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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; oprah</title>
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		<title>Our Oppressed Oppressors</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/our-oppressed-oppressors/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=our-oppressed-oppressors</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/our-oppressed-oppressors/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 May 2014 04:40:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dictator]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[minority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oppressed]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oprah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victim]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225534</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some countries have dictators. America has victims.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/obamainfrastructure295.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-225535 alignleft" alt="obamainfrastructure295" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/obamainfrastructure295.jpg" width="295" height="200" /></a>Some countries have dictators, tyrants and kings. America has victims in high office. Victims with vast powers and great wealth who despite all that are oppressed by the peop</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">le they rule.</span></p>
<p>They are the oppressed oppressors.</p>
<p>Never has a ruling class been as oppressed as ours by an ignorant rabble that rudely abuses the army of benevolent public servants who see to their welfare in exchange for nothing except a feeling of moral satisfaction and a six-figure salary. Not to mention unlimited power.</p>
<p>&#8220;They talk about me like a dog,&#8221; Obama complained. &#8220;Is it a lack of respect for me?&#8221; he whined to the Secretary of Defense.</p>
<p>When Obama isn&#8217;t complaining, the media outlets of the ruling class do it for him.</p>
<p>The media has worked its iPads off alerting us to the perpetual victimization of the Obamas. From <i>NBC</i> to <i>NPR</i>, from <i>CNN</i> to <i>CBS</i>, from the <i>New York Times</i> to the <i>Washington Post</i>, the billion dollar corporations have spoken in one voice and they have said that criticizing the most powerful man in the world is racist. And they have told us that our ingratitude depresses him.</p>
<p>&#8220;The world seems to disappoint him,&#8221; David Remnick said. Remnick deftly balances the responsibilities of promoting Obama as editor of the <i>New Yorker</i> (Advance Publications &#8211; $6.56 billion) and promoting Obama as author of &#8220;<i>The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama</i>” (Bertelsmann &#8211; $22 billion).</p>
<p>Michelle Obama described the White House as a &#8220;nice prison&#8221; and compared her plight to that of a military wife. And who can blame her? One day the Obamas are just barely making do with a 1,701 person staff and then the sequester, that Obama proposed, kicks in and their staff is cut to a miserly 436.</p>
<p>The 16 assistants who help Michelle Obama perform her important duties of giving speeches and booking NBC sitcom appearances were cut so drastically that she was unable to even Tweet. Of the 90 people who clean up the family quarters of the power couple, only 15 remained.</p>
<p>And that went on for days.</p>
<p>Oprah Winfrey ($2.9 billion) said that Obama was the victim of racism. As proof she pointed to Congressman Joe Wilson calling Obama a liar&#8230; while Obama was lying. The interview was part of her promotional tour for The Butler ($176 million) which was also based on a series of lies.</p>
<p>It would take a racist to point out that the most powerful man in the world and one of the wealthiest women in the country were lying. Our oppressed ruling class deserves better than to have its political lies questioned and we should check our privilege for even considering it.</p>
<p>Oprah Winfrey went on to suggest that the only solution to racism was for &#8220;generations of people, older people&#8221; to just &#8220;die.&#8221; Sterling, who has a billion less than her, lost his team for much less than proposing age-based racial genocide. But Oprah, who says worse things in public interviews than Sterling said in private, has proposed buying his team.</p>
<p>Wealth redistribution isn’t for the poor. It&#8217;s for the poor billionaire member of the ruling class who coincidentally experiences a racist incident involving a European luxury goods store whenever she has a new movie to promote.</p>
<p>Our ruling class is being oppressed by those lower down on the ladder. Their pain emerges as heartfelt pleas for genocide and outrage over being held accountable for abusing their power.</p>
<p>Attorney General Eric Holder, who had gotten away with shipping guns to drug lords in Mexico, propping up racist voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party, getting involved in presidential pardons for cash, targeting reporters and making up his own laws, demanded of the audience at Al Sharpton&#8217;s political conference, &#8220;What Attorney General has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What President has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?&#8221;</p>
<p>Who can fail to sympathize with the most powerful men in the country demanding to know when anyone had ever been as oppressed as them by an occasional request for accountability?</p>
<p>The oppression of our ruling class knows no limits. After berating Holder for, again, refusing to provide documents linking Muslim groups close to his boss to Islamic terrorists, Congress (salary $174,000) dragged in Lois Lerner (salary $185,000), the IRS official in charge of suppressing populist threats to the victimized ruling class, and held her in contempt.</p>
<p>Fortunately the ruling class had made it all but impossible to fire or prosecute Lerner.</p>
<p>The oppression marches on with the investigation of Benghazi. Before the Obamas were oppressed by the privilege of being the most powerful people in the world, the Clintons were stuck in that same plight.</p>
<p>Twice.</p>
<p>Now Hillary Clinton is being persecuted for nothing more than championing a disastrous war in Libya that led to the rise of Al Qaeda and the murder of an ambassador due to a lack of basic security while her underlings were spending millions on art and mansion renovations.</p>
<p>After lying, blaming a video, and locking up the filmmaker, she courageously demanded to know, &#8220;What difference at this point does it make?&#8221;</p>
<p>Our oppressed ruling class must still deal with whining from the families of those they kill or lock up for inappropriate speech. If America were more like China, a wish that Obama expressed a few years ago, he wouldn&#8217;t have to put up with it.</p>
<p>Neither would Hillary.</p>
<p>Our victimized ruling class and their living Constitution, which is slowly evolving to outlaw free speech and mandate universal diets, isn&#8217;t ready to reform this broken system which allows the rabble to upload YouTube videos that offend Muslims and demand investigations of public officials. It&#8217;ll take another decade of outraged social media mobs, of the ruling class and funded by the ruling class, blowing up random politically incorrect comments into a national crisis to set the stage for liberating our ruling class from being oppressed by free speech.</p>
<p>Meanwhile mustachioed strategist David Axelrod accused Republicans of using Benghazi to bully Hillary Clinton out of being crowned as the most powerful person in the world.</p>
<p>How does one bully the wife of the formerly most powerful man in the world ($55 million) who has, despite the lack of a single tangible accomplishment, already been declared the inevitable nominee and winner of the next presidential election by <i>Time</i> and the<i> New York Times</i>?</p>
<p><i>Time</i>&#8216;s cover, which showed a tiny candidate clinging to the heel of a gigantic Hillary, and the<i> New York Times </i>cover, which depicted Hillary as an entire planet, might be considered bullying other candidates out of the race. But if Hillary bullies, it&#8217;s because she&#8217;s a victim. If the rabble criticizes her, then she&#8217;s twice the victim that she was before and entitled to bully twice as much.</p>
<p>The same goes for Obama and the rest of our victimized ruling class.</p>
<p>Some might call it the cynical abuse of power by a corrupt ruling class, but it&#8217;s just a case of the victims resisting the democratic oppression of the majority with its tendency to vote against the aggressive taxation and sexual peccadilloes that the ruling class feels that it is entitled to.</p>
<p>One day our oppressed ruling class will tire of our oppression and casting off its shackles will rise up against us. It will liberate itself of the last of our laws and enslave us so that our eternally oppressed oppressors may finally be free to do to us whatever they will.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<item>
		<title>Oprah, Kanye West and the Psychology of Hate</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/marlin-newburn/oprah-kanye-west-and-the-psychology-of-hate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=oprah-kanye-west-and-the-psychology-of-hate</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/marlin-newburn/oprah-kanye-west-and-the-psychology-of-hate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Dec 2013 05:05:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Marlin Newburn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[die]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kanye West]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oprah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Whites]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212396</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Two race-obsessed celebrities work through their "issues" on the public stage. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/kanye-oprah.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212410" alt="kanye-oprah" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/kanye-oprah.jpg" width="205" height="182" /></a>Oprah, the self-anointed Queen of Everything Black, is back. This time we get a two-fer: She not only displays her personal pathologies, she also re-establishes her toxic-tribal bona fides among black people.</p>
