Five Questions, 10 Answers
Five questions the Boston Globe says this election will answer, followed by Howie’s five reasons not to vote for Obama and Marjorie’s five reasons not to vote for McCain at the Boston Herald. Make that 10 questions and 15 answers, because I answered the Globe with five questions of my own. Gray ladies first:
Is the “Reagan Revolution” over?
Is America prepared to move beyond its racial divisions?
Are young people becoming a driving force in American politics?
How much do Americans care about their image in the world?
What does it mean to be a conservative?
I dunno. I’m only getting one question off all that.
When did America stop beating its wife?
“Five Questions” frontpage above-the-fold feature is by Peter Canellos, the Globe Washington Bureau chief whose columns are refreshing in that, unlike the rest of the news section, he makes little pretense of not having a GOP-bashing agenda. ”Five Questions” is illustrated by a picture of a black guy holding a “Hope” sign and looking like he’s about to start bawling. The Globe’s unsubtle message: “Vote Obama, unless you want to see this grown man cry.” Anyway, here are Canellos’ variously heartfelt, handwringing and ponderously headscratching answers. My many years in this business have taught me that the questions ink-stained wretches ask often say a lot more than whatever answers they elicit. Even, make that especially, when they answer the questions themselves. Personally, I think some questions are best answered with other questions.
Is the New Deal in for a major upgrade?
Are Democrats prepared to face up to their rampant racism, sexism, and race- and gender-baiting?
Is the Obama camp and Dem Cong going to re-introduce the draft so Bush can never ever lie and people will never ever die again?
Why do they hate us?
Hang on, I’d like to change that one.
How are the Coca-Cola sales and McDonalds franchises doing?
What’s with these small-town, religion-clinging, gun-toting, other-suspecting redneck bigots, anyway?
OK, Howie’s Five Reason Not to Vote for Obama:
1. He wants to tax working Americans back to the Stone Age. He lies when he says he will cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You know it’s nonsense because they can’t keep their numbers straight from hour to hour. Obama claims everyone making under $250,000 is safe, or is it $200,000 (the infomercial) or $150,000 (Joe Biden)? On Friday, Gov. Bill Richardson cut it to $120,000.
Oh what a tangled web we weave. The fact is, the wealth-spreaders have vowed to do away with the Bush tax cuts. So everybody who pays any income taxes is going to take a hit. Plus, the friends of ACORN also plan to get rid of the cap on Social Security withholding taxes. That means everyone who makes over $102,700 will be slaughtered. I don’t have room to talk about capital gains.
2. The federal courts. In that famous 2001 Chicago radio interview, Obama wistfully talked about the need for the Supreme Court to break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. You know, those pesky constraints that make us a nation of laws, not governed by the whims of the Friends of Obama, or Jeremiah Wright. You think Breyer and Ginsburg are beyond the pale? Obama’s crowd thinks they’re too conservative.
3. Teach the Obama-worshipping bumkisser media a lesson. Have they ever been more in the tank for anyone? They’re all worried about the Patriot Act and terrorists’ rights at Gitmo, but they had no problems printing flat-out lies about Sarah Palin. More recently, they took handouts from Obama thugs in Ohio on Joe the Plumber’s tax liens, divorce problems, child-support payments etc. - worse violations of privacy rights than anything that’s happened under the Patriot Act. But who cares - Joe the Plumber is just a typical white person.
3. The character of Barack Obama. You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much. He lectures you that your kids will have to learn Spanish - your kids, not his. He’s always railing about economic justice, but his illegal-alien aunt lives in poverty in Southie. Hey Barack, I thought charity began at home. Like John Kerry and Joe Biden, he doesn’t believe in donating to charity. Obama is a classic liberal hypocrite: He’ll give anybody the shirt off your back, not his.
4. Michelle Obama. Another pampered semi-literate Ivy Leaguer who still considers herself a victim, even with her $360,000-a-year job as diversity coordinator at a Chicago hospital. Can you stand four years of this harridan lecturing you on your greed?
