility? What do we have to lose from a foreign leader, even a hostile one, somberly laying a wreath at the site of a tragedy? When did we become so afraid?

Others on the left are not so nice in making the same point; that the right are a bunch of bedwetters and cowards, quaking in fear at Ahmadinejad which is why we want to go to war with Iran.

Of course, this “bedwetter” meme is brought out many times. We see it when the right sees fit to report on the latest foiled terrorist attack, or when authorities smash a terrorist cell, or any other time that the left feels that the right is taking the issue of terrorism too seriously.

Daniel Larson has a few thoughts on this phenomena:

There’s a curious idea, one popularised earlier this year by Obama, that a refusal to negotiate or to dialogue with this or that dreadful government and/or individual is an expression of fear. This follows the usual drill: everyone else embraces the politics of fear, but Obama and those like him embrace the politics of hope, blah, blah, blah.

Evidently, it takes courage to stand up and, just like everyone else, denounce the president of another country under the guise of “conversation” and “debate.” After all, what is the point of letting Ahmadinejad onto your stage so that you can tell him that he’s a “cruel dictator”? Are we trying to hurt his feelings? Obviously persuasion isn’t the goal, since calling someone a dictator in front of an audience of students is not going to make him break down and have a conversion experience: “Thank you for showing me the light, Mr. Bollinger! I will do better!”

Similarly, there’s no point in holding talks simply for the symbolism of holding talks and showing that We Are Not Afraid To Talk. How impressive. All of this attempted appropriation of the rhetoric of toughness and fearlessness is an attempt to steal a page from the (stupid) foreign policy book of militarists. Instead of “showing resolve” by not talking to someone, we show resolve by talking to someone.

I must confess to being puzzled by this line of attack from the left. If I didn’t know any better, I would believe that the left was projecting their own fears about terrorism, about Ahmadinejad by referring to “bedwetters” on the right. But of course, that’s not true, is it? It’s just that the left wants to discuss terrorism and these other issues on their own terms - root causes, sins of America, post colonial insecurities, resource raiding, etc. - and find it inconvenient that someone wants to get up and shout “They’re trying to kill us, you ninny!”

I don’t feel any fear whatsoever when talking about Ahmadinejad and the threat Iran poses to American interests and ultimately, America herself. It is a completely rational, objective response to a nation that seeks the ability to enrich uranium beyond the level needed to fuel power plants. This is the basis for the concern expressed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - that some of Iran’s program is of a “dual use” nature; that it can be used to both build fuel rods for power plants and enrich uranium to the 85% level necessary to build a bomb. When nations as diverse as France, Belgium, and Russia have expressed their firm opposition to Iran becoming a nuclear power, surely opposition to their plans cannot be construed as “fear” but rather common sense.

The visit of Ahmadinejad has illuminated a great difference between right and left. Kevin Drum senses it:

Still, I guess I’m curious about something. Am I the only liberal who believes all that stuff but is still pretty queasy about letting this lunatic engage in some wreath-laying crocodile tears at Ground Zero? There’s a difference between being unafraid to let someone speak and being unwilling to let him use the most venerated site in the country for a crass PR stunt, isn’t there? Hell, a lot of us complain when Rudy Giuliani does this, let alone a guy who denies the Holocaust and has made a career out of chanting “Death to America.” Am I off base here?

Kevin is getting skewered in the comments for saying what some on the right have been angry (not scared) about Ahmadinejad’s visit here. This is a man who leads “Death to America” chants after Friday prayers. And we already know that his public utterances about peace, love, and harmony, fly in the face of his nation’s actions in Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, and other places Iranian money and supplies funds the enemies of the west.

I happened to agree that he should be allowed to speak at Columbia for the simple reason I was sure he would convict himself out of his own mouth. While this is exactly what happened, I didn’t count on the use Iran would make of his visit as a vehicle for international propaganda:

On second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall where the Iranian President was to give his lecture as of early hours of the day, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not going to attack any country in the world.

Before President Ahamadinejad’s address, Colombia University Chancellor in a brief address told the audience that they would have the chance to hear Iran’s stands as the Iranian President would put them forth.

He said that the Iranians are a peace loving nation, they hate war, and all types of aggression.

Referring to the technological achievements of the Iranian nation in the course of recent years, the president considered them as a sign for the Iranians’ resolute will for achieving sustainable development and rapid advancement.

This is how the event was reported in Iran. Not a word about Bollinger’s hectoring opening remarks - something that many on the left criticized heatedly and caused many in the audience at Columbia to applaud vigorously when Ahmadinejad complained about the “insults.” It would seem then that being “brave” enough to give the tyrant a public forum at a prestigious educational institution didn’t do anything except make liberals feel good about themselves. It sure didn’t minimize Ahmadinejad’s stature anywhere in the world.

It would seem then that bedwetting is not the problem but rather fear on the left that their own prescriptions for dealing with terrorism might not be the best way to deal with the problem.

Of course, the advantage they have is if they are wrong, we probably won’t realize it until it’s too late.

The Great Munchkin has spoken.

As far as I can tell the world is still rotating on its axis. The sun is still in the sky. There are still 6 million dead Jews as a result of Hitler’s Holocaust although the refugee from the Lollipop Guild tried to wipe that little historical detail from memory and the record by pleading for “more research” - as if digging deeper into the historical record (help yourself, no one is stopping you) will erase the meticulously kept records at Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Dachau, and other death camps that carefully listed the numbers of Jews who were shoved into “showers,” gassed, and then cremated in gigantic ovens.

