SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month

March 2007
Volume 14, Number 3

Editor: Joe Sobran
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CONTENTS
Features
  -> Mighty White of You, Hillary!
  -> The End in View
The Sobran Forum
  -> Jonah Jumps the Whale -- for Giuliani
Cartoons (Baloo)
"Reactionary Utopian" Columns Reprinted in This Issue



FEATURES

Mighty White of You, Hillary!
(pages 1-2, 6)

     Writing about politics these days takes a lot of 
tact, like being introduced to the Elephant Man. How to 
begin? "Nice suit you're wearing there, Mr. Merrick. 
Who's your tailor?"

     Women and minorities never have a nice day, as we 
all know, and I certainly don't want to give offense; but 
candor also has its claims, so I feel compelled to say 
that Hillary Clinton, the aging, Geritol-swigging Queen 
of the Boomers, increasingly reminds me -- and I'll bet 
I'm not the only one -- of Cathy Bates in MISERY. This 
bodes ill, as they say, for her 2008 presidential hopes. 
Yet that isn't the end of it.

     Let me say up front that much as I distrust Hillary, 
I prefer her to most of the other hopefuls so far, if 
only by default, as I'll explain later.

     Because the candidates are so numerous this time, 
it's easy to forget that the elected president (and for 
that matter every presidential nominee of the two major 
parties) has always been the last man standing. That is 
to say, a white male. Hillary is a white female.

     Barack Obama, on the other hand, the current 
American Idol of American politics, is a half-white male. 
But "half-white" still means nonwhite (in diverse, 
multiracial, multicultural America, the word "mulatto" is 
taboo, like the more recent "macaca"), yet there is 
grumbling that he is "not black enough" from the sort of 
people who think Sidney Poitier should have been more 
like Superfly. If that's normative for blackness, Obama 
should carry a switchblade (assuming he doesn't already) 
and address Hillary, when she tries to bully him, as 
"bitch" and "ho." His campaign rallies could also feature 
the theme from SHAFT.

     No, I haven't forgotten that Hillary is from 
Illinois, too. So was Abe Lincoln, though he was born in 
Kentucky, technically. Obama is stressing his Lincoln 
parallels, as in his choice of Springfield to declare his 
candidacy, but he seems unaware that the Great 
Emancipator opposed letting blacks vote in Illinois. 
True, Lincoln opposed slavery, after a fashion, as long 
as freed blacks could be induced to leave the continent. 
He didn't call them "African Americans," which he'd have 
thought a contradiction in terms; he called them 
"Africans" (or, more privately, "niggers"), giving their 
"physical difference" from whites as the compelling 
reason to deny them "social and political equality." 
Though he said repeatedly that "all men are created 
equal," his dream of an all-white America differed 
somewhat from the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. It was 
more like the dream of George Lincoln Rockwell.

     Today Abe Lincoln, barring some metamorphosis, would 
have been most at home among neo-Nazis. No wonder 
Frederick Douglass called him "pre-eminently the white 
man's president." In our world he'd be known as Skinhead 
Lincoln.

     Not that I'd urge Hillary to stress these easily 
ascertainable data. That might cost her more than it 
would gain her. When it comes to Lincoln, even historians 
know enough to dummy up. In mass politics the prudent 
rule is simple: Get real. Stick to the beloved imaginary 
Abe. Abe the apostle of colorblind equality and 
brotherhood.

     The old Obama -- the Obama of yesteryear, 2006 -- 
needs a makeover. The electorate might respond well to a 
newer, funkier Obama. Yet in today's volatile atmosphere, 
that approach might backfire. Hillary has her own 
well-paid black hirelings, who point out, reasonably 
enough, that a black at the head of the ticket could drag 
down all other Democratic candidates.

     This is a powerful argument, but it cuts both ways. 
A woman at the head of the ticket, particularly the most 
hated woman in America, could also drag her whole party 
down. Even if she wins.