<p>It’s a wicked mix: Damaging to herself and others.</p>
<p>During a recent BBC interview, Oprah pronounced that anyone who did not like President Obama was a racist. She also said “old” whites will have to die to end racism. To cap this pre-adolescent interview-rant, she adds that blacks are abused and disrespected the world over.</p>
<p>If these comments were just Oprah working through her “issues” again in a public place, then her remarks could be written off as typical comments from a racist. But Oprah is more than that, of course.</p>
<p>Oprah’s world view has no place for the decades of legal discrimination against non-blacks &#8212; affirmative action – that has victimized millions of people who have been passed over for promotions, or not even hired due to legal preferences for women and non-white minorities.</p>
<p>For decades black people have been given cuts-in-line in hiring and school admissions over non-black candidates who were more qualified.</p>
<p>We can discuss whether this is good or bad. Not whether it is true or false.</p>
<p>Oprah&#8217;s comments are just the latest in a long line of similar remarks from other celebrities that cultivate racial resentment: Racism is everywhere. Racism is permanent. You don’t have a chance if you are black. That is the mantra.</p>
<p>Then rap mogul Kanye West joined in, saying President Obama did not have the Jewish connections to become a successful president. The fantasies of persecution come from all quarters of the black chronic grievance industry, it seems.</p>
<p>This kind of institutional resentment represents the most profoundly powerful, false, and damaging ideas in the country today. Resentment is the most destructive emotion anyone can harbor. In my practice as a prison and private practice clinical psychologist, I have seen up close and personal the damage it does, and it is one of the top reasons people come for therapy.</p>
<p>Resentment stalls growth in anyone who is in bondage to it. Most people who sustain resentments reject personal responsibility for most all of their life choices and decisions. They believe they are given a pass on that pro-social, adult obligation.</p>
<p>Oprah did a great job in spreading – and reflecting – this resentment.</p>
<p>What can be the possible cause for someone with Oprah’s success to do such a thing? In a label: Toxic Shame.  People who have suffered traumatic assaults as she did as a child – as we learn in her incessant autobiographies &#8212; being raped when she was age 9, among other gross psychological insults she endured, develop a sense of toxic shame that can dominate subconscious thinking for a lifetime.</p>
<p>At that early age, they absorb a pathological guilt for what happened to them, as if it was their fault. To a shamed person, their life is a mistake, regardless of the level of success, and they’re both fearful and angry about it.</p>
<p>Shamed people often develop eating disorders, most become very narcissistic, their religious preference is most often the narcissist-friendly “New Age” type, and they are prone to tantrums or rages.</p>
<p>They have a horrible time trying to establish a close and intimate personal relationship, and if they do, they become controlling, quarrelsome, and often, combative. In short, they don’t fall in love; they fall in sick. They’ll do most anything to keep from getting too close to someone, including sabotaging any positive bonding in the relationship. Many choose potential partners that are all but impossible to get close to. Others eventually choose to never get close to anyone – ever again.</p>
<p>When they explain what is tormenting them, real or imagined, at a particular moment they turn to pre-adolescent, “black and white” reasoning, the type that psychologists call, “splitting.” There are no exceptions in the minds of splitters, just like pre-adolescents. To them there are only absolutes. This compels them to often make blanket indictments against others even if there is no basis in fact.</p>
<p>The psychological defense of projection is also a common trait among the shamed population where someone blames others for what the blamer is guilty of.  Oprah demonstrates this by saying blacks are abused the world over.</p>
<p>In Oprah’s world view, there is no room for personal responsibility for any of the pathologies that dominate black life in America today. Whether we are talking about crime, poverty, drug addiction, alcoholism, illegitimacy, HIV, irresponsible birthing, education, income; all these differences between blacks and non-blacks have one reason: White racism.</p>
<p>Then there are the America-wide assaults of blacks against non-blacks, especially against the most vulnerable non-black people such as the elderly and women. Someone should send her a copy of Colin Flaherty’s book, White Girl Bleed a Lot.</p>
<p>Her last psychological defense was her pronouncement that “old” whites must die to end racism. That’s called displacement, and with that primal declaration, she again regressed to pre-adolescence. The sadistic predator that brutalized her when she was a child just may be the real candidate for her wish of death on another. As a psychologist, I’d make serious book on it.</p>
<p>Oprah’s therapist or counselor, if she has one, might consider having her call when she feels the need to lash out at her pathology-based and distorted beliefs about non-blacks. Overall, she would do well for herself by canceling any future interviews regarding race and who should live and who should die.</p>
<p>This is not a prescription for public policy and debate. This is a prescription for serious and intensive therapy for someone who is in a lot more personal trouble that she sees so easily in others.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<item>
		<title>Thirteen Ways of Looking at Race in America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-race-in-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-race-in-america</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-race-in-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2013 05:43:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[african americans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oprah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sharpton]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=211477</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some random observations.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/winfrey.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-211527" alt="LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER Los Angeles Premiere, Hosted By TWC, Budweiser And FIJI Water, Purity Vodka And Stack Wines - Red Carpet" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/winfrey-327x350.jpg" width="327" height="350" /></a>1. In the year 2013, <a href="http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/goo2013/11/dont-oppress-me-with-your-commas.html">here&#8217;s</a> what goes by the name of racism in the United States. Earlier this month, at UCLA, Professor Emeritus Val Rust was subjected to a classroom sit-in by black graduate students who charged that his correction of their grammar and spelling mistakes on dissertation proposals was a case of racially motivated “micro-aggression.” Rust made it clear that he wasn&#8217;t motivated by racism but by a belief that correcting such errors was part of his job. But what did that matter, alongside his students&#8217; feelings?</p>
<p>2. These accusations came a few months after Oprah Winfrey&#8217;s revelation, in an <em>Entertainment Tonight</em> interview, of her own recent brush with the evils of racism. When she entered a luxury boutique in Zürich and asked to look at a $38,000 handbag that was hanging on the wall, the clerk offered to show her a cheaper version. The Swiss media eventually tracked down the clerk, whose own side of the story made a convincing case that race had had nothing to do with it. But what did that matter, alongside Oprah&#8217;s feelings?</p>
<p data-tabpoints="[{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;point&quot;:&quot;5.925694444444444in&quot;,&quot;leader&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;align&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}]">3. More recently, Oprah claimed that President Obama has been treated with “disrespect” in “many cases because he&#8217;s African American.” She added that “it&#8217;s the kind of thing no one ever says, but everybody&#8217;s thinking it.” The truth, of course, is pretty much the exact opposite: ever since his appearance on the national scene, Obama has enjoyed an extraordinary level of unearned respect in many quarters <em>precisely</em> “because he&#8217;s African American,” and has also benefited enormously from the fact that (until recently, anyway) anyone who has dared to make any criticism of him, however well-founded, has done so knowing that a large segment of the U.S. commentariat will immediately call the critic a racist.</p>
