Does Anyone See Anything Wrong with This? Because I Don't

Zut alors!

Gee, I remember learning that phrase back in the late 60s as a high school student learning French. I always wondered when or if I'd ever use it. When I got to college, learning proper French, I never heard it uttered by any of my professors, all of whom were French to the core. Whenever I've visited France - and I live about 30 miles, as the crow flies, from that country, I've never heard it, but I've dug it up now, because it so fits the mountain-in-a-molehill moment engulfing French politics at the moment.

Once again ... zut alors! President Sarkozy has been caught filming a tele-conference with Monsieru le President Obama, and the French are revolting. (Sorry, that's an old British joke - har-dee-har-har).

Here's the offensive article:-



According to The Observer (that's The Guardian dressed in its Sunday best), Sarkozy has now officially embarrassed France in front of the whole world.

Why?

Well, this is also an election year for Sarkozy, who isn't very popular in France for various reasons, and he's facing stiff opposition from little Miss Le Pen, who - had she been alive at the time - would have welcomed Hitler into France with opened arms and roses. Sarko is everything previous French Presidents have not been - a first generation Frenchman, Jewish, married to an internationally famous beauty who's counted Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger as notches on her lipstick case. He also had a famously public bust-up with Wife No 2 (who lives in New York); he's practiced a wee bit of nepotism in appointing his oldest son (from Wife No 1) to a lucrative public post; and he's blatantly pro-American in a way no President of France has been before.

Although the French are grateful for our help and have been in the past, we're still that Trans-Atlantic upstart who ensured that English, instead of French, became the international language of diplomacy. They're still smarting over the Louisiana Purchase and the fact that Monsieur Du Pont decided to immigrate to America. (And did you know that Napoleon's great-great nephew was in Teddy Roosevelt's Cabinet and founded the precursor of the FBI?)

Zut alors!

Anyway, the French are revolting, because they think it a crass move and rather tacky of Sarkozy to film a teleconference he had with our President. Why? Because - mon Dieu! - Sarkozy will do the unheard of thing of using this film as campaign fodder, and it just might help him win!

Days before the 22 April first-round vote in the French presidential election, the rare glimpse of banter between world leaders shows Obama saying of the campaign, "It must be a busy time." He adds: "I admire the tough battle you are waging." Sarkozy replies, grinning and with arms folded: "We will win, Mr Obama. You and me, together." The cameras leave before the presidents talk about Syria, Iran and oil.

The Socialist party accused Sarkozy of breaking diplomatic protocol and embarrassing France on the world scene in order to boost his struggling campaign for re-election, saying the images "weakened France's credibility in Washington and across the world".

The SNJ-CGT journalists' union at the state broadcaster France Televisions condemned what it deemed "a grotesque communications operation" by Sarkozy, calling it a "surrealist sequence" of electoral media strategy.

French media questioned whether the White House knew the footage would be made public or whether Obama was set up. But Washington told Le Monde it had indeed been aware that cameras were authorised to film the first few minutes of the video conference.

In answer to the French concerns, don't be so worried about our President. He's not the type to be set up so easily. That's a bit naughty and condescending to assume otherwise. And, of course, the President knew very well that Sarkozy was filming what amounted to be only the welcoming banter of a teleconference. Sarkozy knew that Obama would benefit from this because he could use such a film clip to emphasize his esteem, his standing and his ability to deal with other world leaders. In other words, it enhances his foreign affairs credibility against Willard's bluff and bluster.

As for the French Socialists' claims that Sarkozy embarrassed France in front of the world, I would have thought Dominique Strauss-Kahn pretty pretty much accomplished that.

I like Sarko's words ... "We will win, Mr President ... together."

I wish him well.

Friday the 13th with Real Time

The Chris Crisco joke is funny at least:-



Tavis Smiley first up ... Bill must be scraping for interview guests. After starting the show with what can only be described as a racist joke, Bill sits down with Stymie from Our Gang Tavis Smiley, who's so upset that President Obama hasn't invited him to the White House that he hates the man, to discuss the Trayvon Martin case. Bill thinks liberals should "stand their ground" on gun law, specifically this particular law which allowed George Zimmermann to declare that he shot Trayvon Martin in what he presumed was self-defence, because he felt threatened.

Look, I want gun laws tightened as much as the next person from the Left side of the political spectrum; and I studied US government from the very same textbook that Bill did ... so why doesn't he realise that this joke of a law in Florida is just that - a state law and not a Federal one. In fact, all gun laws are administered by the states, which is why it's easier to get a gun in Virginia than it is in New York.

