The Conservative Soldier

Sometimes, the hypocrisy is so blatant, so pronounced, very little commentary or “set up” is required.

When U.S. citizens last year were concerned that a junior Senator from Illinois with a thin voting record, and an inclination to befriend social radicals, was gaining momentum in the Presidential race, it was denounced as “hateful” rage among hotheads. But when voters in Iran take to the streets to protest the suspect “re-election” of their notoriously dictatorial President, it is embraced by Obama as “the ability of people to peacefully dissent.”

Compare and contrast. Talk among yourselves.

President Barack Hussein Obama on Iranians reacting to recent presidential election results, June 15, 2009:
“The democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected.”

Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich, NY Times, June 13, 2009:
“… There have been indications that (American citizens’) rage could spiral out of control. This was evident during the (2008) campaign, when hotheads greeted Obama’s name with “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” at G.O.P. rallies. At first the (John) McCain-(Sarah) Palin campaign fed the anger with accusations that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.”

Don Imus was amused by “rough looking” basketball players. David Letterman found humor in a “slutty looking” public official.

Two mean spirited, ill-timed comments by on-air personalities. But look closer. Different targets. Different results.

Radio host Don Imus in 2007 was vilified as a racist/sexist and was fired after he stepped over the line while joking about the appearance of female collegiate athletes. Earlier this week, TV talk show icon David Letterman unleashed brutally pointed, scripted jokes directed at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughter after both visited New York City.

Making unscripted, unrehearsed remarks on his New York-based, televised radio show (which aired on cable’s MSNBC) two years ago, Imus was chatting off-air with a sports commentator and the show’s lead producer about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. Imus had watched parts of the Rutgers-Tennessee game the previous night.

The comments were made when the radio show was in a commercial break on CBS Radio. However, MSNBC audio and video was rolling at the time. That detail is often lost, or ignored.

“Those are some rough girls,” Imus said of the Rutgers players. “They’ve got tatoos. Those are some nappy headed whoahs, man.”

Initially, Imus was suspended two weeks after a public apology. Ultimately, he was fired by CBS Radio in response to advertiser backlash. It took Imus more than eight months to return to the airwaves. His show was picked up by ABC Radio in December 2007.

Letterman, reading a scripted monologue, stood before millions of viewers and said: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee (baseball) game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

Letterman claims he did not know the Gov. had visited New York with her daughter, Willow, 14. He assumed the trailing daughter had been the more well-known Bristol, an 18-year-old unwed mother. In either case, his punch line was rooted in the absurd notion that the teen-aged daughter of Alaska’s governor is carrying A-Rod’s love child.

“Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes,” he said on CBS last night. “Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” He did not suggest it. He said it.

During his famed Top 10 segment, Letterman outlined 10 things Palin did or said while in the Big Apple. No. 2 in the Top 10: Palin bought cosmetics at Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant look.”

Essentially, Letterman’s woeful attempt at humor at Palin’s expense stepped every bit as far over the line between humor and sexist tastelessness as Imus. Letterman inferred that the 14 year old (or, as he insists, the 18 year old) engaged in sexual intercourse with a Major League Baseball player. He more pointedly said the Gov. of Alaska chooses the appearance of a prostitute.

The contrite apology should not be acceptable and Letterman should be banished. Would the joke have been less brutal had he specified that Rodriquez impregnated the 18-year-old Bristol? Ask a father of an 18-year-old how graphic humor about a daughter’s sexual frolicking would go over around the office water cooler.

As I am writing this, I have found only a handful of editorials suggesting Letterman should be suspended or fired. In fact, the Huffington Post reported two days ago that CBS is close to rewarding Letterman with a two-year contract extension. His current annual pay is north of $30 million.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Letterman gets a free pass from the media because he is an established left wing, Bush hating liberal, who is infuriated by Palin’s conservative stance on social issues. And it is obvious there is another, unspoken difference. Letterman’s joke targets were white women from Alaska. Imus was chuckling about black women from New Jersey.

What would the reaction be if a different white male, say, Don Imus, took the “slutty flight attendant” line and went off on a few well know liberal Democrat females? I can only imagine there would be not only calls for his permanent exile from radio but death threats as well if the names Ginsburg, Pelosi, Obama or Sotomayor were uttered in the same sentence with “slutty”.

Racist? Sexist? Disrespectful? Hateful?

As we are reminded once again this week, that depends entirely on who says it and about whom it is said.

“She is not about interpreting the law; she’s about making policy from an extreme radical left-wing position.  (Obama) just wants one of his own on the court to do his dirty work from the highest court in the land, and she fits the bill.” - Rush Limbaugh, on the air, May 26, 2009

The Conservative Soldier loves humor, respects a sense of humor and does not trust those lacking same. But as much as I want to laugh at the clowns running our country, I always yield to despair just at the moment when the unrehearsed (Joe Biden) and well rehearsed (Barack Hussein Obama) begin their daily stand up routines. As Memorial Day reminds us, freedom is not something with which to trifle. And yet …

On the very day that it took mere hours for Clown Prince Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee to become quickly diminished by her feminist, anti-white Anglo-Saxon, Constitutionally marginal, and very well documented, viewpoints, Obama headed off to Las Vegas (where else?) to headline a fundraiser for none other than Nevada Sen. Harry “War Is Lost” Reid. Obama demands an empathetic court nominee but still jets off hours later to make an appearance for the man who once bemoaned the odors of D.C. tourists descending on the Capitol.

It is not clear which destination Obama would prefer to shut down first, Guantanamo Bay or the Vegas Strip, but we’re fairly certain he would sit down to chat up Iran’s dangerous Ahmadinejad more readily than he would confront Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons. In fact, Gibbons’ request to meet with Obama on this trip was denied by the White House. Obamatrons know Gibbons and Vegas resort owners are still fuming that the President threw the gilded convention city under the bus during a rant about “excess”. Come to think of it, now that Obama owns General Motors, he could have thrown Gibbons under a giant Hummer with monster truck wheels, or a tricked out Escalade.

Despite Latina roots and a so-called slam dunk c.v., Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor might yet become another Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, Bill Richardson, Timothy Geithner, et al. The Obamatrons are always the last ones to recognize the little inconvenient details that make nominees either toxic or, at the very least, controversial and thus weakened from the start (Geithner).

Sotomayor implied, amid her own nervous laughter, in 2005 that she and fellow Court of Appeals judges are lawmakers, rather than law umpires as intended by the Founding Fathers.

The “Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know this is on tape, and I should never say that, because we don’t ‘make law’, I know (laughter). I know. I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it, you know (more laughter). OK … .”

And in 2002, in a speech (so we know it was premeditated), Sotomayor went out of her way to make a point that she can not and, more alarmingly, will not separate her ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background from how she thinks and rules from the bench.

“Justice (Sandra Day) O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases,” Sotomayor said in a Cal-Berkeley speech. “I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since (another scholar) attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. … First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

As her racially charged words were ricocheting across cyberspace (she said what?), Obama boarded Air Force One, ironically, to fly west to speak at a fundraiser for one extremely white male, the Senate Majority Leader.

What conclusion(s) do we draw this day after Memorial Day? Frankly, I am at a loss as I contemplate a Left Wing Poster Bigot being measured for a Supreme Court robe.