<p data-tabpoints="[{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;point&quot;:&quot;5.925694444444444in&quot;,&quot;leader&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;align&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}]">4. For a long time, Oprah was a classic example of a “bargainer” – Shelby Steele&#8217;s <a title="" href="/news/articles/SB120579535818243439" target="_blank">term</a> for black Americans who “make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America&#8217;s history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer&#8217;s race against him,” and who are consequently given an opportunity to succeed on their merits. (Think Louis Armstrong or Bill Cosby.) Now Oprah (who also said the other day that America would not move beyond racism until a generation of elderly white people died off) sounds more like a “challenger” – a black American, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who tries to get ahead by manipulating white guilt.</p>
<p data-tabpoints="[{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;point&quot;:&quot;5.925694444444444in&quot;,&quot;leader&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;align&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}]">5. During his first campaign, and throughout most of his presidency, Obama himself seemed to many to be a “bargainer” (otherwise he&#8217;d never have won in the first place), but his intrusive, inappropiate remarks about the Trayvon Martin case, which chimed in perfectly with those made by Sharpton, Jackson, and company, were very much those of a “challenger.” Like Oprah, he turned the truth about the race situation in America today upside-down: to listen to him on Trayvon Martin, you&#8217;d think that America was awash in white-on-black street crime.</p>
<p>6. Which brings us to the “knockout game.” While graduate students at UCLA were whining that their prof&#8217;s spelling corrections were racially motivated micro-aggressions, black youth gangs around the U.S. were committing what I suppose may be described as racially motivated macro-aggressions: unprovoked street attacks on non-blacks, the goal of which is to render the victim unconscious with a single violent blow. The mainstream media dutifully, indeed eagerly, <a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/09/oprah-winfrey-and-the-handbag-she-couldnt-have/">reported</a> Oprah&#8217;s handbag story, and her charge that Obama is a victim of racism; but many of them (as David Paulin <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-paulin/media-blackout-of-the-knockout-game/">pointed out</a> here the other day) have delicately ignored the “knockout game,” or at least ignored its racial element. When the <i>New York Times </i>finally decided to pay attention to it, the result was a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/nyregion/knockout-game-a-spreading-menace-or-a-myth.html">piece</a>, published last Friday, which sought to raise doubts as to whether the “knockout game” is a real phenomenon or a new “urban myth.”</p>
<p data-tabpoints="[{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;point&quot;:&quot;5.925694444444444in&quot;,&quot;leader&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;align&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}]">7. For years, Bill Cosby has been giving no-nonsense talks in black communities about the importance of self-respect and self-improvement. The popularity of his talks suggests that, unlike some of our leading many journalists, professors, and entertainers, many ordinary American blacks aren&#8217;t interested in playing the racism game, but, rather, prefer frank talk about the lethal social pathologies that threaten all of us – and that have been permitted to thrive by people who are scared to speak their minds for fear of being branded racists.</p>
<p>8. America, then, needs frank talk on race. So what did the <i>New York Times </i>run last Wednesday? Why, an entire <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/20/racism-in-the-age-of-obama?hp&amp;rref=opinion">feature</a>, headlined “Racism in the Age of Obama,” in which several lawyers and professors provided answers to the query: “Are white Americans more racist than they were when Obama was elected?” To be sure, what the <i>Times </i>actually asked was this: “Have racial tensions in the U.S. changed since Obama was elected? For better or for worse?” But when the <i>Times </i>speaks of “racial tensions,” everybody knows the real topic is white racism. And so what we got was yet begun useless round of PC hogwash. The cheeriest replies were by a poli sci prof who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/20/racism-in-the-age-of-obama/obamas-election-itself-shows-progress">said</a> that “racial tensions have changed modestly since Obama&#8217;s election, mostly for the better,” and a communications prof who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/20/racism-in-the-age-of-obama/election-coverage-tempered-racism">said</a> white racism “declined during the 2008 and 2012 campaigns.” Another communications prof <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/20/racism-in-the-age-of-obama/definitely-not-less-racial-prejudice-since-obamas-election">argued</a> that Obama&#8217;s election hadn&#8217;t affected America&#8217;s “racial tensions,” while a guy from the Southern Poverty Law Center <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/20/racism-in-the-age-of-obama/race-relations-under-obama-are-a-backlash">asserted</a> that the election had begun “a period of backlash,” making race relations “worse than&#8230;five years ago.” A civil-rights lawyer went even further, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/20/racism-in-the-age-of-obama/bias-seems-rampant-since-obamas-election">maintaining</a> that “racial tensions&#8230;are more prevalent than ever.” (Yes, “ever.”) And a law prof <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/20/racism-in-the-age-of-obama/obama-has-become-a-code-word-for-racists">claimed</a> that whites now use the statement “I voted for Obama” as “a free pass to discriminate.”</p>
<p>9. Finally, there was another law prof, Paul Butler, who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/20/racism-in-the-age-of-obama/the-optics-have-changed-white-supremacy-remains">pronounced</a> that “[t]he problem isn’t &#8216;race relations&#8217;; it is white supremacy – the ideology that white people are superior to people of color, and that whiteness is integral to the United States’s identity.” Butler, who is the author of a 2009 book entitled <em>Let&#8217;s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice</em>, recalled that on the morning after Election Day 2004, a black barista at his favorite coffee shop snapped at a black beggar: “Barack Obama is president. Get a job!” I kind of liked that. But Butler didn&#8217;t. For him, apparently, every black person who isn&#8217;t doing well is, quite simply, a victim of racial injustice – period, case closed. Obama&#8217;s big offense, Butler insisted, is that he hasn&#8217;t done more mau-mauing of the sort he engaged in during the Trayvon Martin case.</p>
<p>10. In short, the <em>Times</em> feature had nothing insightful to offer about race in America in 2013. But then, the point of such a journalistic exercise isn&#8217;t to provide insight. It&#8217;s a gesture, a genuflection toward the altar of political correctness, a way of reminding everybody that the people at the <em>Times</em> may be a lot of things, but, hey, they&#8217;re <em>not racists</em>. Still, to see such a tired, predictable feature in the <em>Times</em> at this late date <em>is</em> faintly embarrassing – a sign of just how out of touch the Gray Lady is with a society in which, I think, more and more people of every skin color are tired of hearing the word <em>racism</em> thrown around in this pointless way. Once upon a time it meant something, and packed a punch; but it&#8217;s been used so often to silence legitimate truth-telling, and employed so frequently as a wallet-opening tool by shakedown artists like Jackson and Sharpton, that it&#8217;s lost all meaning.</p>
<p>11. Why not a <em>Times</em> series about this very subject – about, that is, the way in which the concept of racism has been systematically abused, exploited, degraded? Or how about a <em>Times</em> series asking this question: has Obama&#8217;s success inspired more young black people to work hard and aim high? If not, why not? If you&#8217;re a black American and show the slightest interest in getting ahead academically and professionally, there are innumerable programs and agencies and so forth that will be eager to help you out. Why aren&#8217;t more young people taking advantage of this? And why are so many of those who <em>are</em> taking advantage of it so ready to level accusations of racism at the very people who are trying to help prepare them for life? Why not a <em>Times</em> series about all this? But no, the <em>New York Times</em>, it seems, cannot bear that much reality. Better to round up a half-dozen or so reliable lawyers and professors and get them to tread the same old safe ideological territory for the millionth time – echoing the same old tired rhetoric about white racism – than to admit that the academy&#8217;s defining down of racism to the microscopic level has radically magnified the difficulty of honestly addressing the toxic elements of today&#8217;s black subculture.</p>
<p>12. If millions of white Americans voted for Obama for president despite his meager record, and re-elected him despite his lousy first-term performance, I suspect it was at least partly because they hoped his presence in the White House might somehow help get us past all this nonsense. Instead the nonsense just got ramped up higher. Oprah, one of the richest and most beloved women on the planet, used to seem the very personification of Martin Luther King&#8217;s dream of a colorblind America; when even she can&#8217;t resist the temptation to cast herself as a victim of racism, with some anonymous store clerk playing the part of Simon Legree, it suggests that even the wildest success is not enough for her – that even she, in the end, covets the <em>frisson</em> of victimhood; that even she is vulnerable to that foul contagion.</p>