     To make matters worse, Hillary may also be the most 
hated woman in the Democratic Party! After years of 
trying to soften her liberal image, guess whom she has 
infuriated: liberals. Her positions on the Iraq war, gay 
marriage, the flag-burning amendment, and even abortion 
-- all these have alienated some of her strongest friends 
and supporters of yore, notably in the movie industry, 
only recently a Clinton stronghold. Few think she has 
reached her new positions out of sincere conviction: 
always a bitch, she is now arguably a ho.

     The Hollywood bellwether David Geffen of DreamWorks 
has told Maureen Dowd of the NEW YORK TIMES why he is 
switching to her rival: Obama is "inspirational," whereas 
the Clintons are such liars that "it's troubling" (and, 
for good measure, Geffen hints that Bill hasn't changed 
his randy ways). The spreading conviction among Dems is 
that even with 100 percent name recognition, Hillary 
can't win. And lots of them won't forgive her for backing 
the war at first, even though she has repented. She has 
been virtually Bushified. Serves the bitch right. Ho, ho, 
ho.

     Obama is also chipping diligently into Hillary's 
once-strong black support. When both of them spoke on the 
same day in Selma, Alabama, he could thank the civil 
rights movement of the Sixties for paving the way for a 
black president; Hillary could hardly match that! If 
elected, would Obama show up for his inauguration wearing 
an Afro and an oversized zoot suit?

     All of which brings us back to the question, If 
Hillary and Obama cancel each other out, who will be the 
last man standing? The likely answer is the cute little 
Disney cartoon rodent John Edwards, who has hinted, 
despite some pro forma griping about the Iraq war, that 
he would not be totally averse to nuking Iran. ("All 
options are on the table," he told an Israeli audience. 
"Repeat: =all= options.") And being a slick white guy, 
Edwards would probably crush any Republican in November. 
After eight years of Bush, a GOP victory would be a 
miracle. And considering the choices, not a very nice 
sort of miracle; though we must also take into account 
the Democrats' genius for losing apparently sure things.

     For some reason, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani 
is now leading the Republican pack. Pro-abortion, 
pro-homo, =and= pro-war, with a marital record that would 
scandalize ever-decadent Tinseltown, not on speaking 
terms with his own children, Giuliani's chief claim to 
fame is having struck doughty poses after the 9/11 
attacks (themselves the result of the sort of pandering 
Middle East policy he espouses). His other qualifications 
to be national duce escape me.

     Trailing Giuliani slightly, and only slightly less 
odious, is Arizona's senator John McCain, a pathological 
hawk who, even before 9/11, was telling Jewish audiences 
that the United States should go to war for Israel even 
if it wasn't in America's interest to do so. Hillary may 
be the only bitch in the race, but she's far from being 
the only ho.

     Far behind this sorry pair (whose fading glamour 
appeals chiefly to neoconservatives) are such hopeless 
curiosities as Governor Mitt the Massachusetts Mormon 
Romney, who, as NATIONAL REVIEW's Kate O'Beirne points 
out, is the only solid monogamist of the three. Like 
Giuliani and McCain, he is a white male; like Hillary, he 
has a record of kaleidoscopic conviction, only more 
dizzying. He's counting on conservative voters to trust 
that the views he has adopted this week are for keeps, 
rather like Giuliani's latest nuptial vows. We need not 
detain ourselves with such also-rans as George Allen and 
Newt Gingrich, except to congratulate ourselves on their 
futility. It's hard to imagine conservatives turning out 
enthusiastically for any of the soggy GOP options.

     Given this appalling field, is there any hope for a 
dark horse to surge to the fore and rescue us? You may as 
well pine for party bosses to settle everything in a 
smoke-filled room, if such a room is still legal anywhere 
in this great land of ours. Financial realities have made 
the dark horse extinct, unless a Ross Perot decides to 
give it another go.

     Still, all things considered, it looks as if only 
Hillary can raise, and has raised, the awesome amount of 
money now needed by any little white boy who dreams of 
growing up to be president. And no Republican can win, 
unless the Democrats can actually blow it again. Sure, 
Obama and Edwards and the nation's comedians can make 
Hillary look bad, but so what?