And Columbia is still a school that features the most nauseating double standards in Christendom when it comes to free speech, denying many speakers the opportunity to address students whose ideological bent is deemed too…what? They can’t use the excuse that conservative speakers are spouting “hate” anymore. They just hosted the world’s most celebrated anti-Semite.

Despite President Bollinger’s spot on indictment of the little shit’s nation and rulers, I found it depressing when American citizens actually cheered what this man had to say - cheered when he answered Bollinger with an harangue about academic freedom when the ruling clique of Iran dismisses and jails teachers for looking sideways at the government.

Maybe those idiot leftists missed this report from Human Rights Watch:

The same pattern of persecuting academics in order to curb their intellectual activity recurred around the world. In Iran, a number of prominent academics were arrested in March and April as part of a broader campaign of stifling dissent apparently aimed at countering the widespread support for reform of Iran’s political system. In the weeks immediately preceding Iran’s presidential elections, authorities arrested at least ten scholars among a group of forty-two figures associated with the liberal Iran Freedom Movement, a banned but previously tolerated political party. Among the scholars arrested were Gholam-Abbas Tavassoli, a sociologist at Tehran University and formerly chancellor of Isfahan University, Hadi Hadizadeh, a prominent physicist, Ghaffar Farzadi, Mohammad Mehdi-Jafari, Habibollah Peyman, Reza Raisdoosti, and Mohammad Maleki. Tavassoli was released two days after his arrest, but several other academics remained in jail.

In response, more than one hundred faculty members from Iran’s universities signed an appeal to the government requesting the release of their colleagues. Widespread student protests in support of the detained academics also occurred at universities in Tehran and other cities, and were met by heavy handed police reaction.

These attacks on academic freedom formed the backdrop to a critical rise in the “brain drain” phenomenon among Iran’s academics and university graduates. According to a report issued by the Iranian government in May 2001, tens of thousands of academics and professionals left Iran for Western countries in the preceding twelve months. Commenting on this report, chancellors from several Iranian universities blamed the mass exodus of educated Iranians on the “continual psychological insecurity on the campuses.”

There are other, more recent reports of repression in the Iranian academy. Ahmadinejad himself has led this effort to purge universities of what passes for liberal professors and academics, just as he has purged most of the ministries of educated technocrats and replaced them with incompetent true believers.

For the idiots at Columbia who cheered anything this man had to say in the context of academic freedom shows a depressing ignorance of the true state of affairs in Iran not to mention a derangement that should have sent them for a night of observation at Bellvue.

But why shouldn’t they be captivated by the visitor from Oz? His surface histrionics merged easily with their own warped view of history and current events. Ahmadinejad may not be a classic determinist but his bottom-up teleological belief in the return of the Mahdi - something he mentioned once again, right off the bat during his introductory remarks and colored every utterance he made during his appearance - should chill the knickers off those kids like nothing Bush or America has ever done or said.

Beyond that, the Iranian president showed himself to be something of a coward, failing to address many questions directly and substituting platitudes and religious double talk instead. He even got off the best laugh line (unintentional) of the afternoon when he denied there were any homosexuals in Iran. What wasn’t very funny is that he actually believes it. Such obliviousness to reality from a man whose nation is about to acquire the capability to enrich uranium beyond that which is necessary for the operation of power plants should give us pause.

All in all, a revealing appearance by Ahmadinejad, convicting himself out of his own mouth as I predicted here. What I didn’t anticipate was that there would be a few on the left who found what he had to say appealing.

Even I didn’t think anyone could be so dense.

Today marks the third anniversary of Right Wing Nuthouse. Looking back on my humble, fumbling beginnings (and my even more humbling present) makes me realize how much and how little has changed in my life as well as the wide, wide world of blogs.

I am a little wiser today, a lot better informed and more circumspect in my language (believe it or not). I’m a little more cynical about some things, less so about others.

Things I’d like to improve upon as they relate to this site: more patience with critics, more posting, a little more fearlessness on issues I know I’m going to get slammed on by everybody.

The blogosphere has changed considerably since I began. There is still much punditry but also efforts to use blogs in ways not foreseen three years ago. Cooperative efforts in covering stories and the use of video are huge changes. Podcasting is also an innovation. And blog radio although I’m not sure where that last is going.

There are several new voices and some who quit for one reason or another. I myself read fewer blogs every day than I did three years ago - no time. And that’s the biggest change of all; I’m making a living writing. Not a good one, but a living nonetheless.

I’ve made many friends over the last three years - and lost many as well. I regard both as my greatest success and my worst failure. Any blogger who writes for any length of time is going to experience the same. There will always come a point where you choose writing what you feel or not. I always seem to choose the former which has gotten me in trouble with friends, enemies, right, left, center, and the janitor down the hall. I’ve riled everyone at one point or another - occupational hazard I suppose.

I am not going to name all those who have so generously supported this site through thick and through thin. There are literally dozens of people, blogs big and small, people both famous and obscure, who I could thank by name and who have lent their assistance by linking often or sending along words of encouragement and advice, or simply reading and commenting intelligently. I can’t begin to express the gratitude I feel. Nor will I be able to repay the many kindnesses extended to me by so many of you.