Jeesh, pay attention!

Oh, and Tavis has to get in a dig about gun laws against Barack Obama ... because it's all Obama's fault, don't you know?



Uh-oh, Matthew Puketard Continetti. The son-in-law also rises ... Matthew's father-in-law is none other than Bill MegaPuketard Kristol. I detest Bill "I-always-get-it-wrong" Kristol, who happens to be yet another conservative friend of Bill's, but I reserve a special hatred for Continetti. His "myamyamyamyamya" whingey little voice reminds me of the tattletale kid on the school playground who always ended up getting beaten up by girls.

I'll bet Matthew's into bondage.

And how did I ever hate David Stockman thirty years ago when he was Reagan's budget director? Ah well, I was young, foolish and in love with a Brit, and still inclined to listen to my father's philosophy that the only good Republican was a dead Republican.

David's line about the Republican party not realising that the 19th Century ended well over a century ago is sheer classic ... and the truth.

Kim Campbell, Canadian, gets it. Why is it that English-speaking foreigners always get us better than we get ourselves? And look at her body language ... I distinctly get the impression that she hates Continetti. He's spewing bullshit. The Republicans won the women's vote in 2010 because most of the women who voted were elderly white women afraid of black men, in general, much less in the White House.

Campbell scores it in re-wording what Hilary Rosen meant. Ann Romney had a choice, and chose to stay home and raise her children. Most ordinary women in the world these days don't have that choice. They have to work, and it's the Republican policies, embodied in Paul Ryan's budget as well as the rhetoric about defunding Planned Parenthood and personhood legislation that shows a total disregard for the majority of women in America, who don't have the kind of choice Ann Romney had.

The clincher here is Arizona declaring that life begins the minute a woman's last period ends. (I know. Go figure). David Stockman, who's been around the block a bit, reminds everyone that Barry Goldwater, Arizona's patron political saint, was pro-choice, which only prompts that little tosswank, Continetti (whose balls seemed to have dropped since his marriage) to start wittering on about only when the Republican party adopted a rigid pro-Life stance did they start to win elections. Kudos to Stockman for handing that little prick his ass in reminding him that the Republican party had been taken over by assholes.

Matthew Continetti ... a walking advertisement for being drowned at birth.

Final word to David Stockman: the Ryan Budget is the Last Will and Testament of the Republican Party if it continues down this perilous slope. Somehow, Toto, I don't think David Stockman is a Republican anymore.



Mitt Romney: The Least Interesting Man in the World ... I would also nominate Matthew Continetti as the Most Annoying Little Asswipe in the World.

Eric Klininberg is the fourth guest. Wow, something I'd never realised - 25% of households in the US are people living alone. Whoda thunk that?

Bill gets excited by Klininberg's book, which extols the joys of living alone. However, here's an oxymoron: Both men agree that more people live alone now, because of affluence ... we don't have to huddle together in masses anymore. But wait ... I thought the middle classes were on an economic decline ... Is Bill showing his privilege classism somewhat?

Now, the real Obama-bashing starts because of fucking weed. Would someone please tell the New York City-based Professor Eric Klininberg that the Democratic party BASE is NOT the Left Coast and Northeastern urban cosmopolitan Progressive patronisers but the people across the nation who get their asses out first thing on an election morning and vote for the Democratic candidate. If you don't vote for the President because a pot college got raided, you need to grow a pair and grow up.

And would someone PLEASE tell Bill Maher to stop, stop, STOP referring to the President by his last name only. That is disrespectful and may be construed, by Bill's previous record of remarks, as being racist.

And the very end of this discourse (continued in the next clip) is blatantly and unremittingly patronising toward the President.



Please stop the insulting comparison of this President with Franklin Roosevelt. And for the record, the President was never as weak as Bill and his cronies preached into misguided belief. That was their own fantasy. It fit into the collective narrative, passed down through the years and adopted by Progressives, yet unrecognised by them as a form of subtle racism, that the black man is "weak" and, therefore, needs to be guided by the strong hand of a white role model.

Barack, meet Franklin. Franklin ended Prohibition. Learn from his example and legalise pot.

Oh, and Bill. grudgingly, admits that "maybe" the economy was something the President got right. How white of Bill.

I'm going off Stockman again ... the fact that he isn't taking the blame for his part in economic Armageddon. And Matthew Continetti ... The reason Matthew's disciples are opting for Romney is because he's white. We know that.