     I've about given up on Delaware's Joe Biden -- 
clean, articulate, and white, mildly silly but affable 
and charming, too moderate to be perniciously liberal -- 
so I'm resigned to Hillary. What more harm can she really 
do? It's not as if we had any hope of a president who 
took the oath of office literally. Anyway, the next 
president, whoever it is, will arrive at the Oval Office 
with an agenda already decided by fate: coping with the 
Bush aftermath. That doesn't leave much room for 
innovative action.

     Most Americans, in their basic decency, complain 
that because of "partisan bickering" the government can't 
"get things done." Would that it were so! The real 
problem is that it gets a lot done. Way too much, in 
fact. Legislation means coercion, and anyone who is 
serious about freedom would want to repeal laws and 
programs, not make more of them.

     So the most desirable presidential candidate is the 
one least likely to succeed in piling more legal 
obligations on us; one who would be too cautious to rush 
into war and foreign adventures, one unlikely to mobilize 
Congress into overweening action. My guess is that that 
would be the hated Hillary. George W. Bush has made a 
difference; she won't. That's all I ask of a president 
now.

     Only active, volcanic hatred of Hillary can spur a 
sufficiently large turnout to produce a Republican 
victory next year; hatred is the only force strong enough 
to counter the power of money in politics. But how potent 
will lingering Hillary-hatred be by November 2008? Won't 
most voters see her as a symbol of the good old days 
before Bush? And after all, she has morphed into the 
candidate liberals loathe most. That has to count for 
something, doesn't it?

     I hate her too, but she has my vote. So to speak. 
Jefferson Davis isn't running this year.



The End in View
(page 2)

THE VERDICT: The Scooter Libby trial is over, pending 
appeal, but don't look for closure soon. The minute he 
was convicted, the neocon chorus was demanding a 
presidential pardon; obviously this trial hadn't done the 
War Party (or Dick Cheney) any good. All I know is that 
Valerie Plame is one foxy lady!

TRUE (I THINK) STORY: Apart from the ever-vigilant Joke 
Police, I'm always having run-ins with the law. The other 
day, pulling up beside a police cruiser, I yelled, 
"You'll never take me alive, copper!" I quickly 
explained, "I've always wanted to say that." In reply, he 
told me of an old woman in traffic court. The judge told 
her, "This court finds you guilty of speeding and orders 
that you be hanged by the neck until dead. (I've always 
wanted to say that.)" Sometimes the taxpayer almost gets 
his money's worth from government.

LOOKING BACK: Speaking of Cheney, 'twas he who told us 
five years ago, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein 
now [!] has weapons of mass destruction." Sounds absurd 
now, doesn't it? "Downright goofy" would be putting it 
mildly. If Saddam had had even a single nuke, would he 
have dared use it against us? He wasn't suicidal, and in 
the end, as I recall, he didn't die by his own hand. Yet 
this was the line we heard from Cheney, Bush, Rummy, 
Condi, and, yes, Colin. The worst lie, as I observed at 
the time, was not WMDs, but "no doubt." Seldom has such 
audacious mendacity been combined with such lunatic bad 
judgment.

MAKING BABIES: If it weren't for the lesbian clergy, the 
Episcopalians might not be reproducing at all. This is 
the church that was launched by the heterosexual (rather 
spectacularly so) Henry VIII.

AFTERTHOUGHT: And by the way -- aren't the Cheneys 
Episcopalians?

JUDGES GONE WILD: Mirabile dictu, a Federal appeals court 
has struck down Washington, D.C.'s gun control laws on 
grounds that they violate the Second Amendment. If that's 
the case, what's the point of having a Living Document?

CONSOLATION: The best thing about the Bush years has been 
the Bush jokes. (To take one of a thousand, Conan O'Brien 
says of Bush's warnings on Iran, "He just got out his old 
Iraq speeches and changed all the Qs to Ns.") But if 
anything happened to Cheney, who would explain them to 
the president? Or is that part of the Secret Service's 
job?


