In “Let Them Eat Crab Cake” MoDo says it’s rich. Mitt Romney thinks poor folks are on Easy Street. It’s not just Mittens, dear. For 10 years now we’ve been hearing about these “lucky duckies,” and right wing hate talk radio just keeps on catapulting the propaganda. The Moustache of Wisdom says “Look in Your Mirror,” and that if it’s wrong to insult Islam, it should be wrong to insult any religion. That doesn’t seem to be the case in the Arab world. Tom, I don’t think it’s necessarily being helpful to yell “Oh yeah? Well you do too.” Here’s MoDo:
Oh, for the days when we thought Mitt Romney didn’t stand for anything.
As a secret video from a Boca Raton fund-raiser with high rollers in May shows, Romney in private stands for so many bizarre things that it’s hard to tell what’s crazier — his domestic policy or his foreign policy.
Less than 50 days before the election, we learn that Romney may have given up on half of America and on Mideast peace.
In a reply to a fat cat at the $50,000-a-plate dinner, he wrote off 47 percent of the country as deadbeats, freeloaders and “victims” who feel they’re entitled to stuff — stuff like basic sustenance.
“Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” he said. “All right? There are 47 percent who are with him. Who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they’re entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
The candidate, who pays so little in taxes relative to his income that he has to hide tax returns and money in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, then added, condescendingly: “These are people who pay no income tax.”
“So my job is not to worry about those people,” he blithely concluded. “I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” What kind of presidential candidate shrugs off wooing whole groups — we’re talking many seniors and white-working-class voters in battleground states who are, if he actually knew what he was talking about, his own natural constituencies?
A “stupid and arrogant” one, as Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, put it.
Conservatives knew that Romney was no Reagan, but the tape left many Republicans and Obama strategists gobsmacked. One top Democrat called it “a treasure trove of stupid answers.”
On Fox News Tuesday, Neil Cavuto gently asked Romney if he had “prematurely” presumed that he couldn’t get all of those voters. Mitt’s rambles to the donors, released by Mother Jones magazine and, in a bit of poetic justice, unearthed by Jimmy Carter’s grandson, were a stunning combination of wrong facts, callous sentiments and dumb politics.
He seemed to have bought into the warped canard that some conservatives inside and outside of Congress have pushed: that the president and Nancy Pelosi were nefariously hooking people on unemployment benefits so they’d get addicted and vote Democratic to keep the unemployment bucks flowing like crack.
It’s literally rich: Willard, born on third base and acting self-made, whining to the rich about what a great deal in life the poor have.
We thought Romney was secretly moderate, but it turns out that he’s secretly cruel, a social Darwinist just like his running mate.
You’d assume that it would be hard now for Romney to resume bashing President Obama for demonizing and pandering on class warfare, with lines like he’s been using on the trail: “he and his allies are pushing us all even further apart by dividing us into groups.”
But, even as Mitt was spitefully demonizing and dividing in Boca, he remained cardboard-cutout un-self-aware, musing: “The thing which I find most disappointing about this president is his attack of one America against another America.” This is the absolute height of cluelessness.
At another point in the video, Romney once more showed his foreign policy jejuneness, questioning the workability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which is U.S. policy endorsed by W.
Mr. Sunshine said he sometimes felt “that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace — and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.”
He continued: “You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize this is going to remain an unsolved problem,” adding, “And we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately somehow, something will happen to resolve it.”
Wow. That’s leadership. He said a former secretary of state had called him to suggest that after the Palestinian elections there might be a prospect for a settlement, but that “I didn’t delve into it.”
After months of doggedly trying to seem more likable, sharing his guilty pleasures like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Snooki, Romney came across as a mean geek, a Cranbrook kid at the country club smugly swaddled in class disdain. He thinks being president is his manifest destiny. His father didn’t make it, so he will — no matter what far-out conservative positions he must graft on to in order to do it.
We’re in search of the real Romney. But, disturbingly, so is he.
One thing we have to give Mitt, though: He is, as advertised, a brilliant manager. He’s managed to ensure that President Obama has a much better chance of re-election.
Now here’s The Moustache of Wisdom:
On Monday, David D. Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief for The Times, quoted one of the Egyptian demonstrators outside the American Embassy, Khaled Ali, as justifying last week’s violent protests by declaring: “We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker, was holding up a handwritten sign in English that read: “Shut Up America.” “Obama is the president, so he should have to apologize!”
I read several such comments from the rioters in the press last week, and I have a big problem with them. I don’t like to see anyone’s faith insulted, but we need to make two things very clear — more clear than President Obama’s team has made them. One is that an insult — even one as stupid and ugly as the anti-Islam video on YouTube that started all of this — does not entitle people to go out and attack embassies and kill innocent diplomats. That is not how a proper self-governing people behave. There is no excuse for it. It is shameful. And, second, before demanding an apology from our president, Mr. Ali and the young Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans and Sudanese who have been taking to the streets might want to look in the mirror — or just turn on their own televisions. They might want to look at the chauvinistic bile that is pumped out by some of their own media — on satellite television stations and Web sites or sold in sidewalk bookstores outside of mosques — insulting Shiites, Jews, Christians, Sufis and anyone else who is not a Sunni, or fundamentalist, Muslim. There are people in their countries for whom hating “the other” has become a source of identity and a collective excuse for failing to realize their own potential.
The Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, was founded in 1998 in Washington by Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli government adviser on counterterrorism, “to bridge the language gap between the Middle East and the West by monitoring, translating and studying Arab, Iranian, Urdu and Pashtu media, schoolbooks, and religious sermons.” What I respect about Memri is that it translates not only the ugly stuff but the courageous liberal, reformist Arab commentators as well. I asked Memri for a sampler of the hate-filled videos that appear regularly on Arab/Muslim mass media. Here are some:
ON CHRISTIANS Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi of the Iranian Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution: Christianity is “a reeking corpse, on which you have to constantly pour eau de cologne and perfume, and wash it in order to keep it clean.” http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1528.htm — July 20, 2007.
