Yeah. That’s Rex Harrison. A Brit. I’ll explain. The traditional trailer is here. Man suspected of wanting to kill his wife. How unusual. Call Miss Marple. Only possible Aussie difference could be, well, we’ll get to that.

No, I’m not going to wait. I know better. I’ll produce the list now.

Rake He’s the Rex Harrison from down under everywhere. Not a conductor trying to kill his wife. A barrister trying to keep from killing himself by accident or misadventure. Come to think of it, also a conductor of sorts. Some US network tried to duplicate it, but you can’t make the orchestration of drugs, gambling, wanton promiscuity, and legal brilliance work if you don’t have some kind of ultimately suave center. Greg Kinnear wouldn’t know that center if it hit him in the face. Richard Roxbrough surfs on that center.

Miss Fisher’s Mysteries. Well, gee. She’s a rich, promiscuous, flapper detective. What else do you want? Okay. Her duds are lovely, her car is a Hispano Suiza, and there are, as far as I can recall, nude scenes. Clever. With good music.

The Strip. They don’t pretend. They’re cops on Australia’s Gold Coast. Constantly hot and constantly on the case. More fun than most US cop shows put together.

The Castle. See the clip in the older post. Might remind you of the American Dream.

100 Bloody Acres. A typically Australian twist on the horror movie genre. Biggest surprise? Happy if unsettling ending.

Snow Town Murders. What’s it really like to grow up and become a serial murderer? No sheets of lightning. Just increments of pain. Well done if a bit slow.

Unfinished Sky. American romances involve small talk and sudden lurches between the sheets. This one’s different. I know it’s useless to be patient. But try.

Under Hill 60. See the video in the post before. I’m not over WWI yet either.

Lore. Also discussed previously. But you probably didn’t know it was Aussie.

MacLeod’s Daughters. Australia’s version of the old western series Bonanza. Only instead of a bunch of gun-toting guys, you’ve got a bunch of boob-thrusting gals. I know which I like better. Longest running series in Australia…

Dead Calm. The ultimately scary movie that made Nicole Kidman a star.

The Road Warrior. I don’t need to defend Mel Gibson. He’s the Road Warrior. He’s supposed to have a bad attitude. So do I.

None of which explains the greatest actress of our time, an Aussie named Cate Blanchette.

Or Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Geoffrey Rush, Chris Hemsworth, Toni Collette, Heath Ledger, Naomi Watts, Hugo Weaving, Simon Baker, Eric Bana, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay. I also loved the movie where the American killed the Englishman in Australia. But that’s only because I’m a racist chauvinist bastard.

Breitbart reports:

Monday at the White House while hosting a reception to observe LGBT Pride Month, President Barack Obama call his White House Pastry Chef Bill Yosses “the crust master” because the president said, “I don’t know what he does—whether he puts crack in them.” But the president continued he had to adopt a no weekday pie rule.

Laughing and applauding, the first lady Michelle Obama added, “There’s no crack in our pies.”

Hmmm. I’m inclined to believe there is crack in Obama’s pie. It would explain a lot. But I’m also inclined to believe there isn’t any crack in Michelle’s. She smiles so seldom. Maybe she needs a more vegan chef.

Possible she’d prefer this. Even if
it’s not baked in a WH oven.

The chef’s name is Sara. Worth a try? Who knows? “We” might like it. Especially during LGBT Pride Month.

Flukt. Learning how to fight is sometimes a life and death issue.

You thought I’d have wisdom about the conservative SCOTUS rulings? No. The beltway shell game continues. If you want more than that, inquire in the comments.

But I’m taking this opportunity to announce that I’ll stop seeking comments. Doesn’t matter. I’ll post what I think is of value and you can all make of it what you will, with no prejudice against silence. Silence has been my own inclination for a while now. How can I hold it against you?