Enough looking back. Time to move forward. I hope you continue the journey with me.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has got to be secretly pleased with himself. His visit to the United States so that he can once again harangue the United Nations General Assembly with his warped and twisted view of history and current events has generated so much controversy, he must be hugging himself with glee that his name is on the lips of so many, his every move watched and commented upon.

This is unavoidable. There is a great gulf of misunderstanding between Iran and the west - largely the fault of the mystical Ahmadinejad. In a word, the Iranian President is oblivious. He has made it clear in his public utterances that he is blissfully ignorant of western values, sensibilities, and interests. Further, he has expressed no desire to be enlightened. He is an anti-intellectual in that he is not a seeker of knowledge but a purveyor of dogma. Because of that, he willfully misconstrues what he hears from America and the west, carefully twisting and shaping his take on current events to fit the preconceived outlines of his theocratic worldview.

The relativists among you will point out rather petulantly that we don’t “understand” Iran either, that Ahmadinejad’s understanding of history is formed as a result of western imperial machinations and that we shouldn’t blame him if he thinks we’re a beastly bunch of cutthroats.

And if one more lefty throws the coup against Prime Minister Mossadegh (after he had prorogued Parliament over a dispute involving compensation to the Brits for nationalizing the oil industry) in my face as a reason that the Iranians hate us, I am going to slit my wrists. We certainly supported it. But Mossadegh was not the mild mannered democrat heroically resisting US imperialism as he is so often portrayed by the left. His move dissolving parliament was done to forestall impeachment proceedings against him and caused many of his own supporters to turn against him and assist the plotters. The Iranians selective memory regarding Mossadegh has been useful to the mullahs as they lay the typical third world guilt trip on the US and the west in order to justify their hatred.

It isn’t that Ahmadinejad is misinformed. He is deluded. To believe that Israel has no right to exist as a nation and that the Palestinians are only poor, defenseless Muslims being slaughtered wholesale by the evil Jews for no reason flies in the face of reality. Ahmadinejad portrays the Palestinians as only wanting “justice” (so do many on the left in the west which calls into question their sanity as well as their judgement). The problem is, that is not all the Palestinians want. They have made it absolutely clear - both Hamas and Fatah - that nothing short of kicking the Jews out of what is now the state of Israel will satisfy their lust for “justice.” No word on where all the Jews would end up although their are huge numbers of Palestinians who would like to see them in mass graves.

So Israel continues to be roundly condemned and criticized for fighting for its own survival against a genocidal enemy who, after 60 years of negotiations, refuses to compromise on even the most basic and elemental of points; that Israel is. In any other universe, we would look upon Ahmadinejad and his supporters in the west who agree with the Palestinians and their “right of return” (think “Final Solution”) as lunatics worthy of being committed. But in the here and now, the Palestinians are portrayed as “freedom fighters” and the Israelis, in what is surely the cruelest and most nauseating irony in the long, sad history of anti-semitism in the west, are referred to as “Nazis.”

For this reason, the relativists tell us that Ahmadinejad has every right to desire nuclear weapons. After all, Israel has them, don’t they? Why don’t we take the Israelis to task for possessing the ultimate weapon?

The stupidity involved in ignoring the fact that Israel is an ally, outnumbered 10-1 by its hostile Arab neighbors (whose governments that are currently not in a state of war with the Jews are so unstable that they could be overthrown tomorrow and radicals thrown up in their place) would be shocking if we weren’t so used to it by now. The reason we vouchsafe Israel her nuclear weapons is exactly the same reason we tacitly support the Brits and French being nuclear armed; Israel is an ally and has a demonstrable need for them. This is so obvious that to try and bring some kind of childish notion of reciprocity regarding the Iranian nuclear program into the discussion is tantamount to lunacy.

But despite this sympathy for some of Ahmadinejad’s agenda, his appearance at Columbia University will no doubt draw fire from the left. But not for his anti-Israeli policies nor for the Iranian regime’s quest for weapons of mass destruction. Rather, it will be for the cultural peculiarities of the Iranian theocracy that sees gays and women a little differently than we do in the west:

A U.S. attack on Iran, which is not an inevitability but is a real possibility, would have consequences just as terrible as the invasion of Iraq. Thousands would die in initial air strikes, and more in the resulting backlash and regional conflagration. The work of Iranian campaigners for free speech, women’s rights, and lesbian and gay liberation, and against racism and anti-semitism, would be set back immeasurably. As Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi has pointed out, “Human rights are not established by throwing cluster bombs on people. You cannot introduce democracy to a country by using tanks.”

There are other means for engagement with Iran than war, and other means for disagreement with Ahmadinejad than the planned protest. We call on those who do not support a war with Iran to be wary of the vilification of Ahmadinejad, to avoid Monday’s rally, and to express vocally their opposition to military intervention.

Now here is relativism writ large. Plus a dash of laughable ignorance about the nature of the Iranian regime. All those Iranian “campaigners” for free speech are about as effective as a vegan proselytizing at a cattle auction. Those not jailed for a variety of “crimes,” are regularly silenced by shutting down their newspapers. And is anyone outside of the left not laughing uproariously at the prospect of “gay and lesbian liberation” while the mullahs are in power? These “reformers” need to become armed revolutionaries in order to achieve any of their goals.