<p data-tabpoints="[{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;point&quot;:&quot;2.84375in&quot;,&quot;leader&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;align&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}]">13. It wasn&#8217;t that long ago that black America was defined by hard-working, self-respecting people who justly prided themselves on having overcome virulent racism to attain, with much effort, a modest degree of affluence and self-sufficiency – and who, despite ample justification, refused to feel sorry for themselves. Today, in a world turned upside down, some of those people&#8217;s grandchildren, although having reached levels of success that their forebears could never have imagined, are perversely eager to grasp at even the most minuscule micro-opportunity to claim the label of victim. How sad, how absurd – and how tragic for all of us.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Oprah: Racism Will End When All the Old White People Die</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/oprah-racism-will-end-when-all-the-old-white-people-die/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=oprah-racism-will-end-when-all-the-old-white-people-die</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/oprah-racism-will-end-when-all-the-old-white-people-die/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Nov 2013 01:16:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oprah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oprah Winfrey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210929</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“There are still generations of people, older people and they just have to die!"]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>And if you don&#8217;t think that old white people should die&#8230; <a href="http://moonbattery.com/?p=39332">then you&#8217;re a racist</a>. Because what could be more racist than planning a post-racial utopia that depends on people of a certain race dying.</p>
<p><iframe width="540" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/wK8Eb4oV1CI?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<blockquote><p>Quoting Oprah from the video below (starting at 3:14):</p>
<p>“There are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it — in that prejudice and racism — and they just have to die!”</p></blockquote>
<p>I like the emphasis with which she says it, as if she expects a whole bunch of people to jump into action and carry out her wishes, just like they do every day at Harpo Productions.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not even a wish, it&#8217;s an order.</p>
<p>Also there&#8217;s the whole business about people only hating Obama because he&#8217;s black and not because of anything he did during his time in office.</p>
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		<title>Oprah: Just Because You’re Not Racist Doesn’t Mean You’re Not a Racist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/oprah-just-because-youre-not-racist-doesnt-mean-youre-not-a-racist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=oprah-just-because-youre-not-racist-doesnt-mean-youre-not-a-racist</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/oprah-just-because-youre-not-racist-doesnt-mean-youre-not-a-racist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:25:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oprah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the butler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[White]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=201350</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left's emotional blackmail.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/oprah-butler-premiere.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-201397 alignleft" alt="oprah-butler-premiere" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/oprah-butler-premiere-414x350.jpg" width="248" height="210" /></a>Oprah Winfrey is a cultural mover and shaker. That much is clear after her historically inaccurate film <i>The Butler</i>, which portrays Ronald Reagan as a doddering racist and ignores the legacy of bigotry of Southern Democrats, finished first last week at the box office. Seventy-two percent of those who went to see the film cited Oprah’s participation as a factor in favor of their buying a ticket. Sadly, Oprah has used that power to push a false racial narrative directly at odds with the racial narrative pushed by <i>The Butler</i>.</p>
<p>First, <i>The Butler</i>’s racial narrative. The movie, as Oprah has said, begins with a lynching in 1926 and ends with President Barack Obama in the White House. The notion is that Obama marks the culmination of a centuries-long movement toward equality for blacks in America, a popular perspective that largely explains Obama’s election in 2008.</p>
<p>Then there’s Oprah’s <i>actual</i> racial narrative. In her view, President Obama remains an exception to a broader racist rule. Trayvon Martin, Oprah says, is just today’s Emmitt Till, murdered in 1955 by the Ku Klux Klan. So what if racism in America is at an all-time low? So what if the vast majority of Americans are not only not racist, but actively anti-racist? That’s not enough for Oprah. “A lot of people think if they think they’re not using the n-word themselves, they physically aren’t using the n-word themselves, and do not harbor ill will towards black people that it’s not racist,” she said in a comment that is as challenged syntactically as it is intellectually.</p>
<p>This is paranoia of the highest sort. And it is absolutely crippling to America’s future. If a huge number of Americans believe that racism that is not present in action nonetheless lurks beneath the surface of our life, waiting to burst forth in a conflagration of hate such as that which allegedly claimed Trayvon, there can be no shared future.</p>
<p>But many on the left, including Oprah, apparently don’t want a shared future. They want emotional blackmail. The corollary to the belief that racism hides in the nooks and crannies of the white personality is the belief that the only way to expunge such racism by embracing the philosophy of people like Oprah. If you see <i>The Butler</i>, you’re buying a racial indulgence; if you vote Obama, you’re buying a racial indulgence. Lee Daniels, director of <i>The Butler</i>, told CBS News that white extras cried during the filming of the movie. Presumably, in his view, that meant they were not racist. But what about all the Americans who will never shed tears over <i>The Butler</i>? How will they demonstrate their non-racism, even if there has never been a shred of evidence that they are in fact racist?</p>
<p>That seems to be the perspective not just of many black Americans like Oprah and Daniels, but the perspective of many in various minority communities. For example, in California, Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a law declaring that transgender children must be allowed to enter bathrooms of their choice and join sports teams of their choice. The idea here is that this will minimize bullying, as though most Americans bear children with gender identity issues some sort of ill will. The truth is far simpler: Americans have a right to worry that their children will feel uncomfortable in a bathroom next to someone of the opposite sex, no matter what that person believes him or herself to be. That’s not wrong. That’s normal. But the onus has now been placed on children without gender identity issues to explain <i>why</i> they feel uncomfortable at the urinal next to a girl, even if they’ve never bullied a transgender child.</p>
<p>That’s nasty. More than that, it’s an attempt to shape values by implying that everyone is in need of having their fundamental racism, sexism, homophobia overcome by government action.  Americans have nothing left to discuss. America is now a country where whites are often perceived as racist until proven innocent. And the only way to prove yourself innocent is to perform acts approved by the leftist establishment.</p>
<p>None of this helps black Americans. All it does is perpetuate power for those who divide us in pursuit of political gain. Hillary Clinton, who has begun touring the country invoking the supposed racism of voter ID supporters, is merely the latest race hustler to attempt this pernicious trick. Unfortunately, it seems to work. And that means that Oprah’s racial narrative is far more influential than <i>The Butler</i>’s.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Oprah and Five Racial Double Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/oprah-and-five-racial-double-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=oprah-and-five-racial-double-standards</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/oprah-and-five-racial-double-standards/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Aug 2013 04:38:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Kerwick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assault]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eric Holder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oprah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[white youth]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200658</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Toward that “honest” discussion of race that Eric Holder says he wants.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ow.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-200682" alt="ow" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ow-450x271.jpg" width="315" height="190" /></a>In Florida, a 13-year-old white boy is savagely beaten on a school bus by three black thugs. Yet the incident gains not a fraction of the attention paid by the press of the whole Western world to Oprah Winfrey’s claims to have fallen prey to “racism” while perusing a fancy boutique in Switzerland.</p>