We’ve reached the point where there is no news or commentary more insightful than Drudge headlines. Two out of three of the network newscasts couldn’t be bothered to cover the 1Q decline of 2.9 percent in GDP. Republicans remain in their longstanding circular firing squad. Democrats are stone crazy — Pelosi welcoming TB-infected children across the blown up southern border like a pro-abortion Mother Theresa, and foreign policy officials nattering about Global Warming, increasingly faint redlines, and the utter meaninglessness of Benghazi. While the world is exploding under their very noses. Which are still too much up in the air to detect the whiff of death.

Even the luminaries of National Review are gasping, literally, for breath. There is no more fuel for their intellectual fire. Absent passion, they’re reduced to repeating themselves, mumbling twice, thrice, about matters entirely moot — the IRS, the VA, the case for, and impossibility of, impeachment, the precise legal definition of lawlessness in umpteen instances NBC deems less important than the World Cup, the dire consequences of destroying the American economy and foreign policy at the same time, the ridiculous choice between creepy Rand Paul and creepy Chris Christie, etc. Thing is, they either made or refused to make all these arguments long ago, and what’s left is filigree on the funeral statuary of the nation.

Which is where Netflix comes in. Diversion, distraction, restorative retreat, whatever you want to call it. It’s not trivial. Most entertainment from the old sources has been taken away from us, bit by bit. ESPN used to be a haven from increasingly naked political agendas exemplified by dozens of Dick Wolf Law & Order spinoffs that have become cause of the week items of lefty propaganda. Now ESPN can’t go five minutes without lecturing us about Redskins, the N-word, gay athletes, Redskins, guns, domestic abuse, the sickening violence done by concussions to the great brains of NFL wide receivers, and did we mention Redskins?

Even the back channels are now devoted to reeducating us. We’re Honey Boo Boo, they’re the Logo and Bravo Channels, where us trogs are supposed to learn the high points of culture from homosexuals. The Discovery Channel is in the Global Warming business and the Thanatos of end of humanity fantasies, and the History Channel is endlessly inventive in finding new ways to attack the Judeo-Christian tradition. A forensically speculative reconstructed Jesus looks like a Palestinian terrorist. The supposedly rediscovered Gospel of Mary is run and rerun despite having been conclusively debunked. And, hey, look at these idiots who are STILL searching, like the complete idiots they so obviously are, for the Arks of both Noah and the Covenant. While Joan Rivers advances the cause of promiscuous feminism by using every obscene word you know, and some you may not, in the longest-running routine of vagina and penis jokes you could possibly imagine. She keeps raising the stakes waiting for someone to stop her but no one does. They just snigger at her latest whore/cunt/cock/anal-sex one-liner. Not to mention the gutter double entendres that constitute the script of every single sitcom on the air. I won’t. And have you looked at all at the “family fare” being produced by Disney and the ABC Family Channel? Don’t. You’ll never let your pre-teen daughter out of the house again. On second thought, look.

As I said. Where Netflix comes in. The streaming service has gems that take you away from all this if you know how to find them.

I’m not saying this is Netflix’s mission. They are building a library. Two out of three of their homegrown productions are strictly in line with what I’ve described above. Do I seem angry? I am. Conservatives who profess to be disapproving of the coarsening of American culture continue to shock me, as they did with their adoration of The Sopranos, with their confessions of binge watching Breaking Bad (now available on Netflix), House of Cards, and the new kid on the block, Orange is the New Black. Really? I’ve made two attempts at Orange. I lasted five minutes the first time, enough to see eight boobs, a fairly explicit sex scene and a pee scene, complete with discreet female wiping afterwards. Really?

That was before I read one of Hotair’s hard line conservative contributors announce his bingeing on the show as a prelude to a market argument as to why Netflix shouldn’t make a whole season available at one time. So I tried again.

Sorry. After the initial flash of tits and pee, it turns into a standard prison melodrama, one I’ve seen a hundred times before, fear and alliances and missteps and grudges and complete bullshit. I’ve even seen the female version before, way back in the post punk era, when the infamous Wendy O (of the Plasmatics) played the villain and told the heroine she was a “shit stain on the panties of life.” {Hey, kids. Whatever you think you’re breaking through with your crappy millennial music, we wuz there long before yas.}

House of Cards is a vile wallowing in the most cynical view of politics, cribbed (as usual) from a much better Brit series of the same name. Unspeakable. So I will speak no more of it.

