This speaks for itself, I think:
Anyone who can’t see the distinction has something wrong with their moral compass. (Most likely, I would guess, the magnetic pull of political idolatry.)
Category Archives: Video
Rahm Emanuel and the limits of apology
Rahm Emanuel is the latest proof that apologizing is not the same thing as actually being sorry. Of course, he’s proved that before, since he wields his tongue with all the finesse and remorse of Conan with his sword. Here’s Gov. Palin’s Facebook note on Emanuel’s latest verbal fusillade:
The newly-released mind-boggling, record-smashing $3,400,000,000,000 federal budget invites plenty of opportunity to debate the merits of incurring more and more debt that will drown the next generation of Americans. Never has it been possible to spend your way out of debt. So . . . let the debate begin.
Included in the debate process will be opportunities for our president to deliberate internally the wisdom of this debt explosion, along with other economic, military and social issues facing our country. Our president will discuss these important issues with Democrat leaders and those within his inner circle. I would ask the president to show decency in this process by eliminating one member of that inner circle, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, and not allow Rahm’s continued indecent tactics to cloud efforts. Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing himself a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm’s recent sick and offensive tactic.
The Obama Administration’s Chief of Staff scolded participants, calling them, “F—ing retarded,” according to several participants, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.
Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the “N-word” or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities—and the people who love them—is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking.
A patriot in North Andover, Massachusetts, notified me of Rahm’s “retarded” slam. I join this gentleman, who is the father of a beautiful child born with Down Syndrome, in asking why the Special Olympics, National Down Syndrome Society and other groups condemning Rahm’s degrading scolding have been completely ignored by the White House. No comment from his boss, the president?
As my friend in North Andover says, “This isn’t about politics; it’s about decency. I am not speaking as a political figure but as a parent and as an everyday American wanting my child to grow up in a country free from mindless prejudice and discrimination, free from gratuitous insults of people who are ostensibly smart enough to know better . . . Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
Mr. President, you can do better, and our country deserves better.
—Sarah Palin
Of course, we’ve heard something like this before from this administration, as the President compared his bowling to the Special Olympics (on national TV, no less); he made a couple apologies and left it behind him. Now, it appears, he’s hoping his administration will be able to do the same again. I have to say, that doesn’t sound to me at all like “Rahm blinking,” it sounds to me like Rahm Emanuel—and Barack Obama!—trying to pass the whole thing off with a pro forma apology that he didn’t even have to make in person. It’s nothing more than the political equivalent of cheap grace, cost-free pseudo-repentance, and it’s just not good enough.
It’s especially not good enough considering that were the shoe on the other foot, were this a club Rahm Emanuel could use against a political rival, he wouldn’t rest until the last shovelful of dirt had been thrown on that rival’s political career. Should he be fired? That would seem to me to be out of proportion to the moral offense—though the political offense here, causing further problems for an administration that’s already struggling when to this point he’s been largely ineffective at pushing his boss’s agenda, might be enough to start the deathwatch—but either COS Emanuel or President Obama needs to do something more here than merely make an empty gesture. It’s not enough to say, “Tim Shriver forgave us,” as if that should settle it; if they want real forgiveness, they need to demonstrate real repentance, of the sort that actually costs something. After all, as I wrote after the President’s Special Olympics wisecrack,
Michael Kinsley somewhere defined a gaffe as “what happens when the spin breaks down.” It’s a wry observation that captures a real truth about why gaffes matter: because they reveal something about a given politician that said politician doesn’t want us to see. They’re the places where the mask slips. That may not always be true, and the real meaning of a particular gaffe may not always be the one that first comes to mind, but in general, these are meaningful moments that tell us more about our politicians than our politicians will usually tell us about themselves.
What makes repentance? A change of heart. And at this point, it seems clear that a change of heart is exactly what’s needed here.