And to use Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia to criticize those who are outraged that he is given a forum to spew his hateful nonsense makes one truly think they have fallen down the rabbit hole and entered Wonderland. Except in the left’s version of Dodgson’s universe, up is down, black is white, and the March Hare is sane.

I actually support Columbia University’s decision to invite the Iranian President to speak. Academic freedom must be as close to absolute as possible. Ward Churchill may be a fool but trying to shut him up only makes him a martyr. Similarly, hearing what Ahmadinejad has to say will be an eye opening experience for some, I’m sure. He will condemn himself out of his own mouth and save the Administration from having to gin up outrage over the danger posed by he and his government.

In the end, Ahmadinejad can’t help himself. As a man who believes that when he addressed the UN back in 2005 that world leaders didn’t blink the entire time he spoke and that there was a halo surrounding him, he will be unable to restrain himself from proving that he is insensate to reality.

He is not evil but pathetically childlike in his view of the world. Unfortunately he is determined to acquire some very dangerous toys. For that, the world should unite to deny him his perilous playthings so as to keep him from injuring himself or others.

I don’t believe that we have to go to war with him to keep the world safe - at this point. We still have time - up to 3 years if you believe the experts - before the Iranian regime would threaten the region with nuclear weapons. Diplomacy and sanctions can still work if the world can coalesce to stop them. Is this test beyond the capacity of the nations to pass?

Frankly, there isn’t much of a choice otherwise.

I have to confess that I’ve always found Keith Olbermann to be a great entertainer. He has a keen sense of timing and an educated eye for the absurdities in life and politics (and in sports as his stint at the anchor desk of ESPN showed) that makes a lot of what he does funny and even provocative at times.

In short, he is a first class clown, a talented comedian whose shtick is, unfortunately, too narrowly defined for stand-up and too intelligent for a sitcom. But he seems to have found a comfortable niche in the Howard Beal inspired “news as entertainment” field that Bill O’Reilly and other prime time cable hosts have settled into.

The problem is, like O’Reilly, Olbermann thinks he’s a journalist. Just where this notion is advanced on his show, I am unable to determine. Only an idiot would see the blatantly partisan attacks and relentlessly exaggerated rhetoric employed by Olbermann as anything except exactly what they are; an attempt to promote an ideology at the expense of informing the public by using tactics worthy of a Goebbels or TASS in order to discredit opposing viewpoints.

Well, meet an idiot:

In short, what CBS (and all the others) need is a new Ed Murrow. Good news! There’s already one out there on the launchpad who has demonstrated his qualifications. I’m talking about Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. He has the journalistic chops and the mind, heart, instincts and courage.

Olbermann, who anchors a one-hour nightly news show on MSNBC called Countdown With Keith Olbermann, closes his show every night by saying “1,547th [for instance] day since Mission Accomplished in Iraq,” an homage to Ted Koppel’s “Iran Hostage” coverage, which evolved into Koppel’s late-night ABC news show Nightline (the MSNBC show was originally Countdown: Iraq). Then Olbermann throws his crumpled script at the camera, which shatters, a simulated digital effect (something Koppel never did).

These quotes are from a gushing piece on Olbermann by Marvin Kitman in the online edition of The Nation magazine. It isn’t surprising or disturbing that Kitman likes Olbermann. But positing the notion that the Clown Prince of MSNBC is a modern day Murrow?

A tip off to Mr. Kitman’s bona fides as a judge of who is a journalist is found in the above quote where Kitman seriously informs us that Ted Koppel never crumpled his script and threw it at the camera - unlike Olbermann who does it to sign off his show.

Perhaps the reason Koppel never crumpled his script and threw it at the camera was because he was, like, you know, a real journalist and not a poseur. Real journalists don’t do histrionics. Olbermann is the master of the craft.

Kitman also shows a breathtaking stupidity about Murrow, about journalistic standards, and the difference between advocacy and news. In fact, Kitman proves himself to be an ignoramus regarding just about everything he comments on in his article with the possible exception of his references to celebrities. There, I am not competent to judge his perspicacity.

For instance, Kitman demonstrates a shocking ignorance about Edward R. Murrow and his place in broadcast news history. He believes the problem with modern day news presentation is that it tries to be balanced and objective rather than taking a decided point of view in order to advocate a clear ideological position (liberal) as Murrow’s broadcasts did:

So, as a TV critic who has logged millions of hours of viewing to help save one of my three favorite commercial networks, I decided to volunteer my services to the Save CBS Campaign. Here’s what I would do: First, I would dump the Walter Cronkite school of reporting, of which Katie Couric is the latest practitioner. The objective that’s-the-way-it-is style they use at all the network evening news shows is so old, so over. No wonder all the network news programs are falling in the ratings. Katie Couric is just the hardest hit.

What the evening news shows need is less “objectivity” and more analysis. The problem with objective journalism is that it doesn’t exist and never did. Molly Ivins disposed of the objectivity question for all time when she observed in 1993, “The fact is that I am a 49-year-old white female, a college-educated Texan. All of that affects the way I see the world. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to see anything the same way that a 15-year-old black high school dropout does. We all see the world from where we stand. Anybody who’s ever interviewed five eyewitnesses to an automobile accident knows there’s no such thing as objectivity.”