Breaking Bad is tragedy as long-running soap opera. Only without the tragedy. Innate evil that surfaces and mutilates the lives of everyone around him is not a tragic flaw in a tragic hero. It’s the masturbatory fantasy of people who pretend to be good because pretending is all they know. That’s not just a flaw. Their fascination is a fatal triple failure — of imagination, true moral understanding, and courage.

I liked Lillehammer. Because it’s actually novel, funny, and a double satire on both instant gratification us (as in U.S.) and the strange Scandinavian disconnectedness from the immediacy of consequences. Everyone involved is a joke. The cultural divide just makes for different punchlines. Redeemed by the fact that it never once presumes to be a serious commentary of any kind. The timing is usually impeccable. In that regard it’s a comic masterpiece akin to Dylan Moran’s comedy series Black Books.

I know, I know. Why explore Netflix, then? I’ve taken up enough of your time. So for now I’ll give you a handful of examples of what you can find there you won’t find anywhere else.

Salamander (a series worth bingeing on)

You think you’re paranoid about government? Try being Belgian. HQ of the EU. Jack Bauer never knew he had it so good.

The Imaginary Witness (a documentary about Hollywood and the Holocaust)

Surprisingly honest and even-handed. And illuminating.

Escape [aka Flukt] (see the trailer above. Makes Hunger games look like the twaddle it is)

An Unreal Dream (another documentary that might remind you of the blessings of a belief in God, whether he exists or not.)

Horrible as it is, it’s still inspiring. Honestly.

Lore (a beautiful, terrifying movie that will remind you what life, and film, is or can be)

Her name is Hannelore. Is there forgiveness? She’s sixteen. But you’re never too young for trial by ordeal.

I promise I’ll come back later and give you thumbnails on each of them. But look them all up on IMDB.com. If you’re going to use Netflix for your own edification, you’ll have to learn how to find the needles of gold hidden in the haystack. It’s a huge haystack, though. And the needles can pierce your heart.

In the meantime, ponder this: I continually ask you to rediscover your American roots. Why would I recommend works by Australians, Belgians, Germans, and Norwegians? Regardless of all that has happened, would you rather be us or some other?

Can’t wait for the 200th pledge drive rerun!

It would be kind of sad if it weren’t so perfect somehow.

On cable, we have at least four channels representing various PBS outlets. Always the same thing. 20th century political pundits ranging from the antiquated News Hour to the downright saurian Bill Moyers, spinning and respinning the New Deal of the 1930s, followed by NOVA warnings of Global Warming and Frontline discovering new kinds of minority oppression. As well as five year old rebroadcasts of BBC shows like Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders, and what’s the new one? Squiggly Manor? Uh no. Downton Abbey. Beautiful retread of Upstairs Downstairs, which funded PBS during its glory years. Yeah. Sigh.

Until the pledge drive season. When suddenly it’s time to rally the check writing troops and we get a spate of Great Performances reruns featuring Streisand from 1968, Bob Dylan tributes from 1992, and of course retreads of Sarah Brightman and the Blind Tenor, who was never quite in the same class with Domingo and Pavoratti, just close enough to tickle the generosity of pseudo intellectuals in Darien, Lake Forest, Beacon Hill, and Grosse Point.

Stuck in time. That’s my point. PBS is supposed to be the shining light of quality television, the TV that the best educated watch when they watch, presumably only so they can support the most intellectual and culturally polished aspects of the culture.

What a crock. PBS is actually a mirror of the ossified state of liberal/progressive mentality in America.

Watching PBS in any of its venues is akin to being pinned to your grandmother’s couch in the sixties watching the Lawrence Welk Show. It’s all for old people who don’t want anything to change. Yesterday’s news, yesterday’s opinions, yesterday’s entertainment, and constant reruns. Call it the Hillary constituency.