Song of the Week II
I posted Greg Scheer’s “A Mark of Grace” earlier because I admire what he accomplished in that song, but it’s far from the only new song I learned at the Worship Symposium last week; there were several, of which my favorite is this one, which is still stuck fast in my head from last Thursday morning:
Creation Sings
Creation sings the Father’s song;
He calls the sun to wake the dawn
And run the course of day
Till evening falls in crimson rays.
His fingerprints in flakes of snow,
His breath upon this spinning globe,
He charts the eagle’s flight;
Commands the newborn baby’s cry.Chorus:
Hallelujah! Let all creation stand and sing,
“Hallelujah!” Fill the earth with songs of worship;
Tell the wonders of creation’s King.Creation gazed upon His face;
The ageless One in time’s embrace
Unveiled the Father’s plan
Of reconciling God and man.
A second Adam walked the earth,
Whose blameless life would break the curse,
Whose death would set us free
To live with Him eternally.Chorus
Creation longs for His return,
When Christ shall reign upon the earth;
The bitter wars that rage
Are birth pains of a coming age.
When He renews the land and sky,
All heav’n will sing and earth reply
With one resplendent theme: The glories of our God and King!Chorus
Words and music: Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, and Stuart Townend
© 2008 Thankyou Music
Recorded on the album Awaken the Dawn, by Keith and Kristyn Getty
Making an idol of autonomy
I first ran across this video and this song in a post on The Thinklings (which I can’t find now, not remembering the text of the post), and mercifully quickly forgot it. I happened, through a combination of circumstances, to hear it again last week, and now I have it stuck in my head. It’s aggravating, because this song annoys me from about every angle possible. It’s sappy and saccharine, for one thing, lyrically bad and musically sickly. It’s tendentious and presumptuous, in claiming “thus says the Lord” for a disputed theological position (I probably wouldn’t be quite as irritated were some idiot Calvinist to do the same in reverse, but it would be mighty close; that’s just inappropriate no matter who does it). It fails to take human sin seriously, portraying it as something we can simply choose not to do. (To some extent, that could be said to be true of Arminianism more generally, but this sort of naïvete about sin goes beyond Arminianism into the realm of caricature.)
And most significantly, because the author of this thing had the gall to write it as something spoken by God, its sickly-sweet sappiness is more than just an artistic failing, it’s a theological problem. This song abases God, portraying him as a moony lovesick teenager (with all the artistic capabilities and instincts pertaining thereunto), for the sake of feeding our own sense of self-importance. Even if I were an Arminian, this would drive me bats. We must be zealous for the glory and holiness of God; don’t trust anyone who isn’t. A God who is at our beck and call as this song portrays is a God made in our own image, to suit and serve our own desires . . . which is to say, a false god.
Anything that is not the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone can become an idol.
Give me a home among the gum trees
One of my enduring memories of Regent is one Fall Retreat (my first year there, I think), seeing the school’s entire Australian contingent, led by our utterly irrepressible Australian Pentecostal NT professor Dr. Rikki Watts, perform the song “Home Among the Gum Trees”—as a sort of chorus line, no less. I’ve had that rattling around in my brain today for some reason, and decided to post it. It says a lot about Australia and its people that this performance was from the memorial service for Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, who I’m sure would have mightily approved.
The uncomfortable open-mindedness of Penn Jillette
This is another remarkable video by Penn Jillette, who is I think one of the most remarkable figures of our time, musing over an occasion on which he was raked over the coals by Tommy Smothers.
(Update: At some point between October 2009 and October 2015, Penn took that video private. The video below is of the occasion of Smothers’ verbal assault.)
The Anchoress, writing about Penn’s video, had some things to say that bear consideration. I particularly appreciated this:
Unchecked capitalism does have its drawbacks; it often so enthralls the capitalist with the material that he forgets the world around him, and lives an increasingly insular—and insulated—life.