<p>The racial double standards accentuated by the juxtaposition of these two events couldn’t be more glaring.</p>
<p>Winfrey is a billionaire, one of the wealthiest, most famous, and, to the extent that she’s done more than rub elbows with the biggest names in Hollywood and American politics, one of the most influential human beings on the planet. If anyone qualifies as “privileged,” to use the left’s lingo, it is Winfrey.</p>
<p>The Florida boy who was beaten senseless, like the shop clerk whom Winfrey accused of “racism,” is an obscure figure of modest means. Again, parroting the left, he is among the “powerless” or “voiceless.”</p>
<p>The racially-oriented cruelty to which Winfrey has allegedly been subjected consists in her having been denied the opportunity to inspect a nearly $40,000 pocketbook.</p>
<p>The cruelty to which the 13-year-old from Florida was subjected was a vicious beating by three black cowards.</p>
<p>Within the last couple of days, Winfrey’s “victimizer” has staunchly rejected her accusation.  Immediately thereafter, Winfrey began backpedaling, going even so far as to apologize for all of the attention that this incident has received.</p>
<p>Winfrey, you see, was less than fully truthful, if she wasn’t outright dishonest, about her treatment at the proverbial hands of the white shop clerk in Switzerland.</p>
<p>The 13-year-old, however, <i>really </i>did suffer at the literal hands of his assailants: he was beaten mercilessly and then <i>robbed. </i>The incident was caught on video and his tormentors have confessed to the charges against them.</p>
<p>Still, Winfrey’s non-incident throws the world off of its axis while the plight of this poor 13-year-old is neglected. The media rushes to elicit sympathy—and <i>guilt—</i>for another alleged black victim, even if she happens to be among the most fortunate human beings to have ever lived, and even if the “indignity” to which she was supposedly subjected is not exactly the stuff of which the annals of human suffering are filled.  At the same time, the media rushes just as quickly to suppress the deeds of black victimizers—even when they engage in acts of sheer barbarity.</p>
<p>Moving beyond these two events, there seems to be no end to the racial double standards.</p>
<p>First, loudly and proudly, we’re all supposed to decry racial discrimination when the discriminators are white and those discriminated against are black. To do otherwise is to betray one’s “racism.” However, unless one loudly and proudly <i>endorses </i>so-called “affirmative action”—racial discrimination <i>in favor of </i>blacks—one is “racist.”</p>
<p>So, the “racist” is he who seeks to place blacks at a disadvantage with respect to whites. No less of a “racist” is the person who refuses to give blacks an <i>advantage</i> over whites.</p>
<p>Second, it is “racist” for a white person to render judgments about “black America” on the bases of the actions of individual blacks.  This explains why, say, “racial profiling” is held by the professional “anti-racists” to be morally obscene.</p>
<p>Yet it is <i>not</i> “racist” for blacks (and whites) to complain endlessly about the transgressions of “<i>white </i>America.”  Very few white Americans—including Southerners—owned slaves or had anything but contempt for those whites, like the men who beat and murdered poor Emmet Till, who aspired to treat blacks cruelly. Moreover, if not for the gallant efforts of legions of white Americans, the injustices of the past would be the injustices of the present.</p>
<p>And yet whites are judged collectively while blacks are freed of such an oppressive restraint.</p>
<p>Third, when whites flee those areas that lower and underclass blacks begin to inhabit, it is called “white flight” and chalked up to “racism.”  But when <i>blacks </i>do the same, it is called “movin’ on up” and applauded.  Though as John Perazzo noted in <i>The Myths that Divide Us, </i>at least as many blacks fled the chronic dysfunction of the black underclass in the 1980s and beyond as did whites in preceding decades.</p>
<p>Fourth, for the scandalous rate of criminality and violence among blacks, young black men in particular, an explanation in “root causes” is always sought out. Yet “root causes” are never, ever invoked when it comes to accounting for “white racism.”  It is understandable, even justifiable, that blacks should harbor a violent, even murderous, rage toward whites for centuries of oppression.  But that whites may be wary of blacks is chalked up as the species of some raw, uncaused prejudice.</p>
<p>Finally, blacks commit a vastly larger share of interracial crime than that perpetrated by whites.  Relatively rarely are they charged with “hate” crimes. For example, five black guttersnipes in Knoxville, Tennessee carjack, abduct, rape, torture, and murder a young white couple, but because some of the assailants had white girlfriends and because, as far as could be determined, none of them had used any racial epithets in connection with their victims, race is deemed not to have played any role whatsoever in this outrage.</p>
<p>Every effort is made to discern <i>the intentions </i>of black perpetrators.</p>
<p>Such is not the case when it comes to whites.</p>
<p>According to the doctrine of “institutional racism,” white <i>society</i> is incorrigibly “racist”—even if white <i>individuals </i>have <i>the best of intentions. </i>More exactly, even if whites are <i>consciously </i>well meaning toward blacks, <i>subconsciously </i>they entertain the most degrading of stereotypes concerning them.</p>
<p>There are more racial double standards that could be listed. Space precludes it here.  Still, these five are plenty enough to get going that “honest” discussion of race that Eric Holder says he wants.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Oprah&#8217;s Witch-Hunt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/oprahs-witch-hunt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=oprahs-witch-hunt</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/oprahs-witch-hunt/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Aug 2013 04:15:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Butler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oprah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Switzerland]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200653</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With baseless racism accusations, Winfrey attempts to destroy a powerless shopgirl. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/20110403-oprah-winfrey-intention-600x411.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-200654" alt="20110403-oprah-winfrey-intention-600x411" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/20110403-oprah-winfrey-intention-600x411-450x338.jpg" width="270" height="203" /></a>Oprah Winfrey, who exploited her position as a billionaire, media mogul to attack a “racist” sales clerk at a Swiss boutique, began <a href="http://wonderwall.msn.com/tv/oprah-winfrey-plays-down-racism-row-1766718.story?ocid=answw11">backpedaling</a> away from her story on Tuesday, claiming she&#8217;s &#8220;really sorry that it got blown up.&#8221; Considering it was Oprah herself who <a href="http://www.etonline.com/news/136849_Oprah_on_Being_a_Recent_Victim_of_Racism/index.html">brought</a> the the story to national attention on <i>Entertainment Tonight, </i>such a non-apology rings exceedingly hollow &#8212; especially since her story has also &#8220;evolved&#8221; in the interim.</p>
<p>Oprah&#8217;s alleged tale of woe <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/oprah-backpedaling-apology-racism/2013/08/14/id/520345">occurred</a> last month when she was in Zurich, Switzerland to attend Tina Turner&#8217;s wedding. While there she went to a boutique, later identified as Trois Pomme, to buy a handbag that matched her dress. According to Winfrey, the sales clerk refused to show her a $38,000 bag because it was &#8220;too expensive.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;One more time, I tried. I said, &#8216;But I really do just want to see that one,&#8217; and the shopkeeper said, &#8216;Oh, I don&#8217;t want to hurt your feelings,&#8217; and I said, &#8216;Okay, thank you so much. You&#8217;re probably right, I can&#8217;t afford it.&#8217; And I walked out of the store,&#8221; Winfrey told <i>ET&#8217;s </i>Nancy O&#8217;Dell. Oprah <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuHg0_kg3c">recounted</a> the same story on Larry King, even as she told King she is not a person who &#8220;pulls the race card.&#8221;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a remarkable assertion considering Winfrey recently <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/oprah-trayvon-martin-emmett-till_n_3707096.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment?utm_hp_ref=entertainment&amp;ir=Entertainment&amp;utm_hp_ref=entertainment">asserted</a> the death of Trayvon Martin and the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 were the &#8220;same thing.&#8221; Martin was killed in an altercation with George Zimmerman, who pled self-defense and was acquitted. Till was killed by a group of white men who took him to a barn where they beat him, gouged out one of his eyes, shot him in the head, and dumped his body in a river, because he had flirted with a white woman. &#8220;Trayvon Martin, parallel to Emmett Till,&#8221; Oprah said in an interview. &#8220;Let me just tell you, in my mind, same thing.&#8221;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not pulling the race card. That&#8217;s maxing it out.</p>