This is the tired, old canard that leftists have used for 40 years; that news written by white males is not “objective” because the journalist has no life experience as a woman or other minority to inform his writing and point of view. Somehow, this is supposed to slight issues and concerns near and dear to the hearts of liberal interest groups.

It is the “journalism as a crusade” school of thought that rejects the idea that news gathering and writing is not art, but craft. Clearly, much of the “craft” aspect of becoming a newsman has been lost today. Everyone wants to be a creative writer rather than a journalist. Newspapers especially encourage this because it makes their product livelier and, I suppose, easier to read. But for an old fuddy-duddy like me who looks in wonder even at wire service copy today and sees jaw dropping examples of blatant bias, I still believe it the job of a news writer to try their best to leave their ideological crusades at the newsroom door.

Not according to Kitman. And he holds up as a shining example of how the news should be reported, none other than the sainted Murrow:

What I’m proposing is nothing new. Before Walter Cronkite became the model “objective” newsman, there was Edward R. Murrow. In the late 1930s Murrow started the tradition of reporting the news and analyzing it, giving his opinion of what it all meant. The Murrow legend was built on his opinionated analyses on the CBS Evening News.

This is true as far as it goes. The fact is, Murrow’s editorials - which usually closed the news broadcast - were clearly labeled as such. Kitman is advocating that the entire news program be given over to editorial analysis:

For those who never saw Murrow’s news show, here’s how it would go: After running through the headlines, he would call on reporters at home and abroad to give reports on the scene. These so-called Murrow’s Boys were real TV journalists, not actors who played them on TV. CBS News in the Murrow years had people we respected because of their expertise, not because they were famous TV names. The foreign correspondents weren’t empty trench coats but real experts like William Shirer, who reported from Berlin on the menace of Hitler in the 1930s. It didn’t matter that Murrow’s Boys were bald like David Schoenbrun, who reported from Paris in the glory days, or older than the 18-49 demographic like Dan Schorr. They were specialists in specific areas.

Then Murrow would do his closing essay, in which he would comment on some hot issue, continually treading dangerous waters: McCarthyism at home, apartheid abroad, J. Edgar Hoover, the atomic bomb, stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction–all of which he opposed. He was pro-union and anti-business. He was a dissident on US foreign policy post-World War II.

The problem here is that Kitman has combined several different Murrow programs over the years in both radio and television in order to make an obscure point; that Murrow’s broadcasts had a definite ideological point of view.

Starting in the late 1930’s, Murrow’s reports from Europe were either special broadcasts (as his famous 1938 round up of European opinion about the Anschluss) or his regular reports from London that were part of H.V. Kaltenborn’s 15 minute news reading at night. Murrow was never an anchor for CBS News as Kitman intimates above. In fact, Murrow’s war reports were so good not because he injected opinion into his pieces but because he was able to write clear, concise summaries of what it was like to be in London during the blitz. Whatever opinions he gave were in the context of the deliberate targeting of civilians by Hitler - hardly courageous or even novel.

After the war, Murrow’s Hear it Now radio program and the TV version See it Now tackled the toughest controversies of the time. But these shows were totally independent of the nightly news program. It is clear by the description above that Kitman doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to Murrow’s duties at CBS. He never started See it Now by reading the headlines. The show was a one issue program. It was the beginning of TV documentaries, something that Murrow would continue to perfect until the early 1960’s when he wrote and broadcast perhaps the most memorable documentary in over the air TV history, Harvest of Shame that profiled the plight of migrant workers.

In short, Kitman’s laughable misunderstanding of what Murrow actually did for CBS News makes his subsequent gushing about Olbermann ridiculous.

And this curious historical revisionism about Murrow is almost unfathomable. It is either deliberate obfuscation of the facts or unbelievable stupidity on the part of Kitman:

“No one can eliminate prejudices–just recognize them,” Murrow said. His approach was so successful that all the other network news hours copied him.

Finally, CBS president William Paley made Ed Murrow shut up–by canceling his shows. In the dark ages after Murrow, the most powerful commentary on network news was the raised eyebrow of David Brinkley after reading a piece of news on NBC. A generation of telegenic and totally uninvolved journalists followed.

Um…no, the other networks “news hours(??)” did not try to copy him (news on TV at the time was 15 minutes). In fact, NBC steered clear of controversy as much as possible. ABC News was a joke at the time, not even considered much of a network at all.

And the fact is, See it Now as a weekly program was not cancelled by Paley but rather the weekly show went dark because it lost its sponsor in 1955, Alcoa Aluminum and was unable to secure another permanent one. This was back in the day when corporations would sponsor individual shows and losing a sponsor meant either getting another one or going dark. See it Now was on the air fitfully as a series of specials until 1958 when according to Murrow’s long time producer Fred Friendly, the broadcaster told Paley he refused to do any more shows because of the network’s habit of giving equal time to Murrow’s targets. (Something Olbermann never does).