Without abundant government subsidy, the jig would already be up. PBS is being squeezed to death from three different directions. Forget the doddering pledge drive guys with the cultured voices and grey toupees. Forget the outrageous offers to buy DVDs for three times the price they’d be at Best Buy. Forget even the nerve of taking 15 minute chunks out of programming the octogenarians presumably want to see in favor of wide shots of young Marxists answering telephones while you wheedle your dwindling audience for more money.

Here’s the thing for all you hyper-intellectual progressives to take note of. The game is over. Done.

First. BBC America shows every sign of being a capitalist, profit-seeking network. PBS ain’t going to get a shot at Orphan Black or even the later versions of Doctor Who. BBCA haven’t even tried to show Downton Abbey. That tell you anything? They seem perfectly happy selling ads for shows people want to watch. Odd, eh? No sententious introductions listing foundations, trusts, and other nonsensical phantom sponsors of their programming.

Second. Netflix doesn’t have all the good stuff, but they have a lot. All of Midsomer Murders, most of Inspector Morse, all of Foyle’s War, and more Miss Marple than you can shake a stick at. And the biggest hit BBC1 has had in 10 years, Call the Midwife. Oh. And almost all of Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. Without pledge drive interruption. And show after show after show that never turned up on Masterpiece Theater. Did American intellectuals ever actually have anything to contribute to television? Except Dick Cavett, of course. You know. The lofty view.

Ah. The third and most deadly source of squeeze. A living, breathing example of what public television could and should have been lo these many years. The Ovation Channel.

I’ll give the conservatives a breather here. Right wing as I am, I love the Ovation Channel. I’m sure most of its producers and creative lights are leftist as can be. But I don’t care. They sell ads and they are purveying art in every possible form. They roam the country looking for talent. They spotlight aspects of artistic endeavor you’d never think existed, and they make the creative, intellectual aspect of life vital again. They make it live again. What PBS should have been doing during my lifetime and never did.

I won’t run down the list of their programming, some of which is cheap fill in the blanks stuff but much of which isn’t. It’s new. I’ll direct you only to a surprisingly wonderful three part series called Big Ballet.

It’s a perfect microcosm of the channel’s mission. A diminutive former professional ballet dancer decides to stage Swan Lake with dancers who never got their chance because they were too large, too, well, fat. His partner is a former successful ballerina who was considered too tall. Together, they undertake this mission.

Reality TV schlock, right? No. It works. This isn’t about kicking people out a week at a time. It’s about the delicate balance between being demanding and kind. What should be the best in us. Three episodes. Spoiler. The finale, the performance, will bring tears to your eyes. Art should be accessible to everyone. It doesn’t belong only to the bluenoses of PBS.

Why the squeeze will probably finish off the mummy of government subsidized culture TV.

A few years back.

My wife isn’t a big fan of the Brit motorhead show Top Gear. Mostly for good reasons. The three co-hosts share the arrested development of many many men, seemingly stuck at age nine, despite gray hairs and creeping paunches. Also, the car thing doesn’t fascinate her, which is acceptably common among women. I know her eyes glaze over when I start talking about internal combustion engines, etc.

But we had an exception last night. A standard Top Gear segment is “Star in an Average Priced Car,” which is exactly what it sounds like. TV and movie stars show up, receive some training from the show’s resident racing driver (“The Stig”), and then try to turn in the fastest lap they are capable of on the show’s tricky home track. The car is the constant. Everyone drives the same vehicle.

The results of their efforts are revealed to them in the Top Gear studio, where they and the most acerbic of the TG co-hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, are perched on car seats surrounded by an active studio audience. There is a permanent running record of the times recorded by all the stars, and there are a lot of stars. Whether you know it or not, this test is a rite of passage for a very large number of both British and American actors. Where action stars in particular have to prove their mettle in real life.

So. On the episode we saw last night, Jeremy Clarkson, notoriously anti-American except when he has American stars in the studio, was clearly star struck by having both Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz on hand. They were obviously promoting their movie Knight and Day, which Clarkson may have shown a clip of. Mostly, though, he was interested in Cameron Diaz, Cameron Diaz, and the Hollywood glow of the two of them together.

The man who continually asks Brit stars why they live in New York or Los Angeles when they could live in the one true kingdom went so far as to declare that Cameron and Tom looked like the genetic future of the human race, when all the defects had been eradicated from the species.