<p>After Oprah&#8217;s recounting of the incident in Zurich, the story became a media sensation. Store owner Trudi Goetz, who was also a guest at Turner&#8217;s wedding, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2387630/Racist-shop-girl-said-I-afford-24-000-handbag-says-billionaire-Oprah-Winfrey.html">apologized.</a> &#8220;Everyone wants to sell a crocodile bag,&#8221; Ms. Goetz said. &#8220;It’s a misunderstanding.&#8221; Zurich trade president Markus Hunig condemned the snub as well. &#8220;It’s totally unacceptable. I’ve never heard of anything like it,&#8221; he claimed.</p>
<p>Even the Swiss Tourism Office <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/oprah-swiss-apology-racist-diss-handbag-shop/story?id=19915356">apologized</a> for the alleged &#8220;racist&#8221; treatment Winfrey said she received. &#8220;We are totally ashamed about what happened,” said spokesman Daniela Bar. &#8220;This sales assistant was completely in the wrong. We apologize on behalf of Swiss tourism for what happened. This was a one-off and will not have a long lasting effect on the popularity of Switzerland, but the saleswoman should apologize to Oprah Winfrey.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, the stage was set. All the saleswoman had to do was play her anticipated role in this drama and all would have undoubtedly been forgiven and forgotten.</p>
<p>The problem? The sales clerk wasn&#8217;t having any of it. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know why she is making these accusations,&#8221; the unidentified woman told Swiss paper <i>SonntagsBlick</i>. &#8220;She is so powerful, and I am just a shop girl. I didn&#8217;t hurt anyone. I don&#8217;t know why someone as great as her must cannibalize me on TV. It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds….I would never say something like that to a customer. I explained to her the bags come in different sizes and materials, like I always do. She looked at a frame behind me. Far above there was the 35,000 Swiss franc crocodile leather bag. I simply told her it was like the one I held in my hand, only much more expensive, and that I could show her similar bags.&#8221;</p>
<p>That was more than enough for Trudi Goetz, who is now <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2391880/Oprahs-racist-handbag-Swiss-store-owner-brands-star-sensitive.html">standing behind</a> her employee. She said there would be no repercussions for the 37-year-old Italian woman, who has been &#8220;working for me for five years and is an excellent seller.&#8221; Goetz characterized the exchange differently as well. &#8220;Oprah came into the business, wanted to see the crocodile bag,&#8221; Goetz explained. &#8220;She inquired about the price. When my saleswoman told her that it cost 35,000 francs and then offered to show her cheaper ones, she walked away.&#8221; She further noted that Winfrey is &#8220;so very sensitive&#8221; and that she finds it regrettable that Winfrey &#8220;has come to this service from exactly the wrong way.&#8221;</p>
<p>Apparently Winfrey was beginning to feel the heat. During a Tuesday interview on the red carpet for &#8220;Lee Daniels&#8217; The Butler,&#8221; her first movie role in 15 years, Winfrey surmised the people who encounter her in stores are unaware that she carries the <a href="http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/american-express-new-service-for-its-wealthiest-cardholders/?_r=0">black card</a>, which is an invitation-only credit card issued by American Express. Thus, such people can only make an assessment of Winfrey, &#8220;based on the way I look and who I am.&#8221;</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s where the story gets interesting. Last week on <i>ET</i>, Winfrey contended that while she wasn&#8217;t wearing her eyelashes she was &#8220;in full Oprah Winfrey gear; Donna Karan skirt, sandals.&#8221; On Tuesday, she <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23679605">embellished</a> that description. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t have anything that said &#8216;I have money,&#8217;&#8221; Winfrey explained. &#8220;I wasn&#8217;t wearing a diamond stud. I didn&#8217;t have a pocketbook. I didn&#8217;t wear Louboutin shoes. I didn&#8217;t have anything.&#8221; She then reiterated her accusation. &#8220;You should be able to go in a store looking like whatever you look like and say &#8216;I&#8217;d like to see this.&#8217; That didn&#8217;t happen.&#8221;</p>
<p>So what did happen? Exactly what someone deeply familiar with the machinations of the media and entertainment industry more than likely wanted to happen, namely, the creation of a huge media buzz perfectly timed for the opening of her latest movie. Breitbart&#8217;s John Nolte <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/08/12/Media-fall-or-race-hoax-swiss-clerk-brands-oprah-liar">reaches</a> a similar conclusion, wondering if it occurred to anyone in the media that &#8220;such an anecdote mixed with the promotion of a film based on a racial theme might be a little too neat?&#8221;</p>
<p>The unidentified salesclerk who served Winfrey cannot be located because, according to Goetz, she is currently afraid of &#8220;public hatred.&#8221; Meanwhile, the same mainstream media that dutifully reported Winfrey&#8217;s version of the events, absent any investigation, is <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Oprash,+Oscar+buzz&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a">talking about</a> the &#8220;Oscar buzz&#8221; being generated by Winfrey&#8217;s performance in the movie. The bet here is it&#8217;s no better than the one she has generated at the expense of a powerless shop clerk.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama to Award Oprah the Medal of Freedom</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-to-award-oprah-the-medal-of-freedom/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-to-award-oprah-the-medal-of-freedom</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-to-award-oprah-the-medal-of-freedom/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Aug 2013 23:09:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oprah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[presidential medal of freedom]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Also getting the Medal of Freedom will be Bill Clinton and Gloria Steinem. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Obama-Oprah.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-199931" alt="Obama-Oprah" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Obama-Oprah.jpg" width="296" height="320" /></a></p>
<p>I would summon up some outrage, but this isn&#8217;t even the hundredth trashiest thing that Obama has done in the White House. This is a cynical government that couldn&#8217;t buy class with the entire treasury at its disposal.</p>
<p>So why not?</p>
<p>Or as Hillary would say, what difference does it make?</p>
<p>Also <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/president-obama-to-honor-oprah-bill-clinton-ernie-banks-with-medal-of-freedom/">getting the Medal of Freedom will be such </a>luminaries as Bill Clinton, Dick Lugar and Gloria Steinem.</p>
<p>Finally Bill will be able to have a medal of his own after the whole Vietnam thing didn&#8217;t work out. Maybe he can try throwing his over the fence with John Kerry.</p>
<blockquote><p>“The Presidential Medal of Freedom goes to men and women who have dedicated their own lives to enriching ours,” the president said in a written statement. “This year’s honorees have been blessed with extraordinary talent, but what sets them apart is their gift for sharing that talent with the world.”</p></blockquote>
<p>This is just a case for jettisoning the Medal of Freedom. It&#8217;s a bizarre artifact of liberal Federalism. There was never supposed to be an American version of the The <em>Légion d&#8217;honneur. </em>We don&#8217;t have any knighthoods and we don&#8217;t need to hand out meaningless awards to important people.</p>
<p>This was yet another bad idea that JFK picked up from Europe and it&#8217;s worth abolishing.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Oprah Gets a Degree From Harvard</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/oprah-gets-a-degree-from-harvard/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=oprah-gets-a-degree-from-harvard</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Jun 2013 04:13:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How Oprah’s sob stories became America’s politics.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/oprah-harvard.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-191876" alt="Oprah Winfrey commencement speech at Harvard" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/oprah-harvard.jpg" width="269" height="323" /></a>This week, Oprah Winfrey became just the latest celeb to grab an honorary degree from a prestigious university. Speaking at Harvard, Oprah lectured the graduates about immigration and gun control. She stated, “In our political system and the media, we often see the reflection of a country that is polarized, that is paralyzed, that is self-interested. And yet I know you know the truth. We all know that we are better than the cynicism and the pessimism that is regurgitating throughout Washington and the 24 hour cable news cycle.”</p>
<p>There’s a reason this rhetoric sounds familiar. It’s straight from Barack Obama’s playbook. But that’s what’s so astonishing about today’s politics: if you took the quote out of context, you wouldn’t know whether it came from the Queen of Daytime Television or the President of the United States.</p>