Ep. 244: April 13, 2012 - Overtime

The first part of this annoys me. Stockman was at the forefront of this problem as it fomented 30 years ago. Now he reckons we're as bad as Greece, Spain or Italy? I don't think so. What's more annoying is the affluent, Left Coast audience, applauding Stockman's suggestion that affluent retirees not take their full entitlement of Social Security or Medicare.

Tavis compares Al Sharpton to Glenn Beck. Tavis is dissing and pissing on Rev Al. He's jealous MSNBC didn't give him Sharpton's gig.

April 12, 2012: Downtime

Wherein White Privileged Males Look Up Their Asses and Think They See the World

Very last bit of first clip and beginning of the second, please:-





Oh, the fantasies of arrogance amongst white privilegists!

The thing, it seems, which enrages Progressives most about the President the fact that, you know, he doesn't stop everything at once and legalise pot. Yes, with a Republican House and a slim majority of Democrats in the Senate. Better yet, why doesn't he use that old fiat, the Executive Order?

It seems to me the mischief-making ignorati of the Left have to have some stick with which to beat this President, so why not the pot issue?

Watch the end of the first clip and the beginning of the second.

So Bill's now regretting his million-dollar contribution? What does he think will be achieved under a President Romney and a Republican Congress?

But what angers me the most about this incident is that it's so indicative of the arrogance and patronising assumptions of those morally superior "Progressives" who inhabit the Left Coast and the Northeastern Coast of the United States - the same types who reckon all Southerners and Midwesterners are beyond redemption because they're either gun-greedy survivalists or shit-kicking, toothless inbreds from Deliveranceland.

Eric Klininberg, with the sort of authority only a white, wealthy, coccooned-in-academia self-proclaimed Progressive would possess, warns that "the base" will rebel against the President and not vote because of this failure to legalise pot.

The base?

Please. Don't insult my intelligence. It may be Southern-born, bred and nurtured, but I'll pit my post-graduate degrees and my liberalism against Klininberg's any day of the week. "The base" is not those cosy, smug, affluent and erudite white people drinking Merlot and watching the sun set over San Francisco, nor are they the cosmopolitan elites found in New York City.

They're the people, nationwide, black, white, brown, male and female, gay and straight, who haul their asses out of bed first thing on election morning with one goal in mind - get to the polls and vote Democratic. Some of them have teeth. Some do not. Some have guns. Some may not even be educated to Dr Klininberg's high standards, but they are the base. Not you.

And what angers me even more about this, especially in this split segment, is the overt patronising tone of Bill's punditry here. Once again, he's pushing the lie he pushed relentlessly from the beginning of this President's administration: That he started out weak, that he was a wimp, but he's learning, and he's learning from - surprise surprise - FDR's example. Yet still, he has to step up to the plate and go the extra mile FDR did - after all, Roosevelt ended Prohibition, so why can't Obama just show some balls and legalise pot.

There's a propagation of a bad myth here, which people like Maher and his creatures have pushed since 2009, but it's been the meme of the Left Coast and Northeastern Progressives for the past forty years. They think no one's noticed, and they think themselves beyond racism, which is why people like Joan Walsh get their asses up when Ishmael Reed and others recognise it for what it is.

That's the myth of the weak and inadequate black man, who must be nurtured intellectually and tutored by his white betters. And he must take as his example the ultimate white mentor who may even guide him from the grave, but who gives him an example to follow which may, one hopes, afford him strength of character. Thus, the patron saint, Franklin Roosevelt, the ultimate white privilegist, is called upon, posthumously, to guide the poor, beleagured, genetically and racially weak character of Barack Obama.

The same old same old ... Roosevelt did it, why can't Obama?

And finally, please, would someone tell the likes of Maher and Klininberg that it's mete and polite to refer to the President of the United States by his title and not his last name. Or at least his first and last name. Why is Bill Clinton "Bill Clinton" but Barack Obama merely "Obama?"

One word: racism.

Arizona Redefines Biology

At the 8:30 minute mark. Arizona redefines biology. According to Arizona legislators, in what is now state law, life begins the moment a woman finishes her last monthly period.

Go figure. I can't.

Two Wealthy, Privileged Men - an Uncle Tom and a Racist - Pee on the President's Accomplishments

Tavis Smiley, who infamously made a poverty tour with Cornel West in a designer bus ... Tavis Smiley, sitting there in a made-to-order silk suit ... Tavis Smiley, who still hasn't forgiven the President for snubbing his show and not inviting him to the White House ... sits down to talk about gun laws and poverty with Bill Maher.

That's Bill Maher, who started his monologue with a racist joke. Bill Maher, who - when he voted for Barack Obama - thought he was voting for a real black man.

