Posts Tagged ‘John Podhoretz’

Marianne Williamson Dominates Second Debate

Wednesday, July 31st, 2019

That headline is not my contention (I didn’t watch the debate, for Reasons), but the consensus of people who did watch it. Jim Geraghty:

A lot of us are laughing about Marianne Williamson, but there’s some of that same dynamic that drove Trump to the nomination in 2016. She’s a figure who’s famous for being connected to the entertainment world, who isn’t interested in policy details, and who emotes in a way that generates raucous applause from the audience. She’s the political candidate for people who aren’t that into politics. Ben Smith of BuzzFeed mentioned that a Marianne Williamson staffer told him, “when she visits the networks, reporters and producers sneer at her, but the makeup artists always cry when they meet her.”

And her lack of interest in policy means she’s always talking about bigger, vaguer, more emotionally resonant themes in her own kooky way: “This is part of the dark underbelly of American society, the rainfall, the bigotry, and the entire conversation that we’re having here tonight, if you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.” A chunk of the American people is going to find talk about “dark psychic force” as crystal-waving nonsense. Another chunk of the American people is going to hear Williamson and respond, “finally, a candidate is addressing the real problem.”

John Podhoretz:

Well, Tuesday night in Detroit, the veteran New Age motivational speaker Marianne Williamson hit it out of the park and brought the Democratic Party into the Nutcase Era.

The key problem afflicting America, in Williamson’s view, is a “dark psychic force” that is weaving a racial divide. It is the cause of white nationalism. That racial divide is causing an “emotional imbalance” that is interfering with human thriving. And this betrays the purposes of the founding fathers, who brought America into being to allow us all to have “possibilities.”

To most of us elitists, this either sounds wacko on its own terms or is dismissible as a semi-pagan illiterate translation of classic Christian thinking about the devil’s role in ordinary life. But we dismiss the power of this approach at our peril. These are key themes not only through American history, but also ideas that have played a significant role in the Age of Oprah.

Williamson has been speaking in this way to gigantic audiences for close to 40 years, under the East Coast radar. And you know what? She’s really good at it. And she brought real feeling and passion to the most visceral issue for Democrats at the present moment. She essentially said that racism and white supremacy are nothing less than demonic and that saving America from their evil is a moral task.

She dominated post-debate search results:

She won a Drudge post-debate straw poll with 48%, though no idea of the methodology there.

This bit was evidently the most-applauded speech of the night:

That’s mostly the usual far-left Social Justice Warrior garbage the hard left pushes these days, but she says it better and with more conviction than all the other clowns.

Robert Stacy McCain (who, like me, was early on covering the Williamson campaign):

Here is the thing I keep reminding my conservative friends: You have to keep in mind that this is about Democratic primary voters, the kind of highly motivated hard-core leftists who will turn out on a snowy February night to participate in an Iowa precinct caucus. If you tell me that Marianne Williamson is “too crazy” to win, my answer is, “You’re telling me Elizabeth Warren is not crazy? Bernie Sanders is not crazy?”

If candidates like Warren and Sanders now define what is “mainstream” for Democrats, there is no feasible limit on what is “mainstream,” and the only reason Marianne Williamson is considered a long-shot candidate is because the extremist left-wing fringe has become overcrowded.

More tweets on Williamson:

And another debate is up tonight…

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Posted in Democrats, Elections | 1 Comment »

Twitter’s War Against Conservatives Widens

Monday, February 22nd, 2016

Well, lots of activity on the #FreeStacy front, so here’s a quick update:

  • Twitter has now suspended McCain’s backup account @SexTroubleBook.
  • Actor Adam Baldwin’s verified account appears to have been “shadowbanned” (i.e., his account has not been suspended, but none of his Tweets, except the one he has pinned at top, appear are visible to other users.
  • Discussion of the current problem and how to fix it. Including “Dismantle the kangaroo court” and “Fire CEO Jack Dorsey.” “The ‘Trust and Safety Council’ was Dorsey’s brainchild, and he’s the one who chose to give it over to political hacks with an axe to grind. In other words, while Twitter’s user base has been leveling off and its share price has been going down in flames, he’s been busy hatching a scheme to drive away even more of its users.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Conservative writer John Podhoretz’ blue “verified” check-mark on Twitter was breifly removed over the weekend, then restored.

    • It appears more and more that Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council” should be more properly named “Anita Sarkeesian’s Committee To Ban People Who Say Mean Things About Her.”