<p>And Oprah’s politics are the same as Obama’s, too. “The vast majority of people in this country believe in stronger background checks,” she said, “because they realize that we can uphold the Second Amendment and also reduce that violence that is robbing us of our children.” She then went on to immigration, where again President Obama’s teleprompter clearly spoke through her: “it’s possible to both enforce our laws and, at the same time, embrace the words on the Statue of Liberty that have welcomed generations of huddled masses to our shores.”</p>
<p>Finally, she ended with welfare. “People from both parties and no party,” she said, “believe that indigent mothers and families should have access to healthy food and a roof over the heads and a strong public education. Because here in the richest nation on earth, we can afford a basic level of security and opportunity.”</p>
<p>Why does Oprah sound so similar to President Obama? And is she cribbing from him, or vice versa?</p>
<p>In all likelihood, Obama’s America got its start in Oprah’s audience. Oprah described her mission on television this way to the Harvard audience: to show Americans “that what unites us is ultimately far more redeeming and compelling than anything that separates [us].” That’s just the sort of bromidic nonsense that President Obama speaks, before pretending that a false consensus for liberalism exists. This phraseology means nothing. What unites Americans and al-Qaeda terrorists &#8212; our biology as <i>homo sapiens</i> &#8212; is larger than what divides us. But that doesn’t mean that there are philosophical battles worth fighting and values worth defending.</p>
<p>But Oprah’s entire mission in life is to enfeeble those values. Her entire show was geared for years toward driving sympathy for poor decision making. Emotion was the name of the game. A typical hour of Oprah often included a weepy sob story from someone – either deserving or undeserving – followed by a giveaway to her audience.</p>
<p>Oprah Winfrey, for all her charitable work, has pushed the feelings-first America that drives us to immediate band-aids for long-term problems. While American values bleed out, both Oprah and Obama tell us to take a nice, comfortable anesthetic without correcting the underlying problem.</p>
<p>She deserves her Harvard degree just as much as Barack Obama deserves his Harvard Law degree. After all, her master class in feelings has helped bring us the Harvard value system that now dominates the White House.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>The Super Bowl Veers Left</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/the-super-bowl-veers-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-super-bowl-veers-left</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/the-super-bowl-veers-left/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Feb 2013 04:35:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[super bowl]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=176397</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The death of American values on the biggest American TV day.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/the-super-bowl-veers-left/superbowl2013/" rel="attachment wp-att-176403"><img class="wp-image-176403 alignleft" title="superbowl2013" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/superbowl2013-450x251.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="176" /></a>During Sunday’s Super Bowl, the advertising and programming executives in Hollywood and New York graced us with their version of what we want to see. And if it’s any reflection of reality, we’re becoming a coarser, stupider, and less value-oriented nation.</p>
<p>Let’s start with the halftime show. For years, the Super Bowl halftime show has been a repository for shocking performances, including the pre-staged Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson boobgate in 2004. But Beyoncé’s pelvic-thrusting marathon session, accompanied by her doxy backup dancers, wasn’t so much shocking as it was jaded and cynical. It wasn’t sexy; it was tiresome, in-your-face, boring. Booty-shaking is no longer surprising, since surprise requires standards to be broken. In a nation with no standards, we’re not even excited by what used to be outrageous behavior. There’s no prize for nakedest at a nudist festival.</p>
<p>The commercials, too, contrasted what used to be American with what is now American. The Chrysler Group’s Dodge Ram “Farmer” ad, which showed stills of American farmers over a voiceover from famed broadcaster Paul Harvey, “So God Made a Farmer,” received high marks from the crowd. It was a moving reconsideration of values now thought by many to be passé:</p>
<blockquote><p>It had to be somebody who&#8217;d plow deep and straight&#8230;and not cut corners. Somebody to seed and weed, feed and breed&#8230;and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody to replenish the self feeder and then finish a hard days work with a five mile drive to church. Somebody who&#8217;d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who&#8217;d laugh and then sigh&#8230;and then respond with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life &#8220;doing what dad does.&#8221; So, God made a farmer!</p></blockquote>
<p>Contrast that ad with one from Coca Cola, featuring a series of security camera shots, and titled, “Give a Little Bit”:</p>
<blockquote><p>Security cameras around the world … also capture … people stealing kisses, music addicts, honest pickpockets, and potato chip dealers … attacks of friendship, unexpected firemen, and peaceful warriors. Let’s look at the world a little differently.</p></blockquote>
<p>When the caption reads, “Peaceful warriors,” we see a video of some moron tagging the word “Peace” on the side of a building. This is what it takes to create peace across the world? A powerful military presence irrelevant in comparison to graffiti?  Spraying beyond the call of valor?</p>
<p>The Occupy Generation’s disrespect for the Greatest Generation saw its most obvious embodiment in Taco Bell’s famed “Viva Young” commercial, which featured a bunch of octogenarians acting like juvenile delinquents, complete with a huge back tattoo for an obviously Jewish character named Goldblatt. The ad itself is funny – but it’s also wildly disrespectful, suggesting that if our elderly would just act like teenagers again, oh the fun they could have!</p>
<p>Even the Super Bowl’s finest cultural moment – an ad featuring American troops from Jeep – was studded with an underlying pacifism, brought by Oprah. We all want to see American troops home and with their families. But we never see ads anymore glorifying the heroism of our troops in the field. Instead we get shorter replays of <em>Coming Home</em>.</p>
<p>American culture isn’t moving in the right direction if the Super Bowl is any indicator. But it can be fixed and saved, if we’re wise enough and honest enough to acknowledge the problem. Vulgarity is no substitute for sexiness. Raunch is no substitute for humor. And superficial values are no substitute for real ones.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Summing Up Obama (So Far)</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/summing-up-obama-so-far/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=summing-up-obama-so-far</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 May 2010 04:04:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Solway]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[shattering revelation]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Theodore Dalrymple]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tony Rezko]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[It's still a legitimate question: Who is he?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/obama.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60354" title="obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/obama.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="282" /></a></p>
<p>So much has been said and written about Barack Obama that, barring some shattering revelation, very little remains to be rehearsed. As <a href="http://www.globalpolitician.com/25810-barack-obama-foreign-policy-iran">columnist Barry Rubin bemoaned</a>, “I don&#8217;t want to keep writing every day about the Obama Administration&#8217;s Middle East policy. There are many other topics I&#8217;d prefer, but the problem is that they keep doing things.” I could not agree more, and not  concerning the Middle East alone. Yet the issues continuing to swirl about the president need to be revisited, not only because Obama is arguably the most polarizing figure of our times, but because he is also the most potentially catastrophic.</p>
<p>This statement will be regarded by many as rhetorical overkill, but I would contend that the election of Obama to the most powerful office in the world is  quite possibly the most significant political—and dangerous—event of recent times. By being proactive and making informed decisions, he has the ability to create a slightly safer world. By misreading the historical text, making bad  choices, engaging half-heartedly in certain conflicts (Afghanistan, Iraq), coming down on the wrong side of another (Israeli/Palestinian), and flinching before  yet another challenge of far greater urgency (Iran), he invites retribution. This latter direction is plainly the one he has taken. As such I believe that intense concentration on the man and his compliant administration, and its public reiteration, is both warranted and necessary.</p>