Sheik Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi: It is permissible to spill the blood of the Iraqi Christians — and a duty to wage jihad against them. http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5200.htm — April 14, 2011.
Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, a Saudi professor of Islamic law, calls for “positive hatred” of Christians. Al-Majd TV (Saudi Arabia), http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/992.htm — Dec. 16, 2005.
ON SHIITES The Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub: “Muslim Brotherhood Presidential Candidate Mohamed Morsi told me that the Shiites are more dangerous to Islam than the Jews.” www.memritv.org/clip/en/3466.htm — June 13, 2012.
The Egyptian Cleric Mazen al-Sirsawi: “If Allah had not created the Shiites as human beings, they would have been donkeys.” http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3101.htm — Aug. 7, 2011.
The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan video series: “The Shiite is a Nasl [Race/Offspring] of Jews.” http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6208.htm — March 21, 2012.
ON JEWS Article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Web site praises jihad against America and the Jews: “The Descendants of Apes and Pigs.” http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6656.htm — Sept. 7, 2012.
The Pakistani cleric Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai: “When the Jews are wiped out, the world would be purified and the sun of peace would rise on the entire world.” http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6557.htm — Aug. 1, 2012.
Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The Jews, “a source of evil and harm in all human societies.” http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6086.htm — Feb. 14, 2012.
ON SUFIS A shrine venerating a Sufi Muslim saint in Libya has been partly destroyed, the latest in a series of attacks blamed on ultraconservative Salafi Islamists. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19380083 — Aug. 26, 2012.
As a Jew who has lived and worked in the Muslim world, I know that these expressions of intolerance are only one side of the story and that there are deeply tolerant views and strains of Islam espoused and practiced there as well. Theirs are complex societies.
That’s the point. America is a complex society, too. But let’s cut the nonsense that this is just our problem and the only issue is how we clean up our act. That Cairo protester is right: We should respect the faiths and prophets of others. But that runs both ways. Our president and major newspapers consistently condemn hate speech against other religions. How about yours?
September 19, 2012 at 8:55 am |
My son who earned a fellowship to a prestigious ME grad school does not follow politics but rebuffs if u will the plaintiff argument that this is news to the poor to lower white class of working and non-working Americans. He has stood by this and remains steadfast. Is that I add ruefully not what a Republican stands for? Inviolable objectivity. Now I would look up what I’ve just written to be sure I’ve ingratiated the elite crowd he demeans. Or should I say Santorum. Former PA (R) senator who spoke to no one in particular but we can assume they didn’t attend Yale with George or Mitt (now and again I will substantiate my remarks but Yale is interchangeable with Harvard Yard, is it not?). We do not want the elite smart people on our side Santorium declared! Why would we want to divulge our ignorance when we can rob your taxes blind. I know Mitt believes earnestly as he cake walks through Nebraska and onto New Hampshire and Poland and Near Russia (see SP) that the average skin head cares not whether Mitt’s Bain stole from the market as aggressively as any tin horn broker from Morgan or Brown Bros. Harriman. I think the job of president would leave Mitt bored what with all that attention to his graying temples. OMG is he a Jew?
September 19, 2012 at 4:08 pm |
Tommy Boy the Cairo/Libyan incidents which spread like the West Nile Virus on humus were not started because of the video but instead by the date on the calendar.
Secondly it is painfully obvious that most Americans have a better understanding of this mess than the pundits who want to use freedom of expression to vaguely protect a president and our country when it is the Arab’s fault for being so backwards. Arabs are not strictly speaking a race or a religion. They are a separate part of the human race living in a void where only traditional Moslem values have not found their way to the present times. As John Oliver humorously stated if we give the Islamist nations time to catch up with western democracies it will take as long as four to five centuries. He used the parallel to the Christian denominations which until the Inquisition were similarly entombing bodies for having different beliefs and witches more recently for being left handed. So why we persist in insisting they behave themselves is a road to martyrdom. They are not our allies. Nor our friends. They are avowed enemies. Not because of their religion but because they have not moved forward in time. And they may never.
September 19, 2012 at 5:17 pm |
It’s interesting that both Christianity and Islam grew from the roots of Judaism and that both religions hired the same PR firm to spread their gospel while at the same time legitimized anti-Semitism. Were it not for Paul Jesus would be a footnote in a Birkenstock commercial. For those who pray for peace in Jerusalem let us not forget that teaching and practicing anti-Semitism in fact institutionalizing it in Moslem schools throughout our best ally in the region, Egypt is commonplace and similar to Catholic teachings until at least mid century last.
What we need to remember is that we should not indulge fundamentalist revisionists and hypocrites of Aristotle’s day nor of our own. This includes evangelicals and teachers of treachery worldwide.
Again Tom in an effort to maintain your head while traveling Arabia you decided not to differentiate between western democracy and Moslem dictatorships. It is not the role of the president to speak out to the world on the fortunes of a video maker. That he did was an expression of his faith that our nuclear capability and our submarines and hopefully not our capital will bend their will. For God knows nothing on earth can be as cryptic as an Arab when it comes to logic. It is not the president of the US job to condemn or apologize for an individual. The Republicans found it necessary to criticize the president for sparking a mediator’s tone when in fact he had not at the time made a public speech on the matter.
September 19, 2012 at 7:07 pm |
Jews, Christians and Muslims are all “People of the Book” and “Children of Abraham,” if only we could remember that we have that common heritage. I wouldn’t know how to be a Christian if I didn’t have at least some basic knowledge of Judaism. How else could I approach Jesus, who was a Jew?