He asked Cruise about the reporting that he does most of his own stunts. True. He asked if that was hard and if it ever hurt. Cruise said yes, it often hurts; he’d broken his nose twice, most of his fingers and toes, a leg, and multiple ribs. Oh. How about Cameron? Well, not because of stunts but she’d broken her nose four times, beginning at age eleven. “Shit just has a way of finding my nose,” she said.

Talk about personal cars. Cruise rides motorcycles mostly these days. He has a 1934 Indian once owned by Steve McQueen. Cameron has a Prius. Clarkson made a face. She gave him a nasty grin.

Then to the laps they both did. There’s in car video of these laps. Cameron was obviously taking the competition seriously. While Jeremy was asking how anyone could actually look that good in a helmet, she was setting a TG record for most uses of the F-word in a Top Gear lap. Which is not easy to do. The stars are very colorful in their language while driving. She also mentioned in passing the real handicap American stars are under in the competition. Right hand drive means you do all your shifting with the left hand, not how Americans have learned to shift. “Damn English gears,” she said.

After they’d shown the video, Cameron wanted to know her time. Clarkson gave his Cheshire Cat grin and said it was time to see Tom Cruise’s video. He was also clearly committed, so much so that his line was at times on the verge of loss of control. On the final curve, he actually managed to come so close to rolling that both left hand wheels visibly left the ground. He was shaking his head at his own performance when the video ended.

Clarkson’s big moment in this segment always. He has the times and he tortures the stars, asking them how they think they did, who they’d like to beat on the long board of star times. Cameron didn’t know. She just didn’t want to be humiliatingly bad.

With painful slowness, Clarkson revealed her time. She had beaten everyone on the long board. The top star time.

Cruise immediately embraced her, laughing and cheering her accomplishment.

Clarkson fixed him with a beady stare and said, “That’s a nice show, but you’ve got to be crapping yourself right now.” Cruise smiled and leaned forward, waiting, which all the stars do, no matter how big and famous.

Cruise’s time was doled out even more slowly than Diaz’s. But the end result was worth it. Cruise bettered her by a full second. Cameron squealed, they embraced again and then both stood up and received a standing ovation from the studio audience.

“You Americans,” said Jeremy Clarkson. “You Americans.”

In case any of you needed a bright moment today.

CORRECTION: I overstated my wife’s lack of interest in cars. Lately, she was the reason we watched the Monaco Grand Prix and the Canadian Grand Prix. She was riveted. And she’s waiting for the next one. I think a fan has been born. If that’s not a rush to judgment.

Who is she, really? You know who she is.

She’s been dipping in the personal popularity polls lately. A few unguarded remarks about what it’s like to have momentary cash flow problems while you’re in debt to lawyers defending your husband’s impeachment crisis and the losing effort to keep him from being disbarred in Arkansas. Plus a curious inability to articulate any single actual accomplishment she’s had in her high profile career as a carpetbagging U.S. Senator from New York and a do-nothing, go everywhere Secretary of State for the worst foreign policy president in our history. You know. Little stuff like that. Nits and picks.

Apparently it’s not supposed to matter. An article yesterday at Real Clear Politics is typical:

Not “If” Hillary Runs for President, But When — and How

Yes, let’s get that out of the way: Hillary Rodham Clinton is not deciding whether to run for president; she’s already running for president. If she doesn’t make it to the starting gate for the 2016 Democratic primaries, she will have quit running. When has a Clinton ever quit anything?…

The feigned indecision is part of the 2016 Clinton campaign rollout, as is the new autobiography, “Hard Choices,” and its accompanying book tour. Legendary literary editor Michael Pakenham referred to such volumes as “unbooks.” Like all Washington memoirs, its unofficial subtitle should be “If They Had Only Listened to Me.” Their purpose isn’t to entertain, educate, or enlighten. It’s to keep the author’s name in the news, make some money, and pave the way for the next gig. “Hard Choices” does all three, which is nice work if you can get it, considering the project is a ghost-written campaign manifesto…

This week, she lashed out at liberal interviewer Terry Gross for having the temerity to ask if the Clintons had changed their minds about gay marriage or if they had changed their public position when it became expedient. It’s an interesting question, actually, and one I’ve wondered about since the night during Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign when he signed the Orwellian-named Defense of Marriage Act into law. Hillary also fudged on the date in the Gross interview, citing the year 1993, a reminder that another trait she shares with Bill is a willingness to bend the truth…

So she has flaws, yes, but tremendous strengths as a candidate, too. I’ll go into them next Sunday when I explain why HRC is almost certain to be the next president of the United States.