But it is not only the greedy capitalist who can become insulated; the ideologue who will only speak with like-minded people is in the same walled-off compound, where it becomes easy to see label someone whose ideas are different than yours as “evil” and “lesser;” to ignore human commonalities in the quest to not simply disagree, but to destroy the other.
In a way, it’s a little like an extreme Islamist cutting out the tongue of the heretic, in order to silence his dissent. They fear allowing another point of view, because it threatens to unsettle; it might persuade others away from the fold. It is a threat to power, control and illusory “peace.” It does not submit. . . .
We see that behavior, of course, on both sides. My email has as many people telling me that this politician or that is “evil” from the right as people telling me I am evil, from the left. . . .
But what is interesting about these Jillette videos is that he seems determined not to be insulated in his life. He will meet with anyone, talk to anyone—engage in a respectful exchange of ideas. When I was being raised by blue-collar, union-loving Democrats, this is what I was taught was “liberal” behavior: a willingness to hear all sides, be respectful and open-minded.
And that would seem to be precisely the opposite of what Tommy Smothers was advocating to Jillette. For that matter, I cannot help but find an irony, there. Smothers was furious that Jillette would talk to “the enemy,” Glenn Beck, but he (and the left) were furious when President Bush would not talk to Iran. All Jillette is doing, really, is what Obama is now doing with Iran: talking to “the enemy” without preconditions. You’d think Smothers would admire that, after all. Yes, irony.
What we call “liberalism” today is something strikingly illiberal. As I twittered before turning in last night, when did “tolerance” become a demand for ideological purity above all else?
Read the whole post—there’s a lot more there, including a moving meditation on Penn’s naked honesty and introspection; you don’t see many people wrestle with things as openly, or indeed anywhere near as openly, as he does. I don’t agree with his politics, and I don’t agree with his atheism; but however wrong I may think his conclusions about what is true may be, he seems quite clearly to be a seeker after truth, rather than after winning the argument or pleasing a particular group of people or any of the other substitutes we human beings tend to find. Indeed, he seems committed to taking the hard questions head-on rather than ducking them or dismissing them, and to treating those who ask those questions with respect rather than defending himself by attacking them. This is a rare and honorable thing, and worthy of great respect.
Life with cat
One of my Facebook friends posted this first video the other day; it cracked me up, so I went looking for more. Turns out the guy who made it, Simon Tofield, has his own YouTube channel which I had somehow, inexplicably, missed over the last year or so. I’m glad I found it, because this is truly a man who understands the humor of living with a cat.
Obama media strategy: control the message
This is an absolutely fascinating presentation by Anita Dunn, the White House Communications Director, on the media strategy of the Obama campaign—and by extension, the Obama administration. Her analysis is, I think, critically important for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between politics and the media in the current environment, and the approaches that politicians who want to be successful will need to adopt going forward.
From what I’ve seen, most of the blogospheric reaction has followed the tone of this WorldNet Daily piece:
President Obama’s presidential campaign focused on “making” the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was “controlled,” White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference.”Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control,” said Dunn.
Though that presentation is not inaccurate, it’s designed to support the title of the piece:
White House boasts: We ‘control’ news media
and that title is inaccurate, in two ways. In the first place, Dunn nowhere claims to control the media; what she’s actually talking about is manipulating the media to control the message, to set things up in such a way that the story they have to report is the story you want them to report, so that your message gets out the way that you want it to get out. It’s not about controlling the media but using them for your purposes. (This was, of course, made a lot easier for them by the generally lap-doggish attitude of the major media toward Barack Obama.) And in the second place—and this is more important than it sounds—Dunn wasn’t boasting. She was simply reporting: “This is what we did, this is why we did it, and this is why it produced the result we wanted.”
What Dunn is essentially talking about here is the ways in which the development of the Internet has weakened and is eliminating the long-held power of the legacy media to filter reality, to decide what the culture in general will be broadly aware of—and the ways in which, in consequence, politicians can use that development to control their message. Indeed, she’s laying out a blueprint for doing so, and explaining why it was essential to her campaign’s success.