Putting aside Kitman’s obvious lack of knowledge of who Murrow was and what he did, the question of whether Murrow was “journalist” or an “analyst” remains unanswered. As a first person witness to history he was very good, a pioneer in radio and we have Murrow to thank for much of the structure found in modern news broadcasts. As an advocate for liberal reforms, he was tireless but his legend sometimes outstrips the facts. His McCarthy broadcast was aired in March of 1954, long after most major Democratic newspapers (and even many Republican ones) came out against the Wisconsin Senator. Murrow came late to the bash McCarthy party and most historians agree the Wisconsin Senator sealed his fate a month prior to Murrow’s See it Now broadcast by sliming World War II hero Ralph Zwicker that brought widespread editorial condemnation as well as denunciations from veterans groups and finally, President Eisenhower himself.

Comparing Olbermann to Murrow then is a monumental stretch - just from the standpoint that Murrow relied on a cold, journalistic recitation of the facts in order to make his points. Olbermann wouldn’t know a “fact” if it came up and bit him on his rear end. This from his first “Special Comment” segment where Olbermann tries to evoke the memory of Murrow:

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war. I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient…. I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent. I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought. I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents. I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience and letting him run roughshod over it….

It would be tiresome to rebut what Olbermann has laid out as his “case” for a Bush resignation. If you believe that Bush “fabricated in the minds of your own people a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11″ then there is no hope for you. You might as well believe in Santa Claus. I only highlight it to contrast the way Murrow went about savaging McCarthy:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men— not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Murrow could have been referring to Olbermann during most of that analysis.

Olbermann is a clown. An excellent clown but an entertainer nonetheless. It has been said that he is the first on-air blogger in that his rants are reminiscent of much that passes for analysis on the web. Of this, I have no doubt. His exaggeration, his cruel twisting of facts and circumstances, and his outright deliberate obscuring of the truth - 3 Congressional Committees have found Bush did not lie us into war not to mention assigning unproven and unsubstantiated motivations to the President for his actions - are part and parcel of the way many popular right and left blogs operate. But Olbermann as Murrow?

For ten minutes, Olbermann spoke with fierce clarity and surgical precision, drawing a comparison to President Nixon’s resignation. He had obviously done his homework. His recitation of Bush’s crimes concluded with his observation that the President had been “an accessory to the obstruction of justice” in the Libby case. “From Iraq to Scooter Libby,” Olbermann said at the time, “Bush and Cheney have lost Americans’ trust and stabbed this nation in the back. It’s time for them to go.” The highest praise I can give is to say I can imagine Ed Murrow speaking those words.

If Kitman can imagine Murrow saying those words, he’s a fool. Murrow would have marshaled the facts not gone off on ad hoc rants substituting ill formed opinions for clear, concise analysis. The idea that Kitman can’t recognize this only shows him to be an idiot.

Which is why any comparisons between Olbermann and Murrow are found only in the minds of Kitman and Olbermann himself. No serious journalist would entertain such a comparison nor would any serious person period. It is beyond belief that anyone could be so obtuse as to believe that Olbermann was anything except a clever entertainer who knows his audience expertly and panders to their biases and worldview.

Kitman’s vision of a future nightly news broadcast featuring Olbermann-like rants and ravings is pretty frightening. Thankfully, if such a nightmare were to occur, such relentless partisanship would appeal to an even smaller segment of the population than over the air news appeals to now which would cause Mr. Olbermann to retreat ignominiously back to the cable backwater of MSNBC where he belongs.

Every once and a while an issue emerges that exposes in stark relief the great chasm separating right from left - where the differences revealed are so profound that the two sides look at each other across this great divide and see not a political opponent but a strange and unfamiliar form of life whose habits of thought and moral calculus are so dissimilar as to make the gulf that separates them seem unbridgeable.

The on again-off again visit by President Ahmadinejad is such an issue. Rarely has the reaction to an event been so dichotomous. Perhaps not since the Terri Schiavo matter has the lines of understanding and perception been drawn so sharply that bewilderment mixed with outrage have been the dominant themes rather than the usual snark and spite that is hurled back and forth on a daily basis.

For instance, the normally sane lefty Josh Marshall goes off the deep end of idiocy here:

So what’s the problem exactly? Presumably we can be frank enough to acknowledge that the real issue here is that while Ahmadinejad is not Arab to most of us he looks pretty Arab. And he is Muslim certainly — and pretty up in arms about it at that. And we officially don’t like him. And we classify the country he runs as a state sponsor of terrorism. So even though he has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, when you put all these key facts together, he might as well have done it himself. And what business does anyone with the blood of the victims of 9/11 on his hands have going to Ground Zero?

That’s basically it and don’t tell me it’s not.

See what I mean about bewilderment? It is incomprehensible to me that anyone could dismiss the visit to Ground Zero of someone who leads “Death to America” chants during nearly every speech he gives in Iran with the notion that those who are outraged at the thought are racists or ignoramuses who have a problem with enemy identification.

At least Marshall was earnest in his desire to understand what has so many people ticked off about the proposed visit. Others actually hit the nail on the head but dismissed the outrage as “childish:”

In the simplistic narrative that dominates Republican discourse, it doesn’t matter that Ahmadinejad and Iran had nothing to do with 9/11 or that Iran in fact publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks shortly after they occurred. All that matters is that Ahmadinejad is an Evil Islamofascist and that the attacks were carried out by Evil Islamofascists. Ipso facto, it would be the ultimate insult to allow him anywhere near Ground Zero.