Let me repeat that phrase “tremendous strengths as a candidate.” Let’s see. She’s a do nothing phony who has a record of lying, vengeful personal attacks, and represents a mirror of her husband’s say anything corruption without his political skills. Yeah. What would the strengths be?

She’s a woman. She has name recognition. The Democrats have nothing like a credible candidate to be president of the United States. And she’s a woman.

That’s it. The Dems are planning to parlay their fraudulent War on Women meme to another presidential election based on the idea that it’s this minority’s turn to occupy the Oval Office.

It’s just possible that eight years of Obama will have convinced people that demographics aren’t sufficient reason to hand the keys of power to an incompetent of the politically correct victim class.

More than that, Hillary’s qualifications as a gender warrior in the War on Women battle for equality and respect, etc, are even thinner than Obama’s claim to be an African-American.

Exhibit I in the campaign to come. A new revelation about Hillary’s early legal career. In 1975, she agreed to defend a 41 year old man who was almost certainly guilty of having raped a 12 year old girl. She chatted jocularly about the details of the case with a reporter, on audiotape, and laughed about both her friendly relations with the judge and the technicality on which she managed to acquit her client. At no point did she express the slightest concern for the victim.

You can read the whole story here. Please do.

The victim of that assault is not inclined to forgive:

Now 52, the victim resides in the same town where she was born.

Divorced and living alone, she blames her troubled life on the attack. She was in prison for check forgery to pay for her prior addiction to methamphetamines when Newsday interviewed her in 2008. The story says she harbored no ill will toward Clinton.

According to her, that is not the case.

“Is this about that rape of me?” she asked when a Free Beacon reporter knocked on her door and requested an interview.

Declining an interview, she nevertheless expressed deep and abiding hostility toward the Newsday reporter who spoke to her in 2008—and toward her assailant’s defender, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Being pro-abortion might have been enough cover for her husband’s shoddy if not criminal behavior toward women. I’m inclined to think, though, that women will not be as willing to overlook the indulgence of child rape by Bill’s wife.

What do you think? Inevitable? Maybe a comeuppance for a life of unscrupulous and convenient decisions, accompanied by a uniquely voracious thirst for power. Obama ain’t the only one, and maybe Americans won’t fall for it yet again.

One can only hope.

Friday, November 07, 2008

ACCEPTANCE. One of the (several) controversies conservatives have been snarled up in since the election is the question of how we should regard the president-elect. As I predicted, there’s been a lot of “making nice” by conservative pundits and bloggers, who want to note a great historical accomplishment and congratulate the winner while acknowledging their continued reservations about the policies to come. Since this has been beautifully epitomized and satirized by Iowahawk, I won’t dwell on it here. There has also been a fair amount of the schizophrenic behavior I heard on Glenn Beck’s radio show yesterday, when he wound up literally screaming at a caller that if he didn’t “accept Obama as our president,” he was exactly like the wingnuts at the DailyKos who argued for eight years that Bush stole the presidency and had no legal right to the office. This from a guy who has consistently characterized the 2008 election as “1860, the brink of civil war.”

What’s going on here? Is there an issue at all? If there is, why? If not, why not? I, for example, am already on record as saying that “I refuse to accept a president who thinks our constitution is fatally flawed and who sees nothing wrong with choosing a black racist as a mentor or a murderous terrorist as a partner in a conspiracy to radicalize school children rather than teach them to read and write.” Does this make me “exactly like the wingnuts at DailyKos?”