The fact that the Obama campaign understood this intuitively, and thus was able to use that intuitive understanding to do just that to an unprecedented degree, while the McCain campaign was completely clueless is one of the reasons Barack Obama is now sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The fact that Sarah Palin understands this, and in consequence has turned her Facebook page into a potent political weapon, is one of the reasons she is in my judgment the most important and effective political force in the Republican Party at this moment despite the best efforts of the legacy media to filter her right into impotence and irrelevance. Anyone who wants to compete with them in the future on anything approaching a level playing field is going to need to be smart enough and tuned-in enough to do likewise.
That is the real meaning and significance of Dunn’s presentation; rather than mistaking it for hubris on the part of the Obama administration and using it as one more cudgel with which to beat on the President, the Right needs to recognize her analysis of the political-media landscape as correct and her prescription as essential, and learn to go and do likewise. And the media had best do the same, and figure out how to adapt and respond, lest their current posture of lap-doggish servitude be institutionalized and rendered permanent.
(Cross-posted at Conservatives4Palin)
A bit o’ the genius o’ the Celts
to brighten your Sunday evening. My wife set me off looking for a video of a particular piece by the Irish pianist, composer and scholar of world music Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin; I didn’t find that particular one, but I did find a few other videos of him performing, including the one below. That set me off wandering from video to video (since everyone knows YouTube videos are like Lays potato chips—no one can eat just one), and I added a couple others to the post just for fun.
Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin and Mel Mercier (not sure of the tune)
Silly Wizard: Donald McGillavry
Kate Rusby: Sir Eglamore
Is President Obama not funny?
In response to my previous post, cyberfriend Doug Hagler suggested a couple reasons why late-night hosts haven’t done much with Barack Obama up until he was (startlingly) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One, Joe Biden, I agree with; the VP is a walking punch line, giving them plenty of material to work with all by himself. Doug’s right to call him a “comedic sacrificial lamb.” He also has a point in noting that we’re not that far into the Obama administration, though if you look back eight years, I think you’ll find that that didn’t slow the likes of Jay Leno much in going after George W. Bush.His other suggestion, though, I think is off: that the President is “an articulate public figure” who doesn’t give comedians many opportunities to poke fun at him. You know, the guy gives a good speech, but get him off his teleprompter and he’s startlingly mortal—even Bush-like. Here’s a few examples:
Austrian is a language?
Halting the rise of privacy?
When TOTUS fails:
Thinking on his feet:
57 of 59 states, one left to go:
None of this is to imply that the President is stupid, because he isn’t; but were these lines all attributable to George W. Bush, they would have been fed right into the Bush-as-drooling-clown meme, and the jokes would have come cascading down. When Barack Obama says them? Crickets from the big guns of the media. Clearly, something’s uneven here.
Now, I don’t blame this on bias on the part of late-night hosts. I do think they’re biased to some degree—because who isn’t?—but I don’t think bias drives their routines much at all; for those guys, the driver is getting a laugh, and they’ll do anything within reason to get a laugh out of their audience. (And for Letterman—who’s either the most biased of the group, I think, or just the meanest—maybe not just within reason.) They’ve tried telling Obama jokes, and studio audiences haven’t responded. They don’t want to tell jokes that leave the audience cold, and you can’t blame them for that.
Part of this is that the President started off with such an elevated mood, with such elevated expectations, that many people didn’t want to diminish that any by laughing at him; part of it is that over the course of the campaign, Barack Obama became increasingly unable to laugh at himself, and so far he’s been running an administration that really can’t seem to take a joke. That doesn’t encourage public levity. It will be interesting to see if the laughter over the Nobel is an indication that public attitudes—as represented by talk-show studio audiences—are starting to change, or if it’s just a blip. If it’s the former, then the President had best relearn to take a joke, because as JibJab has known all along, he’s plenty vulnerable to satire.