Paglia has a man-crush on Obama

Camille Paglia has another one of her gaseous essays up on Salon.com which is noteworthy only for these two nuggets:

Bulletin to all nations: help! Tornadoes, typhoons and earthquakes batter the globe, while the U.S. is teetering into recession and paralyzed by a stupid war it can neither win nor quit. But somehow we are locked at the hip to Hillary Clinton, who won't stop her manic tarantella until her party whirls into ruins, like the run-amuck carousel in Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train."

1. "Bulletin to all nations"? Although the US is far from the only nation to respond to natural disasters wherever they occur on the globe it is always the US who gets there first and offers the most. Even the aid given by the UN is funded mostly by the US contribution to that world body.

2. The recession does not seem to be materializing. Unemployment is down, the stock market is up and the credit situation seems to be stabilizing. There has not been even one quarter of negative economic growth (while two back to back quarters of negative growth are needed before a recession can be called). It would seem that we have turned the economic corner.

3. Like it or not the war in Iraq is being won.

And then there's this:

As I recently told Mark Simone on his New York WABC radio show, the Rev. Wright controversy actually solidified my support of Obama (though Wright himself, on the basis of his performance at the National Press Club, seems to have become a buffoon). I was steadily impressed by Obama's idealism and deliberativeness; his refusal to spout the rote demagogic formulas that pour so freely from Hillary's lips; and his patient forbearance in debates, where (like an aikido master) he warily sidestepped Hillary's blatant provocations, meant to goad him into errors. He has a judicious, reflective, authentically presidential temperament.

"[H]is refusal to spout the rote demagogic formulas". All Obama "spouts" are vague rhetorical will-o-the-wisps about "hope" and "change" without any substance whatsoever to back them up. When you take his TelePrompTer away from him so that he cannot read words written for him by someone else all he can do is toss out left-liberal bromides which have never worked anywhere they have been tried anywhere on the planet.

My one nagging question about Obama, given his Kenyan lineage and broad background in Indonesia and Hawaii as well as his Ivy League education, was how well he knew the history, passions and aspirations of African-American culture. But Obama's 20-year membership in Rev. Wright's Chicago megachurch completely reassured me on this score. First of all, sermons constitute only one small part of any congregation's rich religious and social life. Second, not for a moment do I believe -- as talk radio shows are tirelessly alleging -- that Obama's political views are secretly identical to Wright's. On the contrary, it was through listening to Wright, who was reciting a black liberationist theology that has been standard issue for a half-century, that Obama honed his desire to bridge the gap between racial and ethnic communities in the United States. This is one reason I believe Obama is the right person at the right time for the presidency. Where Hillary divides and sows bitterness, Obama wants to unite and heal. It is a project that all Americans of good will should wish to succeed.

Exactly what evidence Paglia has that Obama rejects Wright's message? The fact that now, after 20 years of quiet acceptance he now publicly rejects it? If Obama rejects Wright's world view then why did he borrow the title of his book from one of Wright's sermons, "The Audacity of Hope"? And why did he approvingly quote Wright's line about the "world in need being run by white people's greed"?

If Obama has always rejected Wright why did he call Wright his friend and mentor? Why does he relate that it was only after listening to Wrights venomous preaching that he decided to abandon his agnosticism and become a "Christian" (I use the quotes because the Black Liberation Theology spouted by Wright has as little to do with real Biblical Christianity as Christian Identity does)?

What exactly does Paglia see as Obama's plan to "unite and heal" the nation? I ask because Obama himself has articulated no such plan. When you strip away all of Obama's empty verbiage all you have left is a seeming desire to create a second term for Jimmy Carter. Perhaps Paglia has forgotten how well that first Carter term went.

Camille Paglia is the poster girl for the fact that one can have a high IQ and an excellent education and still be a fool.

Of course I am still hoping that Obama wins the election despite all of this. His record of voting "present" on any remotely controversial issue reveals a man who has no political courage. He has spent half of his short time in the Senate running for president and so does not have anywhere near the deep knowledge of how power works in Washington DC that Hillary Clinton or Johh McCain possess.

The way Obama speaks when not reading a prepared speech reveal a man of limited intelligence, as do his gaffs like thinking the US has 60 states. An inexperienced naive lightweight like this will have a great deal of difficulty moving his radical agenda through a House of Representatives which must stand for reelection every two years.

I know that many people think that a Democrat will have a cakewalk with the size of the majority that the Democrats are bound to have in the next congress but the importance of the fact that the House members must stand for reelection every two years cannot be over estimated. Remember how the Clintons couldn't get anyone to vote for their socialized medicine scheme? This despite the fact that Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and almost all Democrats agreed in principle with Hillary's ideas.

There is no possibility of a good outcome this November. However the best way to limit the damage is to elect the most incompetent of the three evil sacks of garbage we have to choose from.