THE SOBRAN FORUM

Jonah Jumps the Whale -- for Giuliani
by Paul Gottfried

     Having already seen ample evidence that the neocon 
Evil Empire is wild about Rudy Giuliani and supports him 
enthusiastically for president, last week I encountered 
further proof courtesy of Jonah Goldberg, who is 
syndicated in the Lancaster New Era. Although our evening 
paper pretends to be on the center-right, in contrast to 
its equally narcoleptic morning counterpart, which is 
Democratic, most of the items in both papers come out of 
decidedly leftist news services. The featured columnists 
every evening are unfailingly neoconservatives, so much 
so that after several nights of the assorted maunderings 
of that predictable Bushite windbag Cal Thomas, I eagerly 
await Jonah's relatively peppy prose.

     In Jonah's latest offering, "Romney, Giuliani: 
Canaries in Coal Mine of Conservative Politics," one can 
locate the party line already laid out by Richard 
Brookhiser, Dennis Miller on FOX, John Podhoretz, William 
Kristol, the NEW YORK SUN, and the NEW YORK POST about 
which presidential hopeful we best appreciate. What makes 
Jonah's presentation less programmed than the other 
endorsements, however, is that he takes his time 
approaching the big issue. He talks about Romney's 
tactical about-turn on abortion and why this candidate 
just can't cut it with real conservatives. Then he gets 
on to the good guy, who is becoming apparently 
irresistible to voters: "Of course, Giuliani's national 
profile expanded enormously because of 9/11. And while 
the press harps on that point, the more interesting part 
of the story lies elsewhere. The war on terror hasn't 
just changed Giuliani's profile as a crisis leader; it's 
changed the attitude of many Americans, particularly 
conservatives, about the central crisis facing the 
country." Moreover, "It's not that pro-lifers are less 
pro-life or that social conservatives are suddenly OK 
with homosexuality, gun control, and other issues where 
Giuliani's dissent from mainstream conservative opinion 
would normally disqualify him. It's that they really, 
really believe the war on terror is for real."

     There are three questions, although there may be 
more if I think longer, that this implied endorsement 
occasions. One, why don't those who notice Giuliani's 
leftist social views bring up the one that has been most 
on display: his exuberant support of illegal immigration? 
A review essay of mine, printed in the spring 2006 issue 
of the Australian NATIONAL OBSERVER, which starts and 
finishes with remarks on Pat Buchanan's recent 
bestseller, STATE OF EMERGENCY: THE THIRD WORLD INVASION 
AND CONQUEST OF AMERICA, points out Giuliani's shocking 
public positions on illegals. For those who are 
supposedly concerned about what is usually interpreted as 
a wedge issue for Republicans, the fact that Rudy has 
called for increased social services to illegals should 
influence their electoral choices. One wonders whether 
the media, and particularly Rudy's neocon boosters, have 
not been keeping this burning issue out of the public 
discussion.

     Two, how seriously can one take Jonah's assurance 
that "social conservatives" (whatever the heck that 
means) are not less conservative than they used to be, if 
they have abandoned their protection of innocent life and 
the sanctity of heterosexual marriage to back a swinging, 
out-of-work, former New York mayor who is as far to the 
left on social issues as, and even farther to the left on 
immigration than, his likely Democratic presidential 
opponent? I've no trouble believing that this change of 
position has happened for nonmoral reasons, namely, that 
self-proclaimed conservatives and the entire 
"conservative movement" have had their minds or arms 
twisted to vote for a leftist who is "good" on Israel and 
foreign crusades for democracy. What is unlikely, 
however, is that the enthusiasm for Giuliani has anything 
to do with prioritizing deeply held convictions. It 
merely shows the undiminished power of the 
neoconservative media in handling small minds and 
opportunistic placeholders. Or else the pressure placed 
by Republican operatives, who are afraid of losing 
patronage if Hillary wins and who are pushing their local 
organizations to back a left-leaning Republican 
politician, that is, someone who may be able to wrest the 
presidential election from the Democrats. As the French 
say, d'autres temps, d'autres moeurs. Unless I'm 
mistaken, those who ceaselessly yakked about Clinton's 
lechery are now rejoicing over the manliness of their 
preferred lecher of the hour. Two weeks ago, the onetime 
Pecksniffs at the NEW YORK POST placed on their front 
page a tasteless photo, which was meant to impress, of 
Giuliani French-kissing his latest spouse. And this from 
a paper that has sounded like Billy Sunday preparing for 
the Apocalypse when it comes to highlighting Bill 
Clinton's affairs.

