Oh, my head

Three months ago I got angry at Barack Obama, as I often do, for talking shit about the 1960s. At the time, I wrote:

[D]oes he just mean that Senator Clinton hasn't been forceful enough in denouncing the Port Huron Statement? Is John Edwards too soft on the Weathermen? What the hell is he talking about?

Ha ha! Funny anachronistic references to defunct 1960s radicals, which illustrate the silliness of the issue because they could never ever crop up in a present-day... what the hell?

The Hillary Clinton campaign pushed to reporters today stories about Barack Obama and his ties to former members of a radical domestic terrorist group... "Wonder what the Republicans will do with this issue," mused Clinton spokesman Phil Singer in one e-mail to the media, containing a New York Sun article reporting a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founding member of the Weather Underground, to Obama in 2001. (Obama's ties to the radical group first surfaced last week in a Bloomberg News article.)

In a separate e-mail, Singer forwarded an article from Politico.com reporting on a 1995 event at a private home that brought Obama together with Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, another former member of the radical group.

[...] "If the Clinton campaign is truly concerned about the exploitation of the Weather Underground issue by the Republican attack machine, perhaps they should focus on the pardon of some of its members in the waning days of the Clinton administration," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

"The Weather Underground issue." OH MY GOD JUST FUCKING KILL ME. They know there's a WAR going on right now, don't they? Like, not a culture war, a war war? WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS??!!?!?

...The Clinton campaign is simply beyond repair, if this is the level they're sinking to. (Not that Burton's doing himself any favors by jumping right down into their frame -- "Yeah, well, your guy is also a dirty hippie!") I understand such garbage scores points with the pathological media, who of course are obsessed with the 1960s, but for everybody else... this is rapidly becoming the stupidest primary ever. I need a drink...

Please, spare us

See, this is why I don't like Barack Obama's campaign:

"There's no doubt that we represent the kind of change Senator Clinton can't deliver on. And part of it's generational," Obama told FOX News. "Senator Clinton and others have been fighting some of the same fights since the '60s. It makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done. And I think that's what people hunger for."

OMFG ENOUGH with the generational politics. This is such crap. What "fights" from the 1960s is Obama talking about, and by what voodoo are they stifling politics today? "Gosh, I really hunger to reach across the aisle to my fellow Americans and get things done, but I'm just so mad about LBJ and the draft..."

And what cause exactly does Obama propose we abdicate? Women's rights? Civil rights? Environmental responsibility? Peace? Or does he just mean that Senator Clinton hasn't been forceful enough in denouncing the Port Huron Statement? Is John Edwards too soft on the Weathermen? What the hell is he talking about?

Oh sorry, my bad -- I forgot that Senator Obama never addresses actual issues, only generalities. (It's a Politics of Hope thing, I gather.) He must just be referring to radicalism as a category, the kind of politics that was deliberately aggressive toward Middle America. And certainly, nobody espouses that attitude better than... uh... Hillary Cl...

COME ON. I'm no fan of Senator Clinton, but to paint her as a 1960s radical is just insane. This is the second most conservative (after Richardson) and by FAR the most establishmentarian of all the Democratic candidates, and you want to call her a revolutionary? Get off my lawn. (The only way you could suggest Hillary's candidacy harks back to 60s divisions is by simple virtue of the fact that she has a vagina -- which is an argument I really hope the Senator's not making.)

No, I think this kind of comment is just 100% pure bullshit; a senseless sop to political elites, who have a well-documented irrational fear of hippies, and who are attracted to this generational-transformational rambling like flies to a septic tank. Obama's consultant-driven campaign tends to do this kind of thing, and it's sickening -- not only does it validate a right-wing talking point, which no Democrat should ever do (and Obama has a history of it), it's also a stupid political argument, one that has zero force outside the Beltway and the offices of the New York Times.

I mean, My God, our economy is imploding, people are losing their houses, Iraq is a meat grinder, nobody has health care, and Barack Obama -- Savior of Our Politics, Provider of Hope -- wants to talk about hippies. If the Senator really aims to implement "transformational change", I humbly suggest he start with his own talking points...

I Hate Hippies

There is a David Brooks column worth reading. You need a New York Times Select membership to read it. I'm not going to post it, since it would be in violation of the New York Time's (silly) copyright policies or something. I managed to read the article through a post on the Dems-Talk (thanks Jarret). If you can't get a copy of the Times however, the basic gist of Brook's argument is that the extreme political polarization (i.e. name calling and mud slinging) of the past few years has made the current crop of young Americans "practical, anti-ideological, modest and centrist (maybe to a fault)."

I also suspect that we have a stronger sense of irony and a dryer sense of humor as well.

Regardless of what you think of David Brooks himself however, I think this article is dead on. It's a pretty good description of my political views and those I hang around with. If I ever run for office, my campaign slogan would be "shut up and do it." Maybe. Unfortunately, the political process seems to be favor selection of the ideologues (see immediate mockery of Brooks for things unrelated to article), so I don't expect a huge drop in the number of vapid airheads on the airwaves or in the blogosphere anytime soon.

Although I guess you could argue that David Brooks is a vapid airhead himself ... hrmmm ...

I will add, however, that I enjoy being around extreme conservatives. They're rather funny. If I didn't know better, I'd almost argue that they were politically incorrect hypocritical caricatures mocking the conservative movement -- in the same way that Borat's Jew bashing is really a mockery of anti-semites.

Extreme liberals on the other hand (read: hipipes) are just annoying. Hippy-bashing, however, is hilarious.