<p>Indeed, the presidential dilemma we are facing is complex and far-ranging. Leaving aside the ongoing “birther” controversy focusing on the vexed issue of the president’s legitimacy, the “Obama problem” really has to do with the conundrum of his <em>political</em> identity. Is he a bone-stock socialist or a far-left radical determined to impose a neo-Marxist regime upon republican America,  or merely a “person of advanced views and reactionary feeling,” as <a href="http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Small-acts-of-disdain-3948">Theodore Dalrymple says</a> of Virginia Woolf? Perhaps, as <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/what-kind-of-socialist-is-barack-obama--15421">Jonah Goldberg suggests</a>, coining a phrase, he is a “neo-socialist” who believes “in the power of government to extend its scope and grasp far deeper into society”? Is Obama a closet <a href="http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp">Islamist</a>, as some have alleged? Is he a media artifact, the digital remastering of an epic hero enacting an ancient fantasy of salvation? Is he a volatile prevaricator, saying one thing, then saying another, making solemn promises and regularly breaking them, whose erratic behavior must leave us bewildered before an ever-widening credibility gap? Or is he a university-educated postmodernist for whom the concept of truth has been relativized beyond recognition? Is he just a political rookie whose lack of executive experience shows up alarmingly in a capricious and anemic foreign policy? An old KGB hand like Vladimir Putin must look at him and think, “What a patsy.” Ditto Hugo Chavez, King Abdullah, Bashir Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Castros and a host of other shrewd manipulators and world-wise autocrats.</p>
<p>Who really knows? Perhaps, as Pajamas Media founder Roger Simon proposes, he is frankly deranged, meriting the title of <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/04/03/president-weirdo/">President Weirdo</a>? Children’s author Sarah Durand concurs, diagnosing Obama as suffering from <em><a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/liberalomania-dont-drink-the-water-in-d-c/">liberalomania</a></em>,  archly defined as a “degenerative form of dementia” evidenced in his highly skilled capacity as a blame gamer, his extreme narcissism and his delusions of grandeur. Or is he merely an updated version of tall-tale artist and windy opportunist Christy Mahon in John Millington Synge’s comic drama <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Playboy-Western-Riders-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486275620/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1273680676&amp;sr=1-1">The Playboy of the Western World</a></em>, “the laughing joke of every woman [read: person] where four baronies meet”—the man who flies Air Force One to dinner, practices his golf swing while a national crisis is unfolding, and throws Budweiser-like parties in the White house, as if to “keep the good times going”? Or is he none of these but, quite the opposite, the “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr4VZ8xCzOg">sort of god</a>” whom <em>Newsweek</em>’s Evan Thomas worships, “<a href="http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/12/obamas-one-says-oprah.html">The One</a>” venerated by Oprah, Louis Farrakhan’s “<a href="http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=77539">Messiah</a>”? Who? What? Searching for Obama is like mining for unobtanium.</p>
<p>Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri is troubled by Obama’s lack of identifiable character. Commenting on Obama’s casting himself as a bridge between America and the Islamic world (Al- Arabiya TV, January 27, 2009), <a href="http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.politics.bush/2009-01/msg01252.html">Taheri notes</a> that “Obama appeared unsure of his own identity and confused about the role that America should play in global politics. And that is bad news for those who believe that the United States should use its moral, economic and political clout in support of democratic forces throughout the world.” Obama himself admitted in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Audacity-Hope-Thoughts-Reclaiming-American/dp/0307455874/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1273691464&amp;sr=1-1">The Audacity of Hope</a></em>, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” Pretty damaging, this confession. And when it comes to Obama’s famous “hope,” among the most antiquated of imaginable pieties whether audacious or sentimental, American poet <a href="http://www.versedaily.org/2008/aboutcjsageapj.shtml">C.J. Sage</a> has it about right: “<em>Solve for this: where x is hope/and y is your future, what is surely finite?</em>” Something worth keeping in mind when listening to a political mesmerist.</p>
<p>The question remains open. <em>Who is this guy</em>? And what does so enigmatic a figure augur for the United States and, indeed, for the future of us all? No matter what hypothesis or conviction one espouses concerning his definitive DNA, it seems fair to say that a shadow of the clandestine—or if one prefers, the inscrutable—envelops this president.</p>
<p>Even Obama’s most avid supporters, if they are honest, must allow that, <em>compared to his POTUS predecessors</em>, unambiguously little is known about his antecedents or, for example, the salient facts of his academic career—many of his records are still under seal, his college and university transcripts have not been released and, broadly speaking, his significant documentation is rather flimsy. There is not much of a paper trail here; for that matter, there is scarcely a Hansel-and-Gretel bread crumb trail. How such a man could be elected to the presidency boasting a curriculum vitae with more blank pages in it than a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375421769">Danielewski novel</a> remains a <a href="http://www.jimloy.com/puzz/sphinx0.htm">riddle</a> for the sphinx. Nor should it surprise us that it is precisely a blank page, like the blank screen Obama mentions, that solicits conjecture or projection, much of it skeptical or unfavorable.</p>
<p>In any event, there can be no doubt that the dossier is scanty and that this is a truly amazing deficiency. We simply do not have a clear portrait or a crisply factual biography of the president. But what we do know about his close affiliates—America-and-Jew bashing Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, hysterical and racially divisive Cornel West, unrepentant Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, unscrupulous entrepreneur Tony Rezko—is profoundly unsettling. To adapt Obama’s ringing <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/02/we-are-the-on-1.html">slogan</a>, borrowed or plagiarized from African-American poet <a href="http://junejordan.com/byjune">June Jordan</a>, are they the ones we’ve been waiting for? But on the whole, the asymmetric relation between what we know and what we don’t know must distress any rational person curious about so influential an actor on the current political scene.</p>
<p>That Louis Farrakhan, like millions of others, feels that Obama was “<a href="http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/farrakhan-obama-selected-not/2010/05/10/id/358615?s=al&amp;promo_code=9DF0-1">selected</a>” for our times should give us further pause. On the contrary, it may not be out of place to suggest that we are now afflicted with the worst possible president at the worst possible time, with Iran darting toward the nuclear finish line, the Palestinians as intransigent as ever, the Russians moving back into the Caucasus region, negotiating with Venezuela and solidifying ties with Iran, Syria and Turkey, terrorism (oops—“man-made disasters”) on the rise and U.S. citizens increasingly at the mercy of the jihadists, China holding massive quantities of American Treasury notes, Obama considering ruinous cap-and-trade legislation at a time when the AGW consensus is collapsing, the American debt estimated to hit <a href="http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/05/10/terence-corcoran-europe-fixes-debt-with-more-debt.aspx">100% of GDP</a> in 2011 and its unfunded entitlement liabilities totaling over <a href="http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/05/10/indebted-nation.aspx">$US 100 trillion</a>, leading to the prospect of monetary collapse. None of these critical issues have been substantially addressed by the president, except insofar as his actions in some cases, lack of action in others, have only exacerbated them. The collateral fact that we really have no valid and comprehensive notion of who exactly is leading us at this crucial historical juncture boggles the mind.</p>
<p>It should be added, however, that we do know something about the ideas which govern his policies: the redistribution of wealth, the expansion of state control at the expense of the private sector, extensive regulation of more and more aspects of quotidian life, bureaucratic bloat, a paternal administration accompanied by the leveling of individual initiative to a lowest common denominator—all very old doctrines gussied up with a defensive terminology like “social justice,” “progressivism,” “equality of outcome,” “only the people will save the people”—which have been tried before and failed spectacularly. The best that can be said of Obama is that, in the realm of political theory, he does not believe in granny dumping, though the dogmas and paradigms he embraces should long ago have been put out of their misery.</p>
<p>We might have twigged by now. Each new measure he introduces or intends to introduce is a camel’s nose presaging future debilities. But the president’s youthful vigor, toggle-switch charm and exotic presence seem to apply a veneer of novelty to ideological obsolescence. He is like the word “proverbial” which we insert into a tired simile in order to avoid the skank of platitude, as in “smart as the proverbial whip” or “dumb as the proverbial ox.” America is saddled with a proverbial president, a man whose principal function is to renovate clichès and make them palatable.</p>
<p>This appears to be as far as we can go for now, with more to come to a political theater near us. One thing, however, seems undeniable: so far, not so good.</p>
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