And the later, the same author:

And as I wrote yesterday, having an important Muslim leader publicly pay respect to those who died on 9/11 would be a major public relations victory for us. Remember, the primary goal in the war on terror is to reduce the appeal of al Qaeda’s ideology among the world’s Muslim population.

First, as an aside, yes it is true that Iran “publicly condemned” the 9/11 attack - in the context that it mirrored the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The warped sense of history that could place 9/11 in the same moral framework as the wartime attacks on the two Japanese cities is exactly why Ahmadinejad’s visit would have been such an outrage.

But the real headshaker here is the inability of the writer and indeed most of the left to recognize the significance of allowing a terrorist enabler like Ahmadinejad to visit the site of a terrorist attack. For many on the left, because Iran had nothing to do with the event, their hands are clean. In this universe, Ahmadinejad is just some poor, Muslim pilgrim come to make nice with the Americans by piously laying a wreath where his co-religionists so brutally attacked us.

And yes I draw a direct line between Ahmadinejad and Atta. Why? Because despite the differences in their fanaticism (Atta’s inspiration came from Wahhabist radicalism while Ahmadinejad’s is from Shia mysticism), both are adherents of an ideology (not religion) that seeks to destroy the west and replace it with their own version of the Muslim ummah. We are not discussing whether it is possible or not. They both think it is and are therefore equal threats to the safety and security of the United States.

We can make fun of Ahmadinejad’s mystical utterances. They are a product of his extremely sheltered and deliberately closed off existence in Iran. And his obliviousness to American sensibilities about Ground Zero is telling indeed. But it is his determination to spread Islam - the same determination that animated Mohammad Atta - that would have made his trip to Ground Zero so inappropriate.

But for many on the left, a suspension of moral certitude takes place when dealing with America’s enemies. In their haste to see “both sides” in a conflict, many on the left forget (or deliberately choose to ignore) the nature of the Iranian regime and why the spread of that ideology must be opposed and stopped if possible. In fact, the left is so busy being even handed that it becomes impossible to take a moral stand at all.

This then is the real chasm. The right has moral certainty on this issue. The left, a moral relativeness.

Now before everyone gets all bent out of shape let me make a couple of observations. First, I believe criticism by the left of the right’s moral certainty about everything is well founded in some instances. It is just as idiotic to believe that everything is black and white as it is to believe that everything is shades of gray.

There are moral stands to be taken where there is little or no wiggle room. For or against a war would be one example. And then there is the idea that one can oppose terrorism but treat its perpetrators and enablers as they would anyone else. The United States government is at war with this man’s ideology. We are at war with most of what he wishes would come true for the Middle East and the west. We are at war with his notion of human rights and human decency.

We are not a perfect people nor are we infallible. But we can certainly stand up for those things that we feel are “inalienable” rights and therefore natural to the human condition. It has become unfashionable to believe that babies are not born into bondage to government diktats but rather free to live, breathe, speak, write, worship, and associate. It is government that takes these things away or doles out these rights like pieces of candy to little children. What Ahmadinejad/Atta represent is a complete anathema to the idea of natural rights - the basis of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and of the American way of life. There can be no more complete enemy of the United States.

There are variety of reasons the left chooses not to see the moral trap they have set for themselves by excusing Ahmadinejad’s desire to visit Ground Zero. They oppose the Iranian regime on an intellectual level but can’t make the leap to opposing them on the only level you can effectively fight them - the gut churning emotional level where you can feel something is either absolutely right or terribly wrong. Without moral certitude in fighting the Ahmadinejad/Attas of this world, we will lose. We will lose because they are certain that they are in the right .

The outrage felt by many on the right regarding Ahmadinejad’s now scuttled visit to Ground Zero and the left’s mockery and bewilderment of it open the chasm between us just a little bit wider. I have no idea how to bridge the difference between us. I hope it won’t take some cataclysmic event to make it happen.

I had a good time talking to Melanie Morgan and Brian Sussman of KSFO’s popular morning program out in true blue San Francisco.

We talked about the now scuttled Ahmadinejad trip to Ground Zero among other things. If you’d like to listen, you can stream or download the podcast here.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

I just woke up from one of the worst nightmares I’ve ever had. You’re not going to believe this but I dreamed that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New York City for one of his semi-annual harangues to the General Assembly of the UN and decided to take a side trip to Ground Zero. Why he wanted to do this was never made clear in the dream. Maybe he wanted to dance a jig or lay a wreath honoring those martyrs to Islam he’s so fond of praising after they blow up a bunch of babies in a crowded market or die while launching missiles aimed at innocents in Israel.

Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous and would never even be contemplated in a million years but let me finish. It gets better. In my dream, would you believe the New York authorities actually negotiated this little scenario, tried to see if it could be carried off? That’s right. The police and Port Authority were seriously looking at the idea of accommodating this Holocaust denying, terrorist enabling scumbag.

As it turns out, someone must have whispered in the ear of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly that such a visit might invite a negative reaction from New Yorkers and would cause all sorts of unsightly demonstrations and protests. This just can’t be allowed under any circumstances. It doesn’t play well on TV and there’s always a helluva mess to clean up afterwards. Besides, the Police Department can’t afford the overtime paid to all those cops who would have to guard the life of a man who leads “Death to America” chants at most of his public appearances and speeches.