    This is a quick post due to Stuff and Things, but possibly more later. Or, as Drudge Report is wont to post, “Developing…”

    Update: Baldwin has announced he’s quitting twitter.

    Update 2: Welcome Ace of Spades HQ Readers! Now Ace just need to add BattleSwarm to the Bloggers in Arms list…

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    Posted in Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | 5 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for December 5, 2014

    Friday, December 5th, 2014

    Let’s jump into it:

  • IRS cites taxpayer confidentiality in defying a federal judge by refusing to hand over documents showing it violated taxpayer confidentiality by sharing that information with the White House.
  • By 2020, some 90% of Americans will be forced onto ObamaCare exchanges.
  • So left-wing stalwart magazine The New Republic just let several long-time editors go, reduced their publishing schedule from 20 issues a year to 10, and put a former Gawker-person in charge as editor, which is just short of putting up a sign reading “Dead Magazine Walking.” John Podhoretz traces their decline to the age of Obama:

    I think the answer is that there never was any Obamaism to champion; there was no serious vision of America and the world being laid out by the administration that provided fertile ground out for intellectual cultivation, for voices on the outside to make sense of that serious vision and help it cohere into an argument. (In the 1980s, ironically, it was the New Republic‘s own Charles Krauthammer who did just that in explicating the “Reagan Doctrine,” though even more ironically, he did it in the pages of Time Magazine rather than in TNR.)

    What there was, instead, was the increasing reliance on the cheap-shottery of the Internet era—in which TNR and others were driven more by a kind of grinding loathing of the Right than by an effort to create a more effective and serious Center-Left. The magazine foundered because liberals foundered, because Obamaism was a cult of personality that demanded fealty rather than a philosophy that demanded explication.

    Also: I was unaware that The Weekly Standard had twice the circulation of The New Republic. And you should check out the rest of that piece, not least for the perfect title…

  • And speaking of Podhoretz, his New York Post piece on why Hillary’s supposed cakewalk to the Democratic nomination is a sign of party weakness is well worth reading: “Hillary Clinton has no natural claim to her party’s nomination. She’s not even an especially gifted politician. Aside from the spectacular incompetence of her 2008 campaign, she is as gaffe-prone as Dan Quayle and as awkward as Bob Dole.”
  • For the left, the truth no longer matters. “For the Left, this is all tribal, white hats vs. black hats. Fraternity members and police officers are, in their view, by definition on the wrong side of every dispute.”
  • Mary Landrieu isn’t just going to get beat in Saturday’s runoff, she’s primed to get slaughtered, trailing in the latest polls by 24 points.
  • European “austerity” isn’t.
  • The European economic crisis has gotten so bad that traditional left-wing and right-wing parties are thinking of teaming up to thwart newly ascendent Euroskeptic parties.
  • Fracking is kicking Putin’s ass. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Battles with jihadists kill 20 in Chechan capital of Grozny. I guess December is rerun season in Russia as well…
  • Wisconsin might be getting ready to pass right-to-work legislation. Hey Wisconsin unions: How’d that whole “recall” thing work out for you? “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
  • Evidently teenage boys have too many cooties to be taken in at the Salvation Army. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • How PBS lied about Ferguson.
  • The Rolling Stone story of an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity continues to unravel. If there was an actual gang rape, the perpetrators should be arrested and tried. If not, Rolling Stone has some editorial house-cleaning to perform…
  • Breitbart demolishes Lena Dunham’s “raped by a Republican” story. Plus this nugget from a liberal college administrator “‘Asking whether or not a victim is telling the truth is irrelevant,’ Ms. Hess proclaimed. ‘It’s just not important if they are telling the truth.'”
  • On the same theme:

  • Andrew Klavan on #GamerGate and the immense gozangas on display in Soul Caliber. Nice shirt! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • The UK announced they’re finally going to pay off their World War I debt. Governments come and go, but sovereign debt is almost immortal…
  • Another day, another 36 people killed by jihadists in Kenya.
  • In Denmark, “27 percent of male descendant of immigrants from non-Western countries aged 20-24 years were convicted of an offense in 2013.”
  • Shakespeare First Folio found.
  • Newly discovered Ayn Rand novel to be published.
  • And speaking of Rand, her longtime disciple/lover Nathaniel Branden died at age 84. I’m sure he would be deeply offended at the suggestion he’s gone on to the afterlife…
  • Detroit man steals ambulance to go to a topless bar.
  • I have no joke here, I just like typing Vegan Strip Club Riot.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, unions, video | 1 Comment »