5. All the other stuff I don’t have much room for. Where the heck was Barack Obama really born? Don’t forget his pal Bill Ayers dedication of his 1974 book “Prairie Fire” to, among others, Sirhan Sirhan. (Are you listening, Teddy and Caroline?) If Obama loses, Gwen Ifill’s book tanks. The return of the Fairness Doctrine to censor free speech. Joe Biden, a heartbeat away. And the No. 1 reason of all to vote against Barack Obama: If he loses it will drive the moonbats absolutely bonkers.
Marjorie’s Five Reason Not to Vote for McCain:
1. Sarah Palin.
She’s a “whack job.” Not my assessment, but that of an unidentified McCain campaign staffer who’s blaming Ms. Meany-dressed-by-Neiman-Marcus for the big guy’s travails.
2. Joe the Plumber.
Afraid he might invade Iran.
3. State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, she of the $23G brassiere. If McCain wins, she’ll keep blaming it all on racism.
Did I mention Sarah Palin?
“Even at McDonald’s, you’re interviewed three times before you get a job,” said former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein in criticizing McCain’s non-vetting of Palin.
Did I mention Joe the Plumber?
His new publicity team says he’s got a book deal, a budding country music career, and is considering his own political run . . . for president. Because he’s just like us and just like Sarah Palin.
Did I mention Sarah Palin?
“Of course not,” said Lawrence Eagleburger, McCain backer and George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state, when asked this week if the Alaska governor could take over as commander in chief. “And I devoutly hope that (she) would never be tested.” Me too.
4. Sarah and Joe might put a fence around Brookline, my adopted hometown, not to mention Cambridge, Jamaica Plain, maybe even all of Massachusetts. We’re not “pro-America” enough, Sarah has told us, which I guess makes us anti-America, even though we are Americans.
I’ve never been able to figure that one out: why an American would be anti-American. I mean, what’s the advantage? But nonetheless, that’s what Sarah thinks. “The best” Americans are Americans not around here but in small towns, those “wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, (those) hard-working very patriotic pro-America areas of this great nation,” she says, “where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans.”
My fellow Bay Staters? Let’s face it, she thinks we’re nasty, gutless wimps.
5. And the last of my top reasons to vote against John McCain:
If McCain wins, I go to bed Tuesday night both depressed - four more years! - and anxious that the “whack job” may yet wind up running the world. What then?
If Obama wins, I go to bed just anxious: I hope he knows what he’s doing. But here’s what I do know: that he’s appealed throughout this campaign to something better and higher in all of us. That he’s not about dividing this nation into red and blue, black and white, good America and bad America, “real patriots” and fake patriots or whatever gibberish the McCain campaign spews on any given day.
I’ve been lucky enough to interview John McCain several times in my life. He used to be about appealing to what’s best and noblest and proudest in America, too. But not anymore.
It’s a two-newspaper town, Allah be praised. But what’s with the rightwing conservative Murdoch-progeny tabloid and all the evenhandedness?
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:03 am on Sunday, November 2, 2008
6 Responses to “Five Questions, 10 Answers”
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November 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hm. Howie makes some salient points. Sorry, but Marjorie is just a Palin-deranged idiot.
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Howie gave six; there are two number threes. Woo hoo!
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
“Marjorie’s Five Reason Not to Vote for McCain:”
Exactly the sort of mindless fluff one expects to hear from followers of the new messiah.
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Re two number threes … who says the Herald isn’t a bargain. Blueblood tightwads at the Globe only deliver five five questions. I gave six back, seven with the rephrase. Howie, five plus an extra No.3. Those cheap bastards …
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I imagine if Palin were a Democrat and running on the ticket with Obama, Marjorie would be all agush over her. She’s the second worst columnist at the Herald. Any chance you guys could arrange for her to be traded to the Globe along with a Gelzinis to be named later, for Jeff Jabcoby?
Really.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:13 am
Jules, I love the Herald for that very reason!