I would say no. I don’t dispute the legality of Obama’s election, and I doubt most of the people who agree with my statement above would either. After he takes the oath of office, Barack Obama will be the President of the United States. I have lost none of my respect for the office, and as the current occupant of that office, he is entitled to the official respect that was always denied George W. Bush by his fanatical opponents. If I were overseas and heard him criticized by a foreigner, I would defend him because I’m an American citizen and that is part of my duty as a citizen, as I understand it.

However. As an American citizen, I also reserve the right to believe that Barack Obama is not my president. The prigs and the screamers on this point seem suddenly to be forgetting that there’s more than one kind of contract in force here, and all of them involve complex and sometimes mutual responsibilities. The president has an express contract with the Constitution of the United States; he swears a solemn oath to defend and protect it. He also has an understood contract with the the United States as a nation, that he will subordinate his own interests to the welfare of the nation as a whole, and will make whatever personal and political sacrifices may be necessary to keep it from harm. Finally, he has an implied contract with each and every citizen individually, that he will repay our respect for the office and his tenure in it by remembering that he works for us, all of us, not simply those who elected him.

Only the first of these contracts is a legal one. Once he takes the oath of office, he becomes President of the United States. The other two contracts are moral contracts, ideals of the grand American tradition. It is these unwritten contracts which determine whether we, as individual citizens of the United States, accept the legal president as “our” president. I do not. Glenn Beck can scream all he wants, but he does not speak for me. He is a citizen. He has every right to give Obama a nod on all three contracts. But I’m a citizen too. I do not believe Obama is entering into any of the three contracts in good faith. I don’t believe he intends to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States, but to engineer its rewriting from the bench. I do not believe he holds the interests of the United States as a nation above the interests of various constituencies and political factions around the globe. And I do not believe there is any definition under which he would repay my acceptance and respect by being my president as much as he intends to be the president of the aggrieved and vengeful.

It’s not an emotional animus as much as an intellectual assessment. I don’t believe him. I don’t believe in him. Why must I nevertheless accept him in the monolithic terms scared conservatives seem to demand? I said I won’t give him the benefit of the doubt. Why should I? In my opinion, he has to prove to me that he can be believed. It’s not as if he is above me and can somehow command my private and personal allegiance. I don’t work for him. He works for me. I don’t think he understands even that much.

So my conclusion is that this particular controversy is not one conservatives should be yelling at each other about. If you don’t feel he’s your president, that’s your business. It doesn’t make you seditious, or the second coming of Bush Derangement Syndrome, or a flaming reactionary racist.

Let me elaborate on that last point. I have never doubted that an African-American could be elected president. I still believe it will happen one day, and I abide by my conviction that when it does happen it will be a Republican candidate who does it. I’m also not enough of a hypocrite to pretend great joy and other vaguely self-congratulatory emotions over the fact that a man whose personal history, associations, and political views I regard as disqualifying for the presidency has been elected to the position of Commander-in-Chief. There’s no silver lining to this cloud. In my view, there’s every likelihood he will be so bad a president that he will delay for a decade or more the election of the first African-American president. (If there’s anything worse than a ringer, it’s an incompetent ringer. Makes the whole team look bad.)

My last point on this subject concerns my grave disquietude about the meaning of the conservative rush to “make nice.” I think everyone who does this betrays a naïveté for which there is absolutely no justification. Do they really think that being gracious is going to slow down the juggernaut of a Democrat White House and congress? Fools. We are days, if not hours, away from an all-out declaration of war by Democrats on all things conservative and Republican. Taking time out to shake the right hand of the man who will immediately stab you with the dagger in his left is more than folly. It’s contemptible.

Barack Obama is soon to be the nation’s president. No argument on that point. He is not my president. No compromise on that one. It’s not a distinction invented by the DailyKos. My dad never accepted FDR as his president, either, but it didn’t stop him from defending the nation in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II. All you snob media patriots, take note.

If you’ve got a problem with that, tell it to Glenn Beck. He’ll kiss you on both cheeks. If that’s what sends a tingle up your leg.

posted at 11:36 am by InstaPunk