First, the fact that the Democrats haven't taken a stronger and more vocal stance on gun control legislation is - yep, you got it - the President's fault. The President is to blame, according to Tavis, for Gabrielle Giffords being shot, Trayvon Martin being killed, and for every black man shot and killed on the Southside of Chicago.

Guess that feeds into a popular Rightwing meme of Obama being an assassin, huh? Some on the Progressive Left would believe that as well.

Tavis and Bill, both, don't seem to realise that gun laws are state, and not Federal, laws. That's why it's easier to buy a gun in Virginia than it is in New York.

Next up, Tavis even takes a swipe at the plantation massa former President Bill Clinton, his idol, whom he says should never have signed the Clinton welfare reform bill. Ne'mind the fact that Clinton was governing then, effectively, as a minority President, with Republicans holding both the House and the Senate.

But then, Clinton knew how to corral those mustangs, didn't he, Tavis?

And, finally, Tavis subtly gives his dagger of hatred toward the President a final thrust in insinuating that he hopes the Supreme Court does find the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional ... because, you know, it would just give everyone a chance to sit down and rewrite the thing to do more, like - you know - single-payer, a second time around.

And pigs might fly in the sky too, Tavis ... because there's no guarantee the Democrats will retain the Senate or regain the House, and if they don't healthcare reform would come in the shape of Paul Ryan's budget effectively ending Medicaid and Medicare. And if Willard enters the White House too, all and any hope of healthcare reform is toast, and the peasants are fucked.

But Tavis and Bill won't be.

Let me be politically incorrect here, Tavis ... the only colour that matters in the United States of America isn't black, white or brown, it's green, the colour of money; and you're all right in that respect, aren't you?

Only in America? Not. The British Moral High Ground Crumbling Beneath Their Feet, Part 2

A British Christian fundamentalist group has paid for the following advertisement to appear on the sides of as many London buses - those are the big red double-decker ones - as possible. And, believe me, there are lots of big red buses in London.

Didn't think you'd see that in happy-clappy Europe, much less, Britain, did you? But it's there, it's loud and it's getting louder, even though London's American-born mayor, Boris Johnson, is trying his best to get these signs banned.

As I said ... crawling from the woodwork.

Britain's False Moral High Ground

In all the years I've lived in the UK, the intellectual talking heads who populate the media's talking points programs have revelled in the fact that, according to them, Britain was a far more tolerant society than wicked, evil, racist America, in general.

When I arrived in the UK in the early 1980s, there were race riots in Liverpool and London. When Stephen Lawrence, a promising black student, was killed by five young white men, who can only be described as "thugs" in the mid-1990s, all five were initially acquitted in court, even though the murder took place on a busy Saturday afternoon in high summer and was witnessed by several people passing by on a bus (many of whom were later intimidated by one of the boys' fathers' criminal friends).

No, Britian wasn't racist at all.

But, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin controversy, which is only now just receiving airplay in the UK, it seems that racists and racism of all sorts are now crawling from the woodwork.

Well, as Gomer Pyle would say, "Soo-PRISE soo-PRISE." The Guardian has actually admitted something that, probably, a lot of people already knew.

Black people are more likely to be unemployed in the UK than white people and even moreso than black people in the US.

Whoda thunk that?

In fact, according to the article, successive British governments have consistently failed minority ethnic groups in the UK - which is tantamount to saying, if you're white and British, you're all right, Jack, fuck the rest.

A paper presented on Friday at the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Leeds shows that in the last three recessions, unemployment among black British men was up to 19 percentage points higher than among those in America.

Yaojun Li, professor of sociology at Manchester University, told the conference that in Britain black male unemployment reached 29% in the early 1980s recession, 36% in the early 1990s and 22% in 2011. Unemployment figures for black men in the US were 22%, 17% and 22%.

Black women in Britain were also worse off than those in the US. Unemployment for black women in Britain in the three recessions reached 25%, 26% and 17%, compared with 20%, 12% and 13% in the US. Overall, one in 12 black Britons are unemployed, compared with one in 16 in the US. Li, who examined 2.7m responses from three datasets in the UK and US, said: "There is greater ethnic inequality in Britain than in the USA for both sexes … If you are black you are more likely to be without work in the UK."

The US had long recognised that black people faced entrenched discrimination in the job market, Li said, and had intervened to level the playing field. Britain, he added, had experienced a much more "abrupt and extensive deindustrialisation than the US". Despite this, Li points out, Britain had no equivalent of affirmative action or "federal procurement policy which requires institutions to have staff representative of the population". "These have really helped reduce the unemployment rate among black people there," Li said.