     Three, why doesn't Jonah offer any better evidence 
for his weighty judgments than what he picked up at the 
"NATIONAL REVIEW conservative summit last month"? 
Supposedly Romney laid an egg there as a speaker by 
addressing the pro-life issue. Those assembled registered 
"disappointment" that Romney proceeded to discuss social 
issues and failed to stress the war against terror. It is 
hard to imagine what the reader is supposed to learn from 
this "disappointment," however "palpable" it was 
according to Jonah. The gathering to which Jonah refers 
would have had the spontaneity of a meeting of the 
geriatric Soviet Politburo or, to find an even more 
dramatic example of obedient consensus, a meeting of 
Heritage Foundation staffers called to discuss Middle 
Eastern policy proposals. I'm not sure that one can learn 
much about opinions in the American heartland by 
schmoozing with Rod Dreher, Ramesh Ponnuru, and David 
Frum. Who cares that they say the obvious, that they 
agree with the neocons' presidential choice, and that 
Israel and exporting democracy are the key issues for the 
next presidential race! Although Jonah would not very 
likely be persuaded to do anything quite so 
intellectually honest or daring, he might, for the sake 
of a fuller view of political reality, pay attention to 
those who write for and read this website [i.e., 
www.takimag.com]. There are at least as many of us around 
here as those who attend NR "conservative summits," and I 
imagine that our median intelligence is considerably 
higher -- or at least less constrained.

     For the sake of full disclosure, in a two-way race 
between Hillary and Giuliani in which I was required to 
vote, I would reluctantly give my ballot to the less 
dangerous and less radical candidate from New York, the 
former first lady. I could not imagine a candidate whom I 
as a Taft Republican would find less agreeable in the 
White House than Giuliani, and not only for his positions 
on foreign affairs. His stated views on illegal 
immigration are at least as execrable as those of Teddy 
Kennedy.

     Paul E. Gottfried, Ph.D., is the Raffensperger 
Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College 
(Elizabethtown, PA) and a Guggenheim recipient. He is an 
adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute. He is the author 
of numerous articles and eight books, including, AFTER 
LIBERALISM: MASS DEMOCRACY IN THE MANAGERIAL STATE 
(Princeton University Press), THE STRANGE DEATH OF 
MARXISM: THE EUROPEAN LEFT IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM 
(University of Missouri Press), and MULTICULTURALISM AND 
THE POLITICS OF GUILT: TOWARDS OF SECULAR THEOCRACY 
(University of Missouri Press), and of the forthcoming 
BASELESS CONSERVATISM: MAKING SENSE OF THE AMERICAN RIGHT 
(Palgrave Macmillan).

     This article originally appeared at www.takimag.com. 
It is reprinted with permission.



CARTOONS (Baloo)
http://www.sobran.com/issue_cartoons/2007-03/2007-03-
cartoons.shtml



REPRINTED COLUMNS ("The Reactionary Utopian")
(pages 4, 7-12)

* Ms. President? (January 29, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070129.shtml

* A Better Tyrant? (February 1, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070201.shtml

* America after Anna Nicole (February 12, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070212.shtml

* Rated FDR (February 15, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070215.shtml

* Fine Filed Phrases (February 22, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070222.shtml

* How to Make a Great Movie (February 26, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070226.shtml

* The Fun of Falstaff (March 1, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070301.shtml

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All articles are written by Joe Sobran, except where
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[ENDS]