Saturday, October 04, 2008
Dig it again
Fans of "Dig it!" are surely in a high dudgeon over the Grey Obfuscator's superficial coverage of Barack Obama's relationship with radical Bill Ayers. Glenn Reynolds logs the links, and points us particularly to this gem from Tom Maguire. Me, I'm most of a bottle of Spanish red in the bag and lack either the energy or the wit to add anything to the scorching criticism from righter precincts of the Times and its equally blinkered fellow travelers in the mainstream media. Except maybe this: Highly-educated progressive types -- the sorts of people who dominate the media -- really are quite comfortable with the glorification of lefty radicals. Doubt me? Try this thought experiment: If their children came home sporting a "Che" t-shirt, would they consider themselves failures as parents, slap them silly, and threaten to pull them out of Oberlin if they do not get a clue? Of course not. And therein lies the problem.
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Oct 04, 05:09:00 PM:
Guess we all know what will be topping the Tigerhawk Teenager's Christmas wishlist!
By , at
Sat Oct 04, 08:28:00 PM:
Heh.
I interviewed someone who graduated from Oberlin this week. He went on a (tee hee) football scholarship. Seemed like an OK kid, and he thought Oberlin was kinda 'different'.
Go figger.
-David
By 
Noumenon, at
Sat Oct 04, 09:12:00 PM:
Would you slap your son silly for wearing a shirt of some radical conservative, say the Unabomber?
By , at
Sat Oct 04, 09:58:00 PM:
I would slap him silly if he wore a unabomber t-shirt, also. Our family is from Bolivia, so doubt he'd ever consider wearing a Che tshirt because he's well enough educated to know what a serious pansy Che turned out to be once Bolivians kicked the crap out of him. I think the question goes back to you noumenon, what would you have to say if McCain was friends, even casually, with Timothy McVey? I think that litmus test would show that you're a hypocrite.
By , at
Sun Oct 05, 01:20:00 AM:
Since when was the radical-environmentalist Unabomber, of all people, ever considered a conservative?
WTF, over?
--Wes S.
By Escort81, at
Sun Oct 05, 01:24:00 AM:
What Wes said.
McVeigh, and maybe abortion clinic bombers, I can see as being described as "radical conservatives," but I think the Unabomber has his own special category of math whiz / whack job.
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Oct 05, 01:44:00 AM:
Yeah, Noumenon, what everybody else said. And, in any case, there is no righty equivalent of "radical chic." I mean, it is not as though I am the first to make this observation.
By Noumenon, at
Mon Oct 06, 06:57:00 PM:
Yeah, I realized that about the Unabomber soon after I posted it, but I'd already spent five minutes of my break trying to think of someone who does face the kind of opprobrium handed out to liberal figures like Ward Churchill. Milton Friedman? Bill Gates? Nah. And that was the point I really wanted to make... you can't hold someone to the standard "slap your children for chicifying the radical left" unless you would slap your children for chicifying the radical right. But you've somehow managed to define things so that there's no such thing as a radical right figure. So I punted.
I will pay attention to the "radical chic" issue in the future. There have to be some conservative revolutionaries out there, OTOH it seems like the true radical conservatives ought to be running things, not revolting. Kids would be wearing a T-shirt with a picture of el Jefe.