So in my dream, the Commish turned the Iranian President down, saying Ground Zero was closed to the public because of the construction that’s going on. You would think that this would have been the end of it. But the former Mayor of Tehran, former senior Commander in the Qods Force of the Revolutionary Guards (who almost certainly participated in the assassination of an Iranian dissident in Vienna a few years ago), and former “student” kidnapper of American diplomats was not to be deterred.

He decided to go anyway. And being a foreign dignitary, he was entitled to the protection of none other than the United States Secret Service - a dedicated group of selfless and courageous professionals who would be expected to take a bullet for this supporter of Hamas, Hezb’allah, and several other groups who make it their business to murder innocents.

Irony piled upon irony as Ahmadinejad’s entourage approached Ground Zero. New Yorkers lined the streets watching in stunned silence as the Iranian President’s car moved through lower Manhattan. The look on their faces reminded one of the old newsreel pictures of devastated Parisians who watched helplessly as the German Wehrmacht rolled down the Champs d’Elysees in 1940. Their shock and sadness at the turn of events was total. Their devastation, complete.

As his little caravan approached the site of the worst terrorist attack in world history the scene changed abruptly. Several thousand people had gathered to protect the site from being abased by a man who has said recently that he believes that the United States government was responsible for what happened that awful day when the towers fell and not his murderous co-religionists whose announced reason was to martyr themselves for his God.

Hundreds of people were lying in the street blocking the caravan from making further progress, their bodies meshed together forming a solid block of unmovable flesh. Thousands more were screaming obscenities and shaking their fist in his direction, expressing the rage felt by most Americans that this leader of a government that is currently training and supplying terrorists in Iraq who target American soldiers should have been allowed to get so close to one of our nation’s most sacred sites.

Of course, this wasn’t really a nightmare because we just experienced the possibility of this scenario playing out next Monday in real life. The chances of the dream becoming reality have become slim indeed due to what Ahmadinejad told CBS News 60 Minutes a few hours ago; that if the New York authorities can’t arrange security, he won’t go.

But in that interview with CBS, an even greater nightmare is revealed. The President of Iran, the leader of one of the most important nations in the Middle East and a world/historical figure - a beacon of resistance to western powers in the third world - didn’t have a clue that his proposed trip to Ground Zero would cause such resentment among the American people.

Here is the disturbing exchange between CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley and the Iranian President:

PELLEY: Sir, what were you thinking? The World Trade Center site is the most sensitive place in the American heart, and you must have known that visiting there would be insulting to many, many Americans.

AHMADINEJAD: Why should it be insulting?

PELLEY: But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world. You must have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would infuriate many Americans.

AHMADINEJAD: Well, I’m amazed. How can you speak for the whole of the American nation?

PELLEY: Well, the American nation–

AHMADINEJAD: You are representing a media and you’re a reporter. The American nation is made up of 300 million people. There are different points of view over there.

This is not the tone deafness of an ignorant man. This is the leader of a nation that is striving to build a nuclear weapon and has made it crystal clear it intends to confront the United States in the Middle East and drive us out while “wiping Israel off the map.”

This is a man who is totally unaware of what goes on outside of Iran, a man whose worldview is so warped by fanaticism, religion, and his own messianic self image that the concept that he could be anything except universally loved and admired is foreign to him. I have no doubt he was sincere in believing that his offer to lay a wreath at Ground Zero was a gesture of goodwill. But the towering conceit that allowed him to believe in the impossibility that his gesture would be greeted with anything except outrage shows Ahmadinejad to be an extraordinarily dangerous man.

We are constantly told by Iranian apologists in this country that Ahmadinejad and his boss, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei are rational actors and that even if they achieve their goal of building a nuclear weapon, we have nothing to fear because of the certainty that they do not wish to commit national suicide and either launch a nuclear weapon at America or give one to terrorists so that they can do their dirty work for them. This is the MAD doctrine - Mutually Assured Destruction - that kept the world from exploding during the cold war.

But even if Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are “rational” in the sense that they are clinically sane, how in God’s name can you not look at the above statements by the Iranian President and not wonder if his warped, sheltered, and intensely narrow view of the world from Tehran hasn’t blinded him to how the world perceives his rhetoric and actions?

This is a man born to miscalculate America. He isn’t ignorant but rather oblivious - a far more dangerous state of mind when one considers that by the fact that he is unable to grasp certain realities about America and her people, he is more than likely to assume reactions by us to his provocations to be something totally different from what they truly are.

Would he, for instance, believe that exploding a nuclear weapon on American soil not cause us to retaliate? It is not likely but reading the above responses to his proposed visit to Ground Zero causes one to hesitate in saying that there is no chance he could be so obtuse. His reality is so skewed that anything is possible.

And that might be an even bigger nightmare than anything he and the New York authorities could have dreamed up at Ground Zero.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category was “2001 — Our Own Odyssey Began On 9/11″ by ‘Okie’ on the Lam.

There was a 4 way jam up for second:

1. “50 Million Intellectuals Can Be Wrong” by Bookworm Room

2. “The Way We Were” by Right Wing Nut House

3. “Osama’s Real Message” by Joshuapundit

4. “Voter Racism Must Be Condemned!” by Rhymes With Right

In the non Council category, the winner was “When the Left Cares, and When It Doesn’t” by Dennis Keohane at American Thinker.

If you would like to participate in the weekly Watchers vote, go here and follow instructions.