NQ First Responders: Steele Weighs in on Sotomayor, Wolffe Refutes Marshmallow Label and Sarah Palin Obsession Lives on
By LisaB on June 8, 2009 at 6:00 PM in Current Affairs
1) Shelby Steele has weighed in on the Sotomayor nomination. As always, Steels has something to say worth hearing. The WSJ has a column by him today.
President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court points to a dilemma that will likely plague his presidency: How does a “post-racialist” president play identity politics?
What is most notable about the Sotomayor nomination is its almost perfect predictability. Somehow we all simply know — like it or not — that Hispanics are now overdue for the gravitas of high office.. .
Steele goes on to say that identity politics are at the heart of this nomination despite Obama’s wish to be a “post-racial” leader.
But of course “post-racialism” is not a real idea. It is an impression, a chimera that grows out of a very specific racial manipulation that I have called “bargaining.” Here the minority makes a bargain with white society: I will not “guilt” you with America’s centuries of racism if you will not hold my minority status against me. Whites love this bargain because it allows them to feel above America’s racist past and, therefore, immune to charges of racism. By embracing the bargainer they embrace the impression of a world beyond racial division, a world in which whites are innocent and minorities carry no anger. This is the impression that animates bargainers like Mr. Obama or Oprah Winfrey with an irresistible charisma. Even if post-racialism is an obvious illusion — a bargainer’s trick as it were — whites are flattered by believing in it.
——-I have called Mr. Obama a bound man because he cannot win white support without bargaining and he cannot maintain minority support without playing the very identity politics that injure him with whites. The latter form of politics is grounded in being what I call a challenger — i.e., someone who presumes that whites are racist until they prove otherwise by granting preferences of some kind to minorities. Whites quietly seethe at challengers like Jesse Jackson who use the moral authority of their race’s historic grievance to muscle for preferential treatment.
——-
Judge Sotomayor is the archetypal challenger. Challengers see the moral authority that comes from their group’s historic grievance as an entitlement to immediate parity with whites — whether or not their group has actually earned this parity through development. If their group is not yet competitive with whites, the moral authority that comes from their grievance should be allowed to compensate for what they lack in development. This creates a terrible corruption in which the group’s historic grievance is allowed to count as individual merit. And so a perverse incentive is created: Weakness and victimization are rewarded over development. Better to be a troublemaker than to pursue excellence.
——-Challengers are essentially team players. Their deepest atavistic connection is to their aggrieved race, ethnicity or gender. Toward the larger society that now often elevates and privileges them, they carry a lingering bad faith — and sometimes a cavalier disregard where whites are concerned, as with Judge Sotomayor in the Ricci case.
With the Sotomayor nomination, Mr. Obama has made the same mistake his wife made in her “This is the first time I am proud of my country” remark: bad faith toward an America that has shown him only good faith.
Steele is always worth reading. Check out the full article.
2) CNN takes note of the controversy over Richard Wolffe’s book about the Obama campaign. If you’re a regular here at NQ, you may have seen two posts about this book already.
Even Newsweek Thinks Wolffe’s Book is Weak
RENEGADE: The Making of a President, Wolffe’s Book on Obama Misses no Opportunity to Diss Hillary
Author and former Newsweek journalist Richard Wolffe is refuting charges that he acted more like Barack Obama’s campaign spokesman than as a journalist covering Obama’s presidential campaign. It was Obama, himself, who suggested that Wolffe write his book Renegade: The Making of a President. Wolffe, however, denied that writing the book meant trading objectivity for access.
“It certainly meant that I would have an access and a relationship with him and his inner circle that gave me an insight into him and his campaign that was I think better than anybody else,” Wolffe told Howard Kurtz Sunday morning on Reliable Sources, adding that the newspapers that reviewed Renegade didn’t seem to have problems with his reporting. “We were reviewed in The Washington Post and The New York Times. They’re not pushovers, and they found the book to be fair and there were plenty of things they liked about it.”
Wolffe says his book is honest and doesn’t pull punches. To illustrate, he talks about Obama being angry over Bill Clinton’s speeches in SC.
In Renegade, Wolffe chronicles Obama’s frustration with Vice President Joe Biden’s gaffes, and Obama’s feelings toward comments former President Bill Clinton made in the press. The public does not often get to see a frazzled Obama, but Wolffe reported that Obama called some of Bill Clinton’s comments “bald-faced lies.”
Well, OK. I suppose that does show Obama being frustrated. But that’s hardly a negative. Everyone gets frustrated and blows off. Using this as an example reminds me of that question you occasionally see in interviews: “What is your worst trait?” If you’re honest, you might say something like, “I can sometimes procrastinate when the task looks too big.” But you’ll probably say something like, “I’m too easy to get along with and sometimes it causes me trouble.” Trying to sell a positive as your worst negative. Lame enough when you do it yourself, it’s propaganda when someone else does it on your behalf, IMO.
A real negative would have been far more instructive, more human, but potentially more troubling politically. But that was not why Obama wanted Wolffe to write the book anyway. As for Clinton:
Wolffe said he did not seek reaction from Bill Clinton’s camp because the book is centered on then-candidate Obama, but he did verify statements made by individuals interviewed in the book with other people who were there.
Lastly, Wolffe says he left Newsweek and not that Newsweek pushed him out the door. This implies he chose what to do. Well, sort of. Wolffe was the go-to guy on the Obama campaign for Newsweek. However, other magazine staffers felt (believe it or not since it’s Newsweek) that Wolffe drank waaaayy too much Kool-aid.
Earlier, Wolffe said he could have stayed at Newsweek, but at the ever-so-lowly position of writer and blogger. Can’t have that if you’re an up-and-coming presidential scribe for the ages. According to Ben Smith at Politico:
When the election ended, the Newsweek brass offered him a new job. Not the White House beat – a natural extension of his campaign coverage – but, he said, “a blog, no less.” He describes the genre in his book as the equivalent of “fried and fast” food, as compared to his own more nutritious “slow food.”
CNN says:
Wolffe left his White House Correspondent job at Newsweek in order to write the book, and said it was an issue of timing, not journalistic issues, that caused his departure from the magazine. “Newsweek would not give me enough time to write the book. I felt it was an important story to tell and I wanted to tell it passionately. We couldn’t come to agreement on that and there was a parting of the ways.”
Heh.
But Wolffe still enjoys his job as “political analyst” for MSNBO, so he’s still got a gig. And, he probably hopes, bestseller status on the NYT lists.
3) And lastly for today, over at the HuffyPot (won’t link to it – use teh Google), the obsession with Sarah Palin drum still beats. You may think I’m referring to the Atlantic’s own Andrew Sullivan – the womb researcher – but this is another Sarah obsessed guy. Geoffrey Dunn is very concerned that Palin plagiarized a four year old speech by Newt Gingrich. Seriously. The writer carefully notes all the similarity and does say Palin credits Gringrich (but too late for Dunn).
I suppose this dude has no recollection of the similarity between BO’s “just words” speech and Deval Patrick’s “just words” speech.
But why go over the top about a speech by Sarah Palin and Gingrich in the first place? What could possibly be the point? The ‘Pot will tell you, oh grasshopper:
Award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn is at work on a book about Sarah Palin and her role in American politics, to be published by Macmillan/St. Martin’s in 2010.
You can find this at huffingtonpost.com.
Of course!!!! He’s GOT A BOOK!!! Any bets on whether he’ll eat carrot cake or play hockey with Palin? Anyone here who actually believes this book could be anything other than a hit job, considering this article? Seriously? Well, I’ll sell you a map to the Easter Bunny’s hutch then. Cheap. Paypal or cash only, please.
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