Please notice the highlights, especially the bit about the British division of The He-Man Woman-Haters' Club being just that tad bit racist as well.

Although many job adverts in various papers tout being an "Equal Opportunity Employer," there are no affirmative action programs designed to bring more qualified people of colour either into the workplace or into the higher education sphere; and in many cases, employment of ethnic minorities, especially black people, is actually tacitly discouraged.

I well remember my first boss here in the UK, back in the 1980s, being positively offended that an employment agency had sent him a (qualified) black candidate for a job opening. The interviewer told him she was helpless to tell the agency not to send black candidates. Indeed, he only thing they could do was interview the person and not hire them.

OK, this was an older generation of Brit, and both those people are long dead; but I work every day with people who are under forty, and not a day goes by that I don't hear - at best - the word "spade", at worst the actual n-word when speaking of people of colour.

All this so-called subtle racism is now happily skipping out into the open under the guise of "freedom of speech" (a concept which is an anomaly in Great Britain as much as in that they have no written constitution as they also have laws regulating hate speech).

The Guardian reported last month that the current recession had left almost one in two young black people without a job. Li agreed with the analysis, pointing out that the trend had been noted in 2010. "You have to discount those that are economically inactive, including those in education. The student population is very high. Once you just looked at those who are unemployed, then you see that young black unemployment runs at about 50%."

Diane Abbott, the Labour MP whose recent article in the Guardian highlighted the looming crisis in jobless black youth, said the figures were alarming. "Britain is undergoing a jobs crisis, with unemployment at its highest level in 17 years. This research tells the story of the inequality time bomb that Britain is going to have to face up to."

There has been growing disquiet among charities and companies about the "slow response" from the government, especially given ministerial claims that the coalition would shield the most vulnerable from the effects of the downturn.

"I think that there has been a lack of awareness about the fact that so many black people are starting from such a low economic base that their life chances are so affected," said Tunde Banjoko, chief executive of the welfare-to-work charity Local Employment Access Projects, and an adviser on race to the Department for Work and Pensions.

"In the US there is affirmative action and people do get in on those programmes. But once in they rise on their own merits."

Of course, there is a way of rising above one's race in the UK - the celebrity system in sports and entertainment.

Years ago, I read Paul Theroux's book The American Embassy, a series of short stories about minor American diplomats living in the UK. The main protagonist, a young white American, is friends with an older, black diplomat, who explains the British methods of determining what "rank" a person of colour holds.

If the person is an Olympic gold medalist or someone who's won an Academy Award or is at the top of his/her field in sport or entertainment, they are referred to as "British."

If they've won the odd silver or are mildly successful in sport or entertainment, they're regularly referred to as "West Indian."

If they're failures, they're simply called "black."

Pretty true.

But even with all this revelation, supported by fact, there are still those so blind that they will not see. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the commentator, MacNara, who (as he says) is British:-

And in any case, a priori, one might expect blacks to be treated better in the US than the UK, since they have been around a lot longer than the British black population, and can claim to be just as much a founding group of the modern US population as anyone whose ancestors came off the Mayflower, and share a culture and language with white Americans. On the other hand, my personal experience of (mainly very educated) white Americans suggests that prejudice based purely on skin colour is much stronger in the US than in Britain (I'm from Britain), despite the fact that a much higher percentage of black people in Britain is foreign-born and has different cultural values that the British white population.

I don't doubt that there are racial problems in Britain, but on a person-to-person level, on average, Britain is ahead of every country I have been in. Even in Africa, I have heard comments from one black person about people of another tribe that would get you put in prison in the UK if made about someone of a different colour. And contempt from well-off Indians about other Indians less fortunate than themselves are off the scale of vileness. And I think a lot of the tension in Britain is about cultural differences, not skin colour. And tough economic conditions are bound to emphasise feeleings of differential entitlement.

I would like to add that I think postive discrimination based on skin colour is a recipe for stirring up trouble in the British context, even if it were the case that black unemployment, allowing for the factors I have mentioned, is higher in the UK than the US. Remember the US had legal apartheid until the 1960s, and de facto apartheid much later. Britain was never like that.

That last sentence is an obvious lie. When the Windrush immigration of Afro-Carribbeans began in the late 1940s (to do the jobs white Britons wouldn't deign to do), many hotels and boarding houses openly posted notices prohibiting blacks from occupying rooms. Apartheid may not have been "official," but it certainly was and is de facto, with that singular British signature of subtlety to boot.

And as for MacNara, was there ever a more obvious example of subtle British racism and moral superiority than this commentator. Makes me think of a Beatles' song ...