Conservatives are outraged over an actual outrage? Color me impressed.

It may have taken awhile, but thanks to Patrick Courrielche’s exposé at, of all places, Big Hollywood, conservatives are positively fuming over the Bush Administration‘s decision to funnel $2.2 billion through the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives into programs that specifically support the President’s ideological and policy commitments, like the Abstinence Education Program, designed to “enable states to provide abstinence education and mentoring, counseling, and adult supervision to promote abstinence from sexual activity.”

Conservatives are rightly upset with a speech Bush delivered at the 2004 White House National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, in which he said “[i]t’s hard to be a faith-based program if you can’t practice faith [and] the message to you is, we’re changing the culture here in America.”

“It’s hard to read his comments as anything but a call for groups to engage in a partisan campaign on behalf of the Bush Administration’s policy agenda,” argued John Hinderaker. Nick Gillespie agreed, saying that “[i]f you’ve ever wondered—and worried—about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10, 2009 telecon[ference call] between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts and a group of ‘independent artists from around the country.’”

Wait wait wait—I thought conservatives were upset because the White House created an office, installed it five federal agencies, then used them to fund a clearly partisan policy agenda to the tune of $2.2 billion. You mean to tell me all those links are about an August 10^th conference call that tried to wrangle up support for the current President’s National Day of Service—a call in which not one cent of the NEA’s $155 million budget was dispensed or even offered?

They are.

All the outrage centers around a conference call designed, in the words soon-to-be-becked* Yosi Sergant, “to raise the visibility” for a program whose purpose is to encourage “all Americans and others throughout the world to voluntarily perform at least one good deed or another service activity on the anniversary of 9/11 each year, and on other days marked by terrorist events.” The problem, it seems, is that the NEA is supposed to be above partisanship, and supporting the President’s United We Serve initiative is seen by conservatives to be a partisan issue. Here are some of its highly partisan goals:

We want to make Americans’ lives better by asking everybody to participate in shaping the life of their community and make the quality of life better.

Clearly, “making Americans’ lives better” is a partisan issue. Which would be acceptable, were the administration not being so heavy-handed:

[H]ow do we move the people who look to each of you for guidance to get involved? We have to leave that to you because nobody else knows how to do it better than you do[.]

Clearly, dictating that individual organizations ought to do what they think is appropriate in a manner of their own choosing is but one step from installing Obama as Dictator for Life. Which is what they will do, because these are doggedly partisan projects:

I hearken back to an example that happened right before election day during the campaign when a bunch of DJs got together and put on a conference call for all the top radio and club DJs around the country who got onto a telephone call and encouraged everyone to make DJ mixes using songs that would encourage people to get out and vote.

And when these hip-hop-listening kids went out and voted for whomever they so desired, who did they vote for? The Dictator for Life, who now wants them to

to go out and donate blood or adopt an alley way or identify some walls in [their] neighborhood that have been stricken with graffiti that need a mural.

According to conservatives, encouraging artists to encourage kids to donate blood is now a partisan activity because it falls under the heading of “service,” and “service” is communism; “service” is socialism; “service” is Marxism; “service” is fascism.

So now, for conservatives, “service” is partisan.

That’s the root of all this outrage—that the NEA would listen in on a conference call designed to spread the word about the National Day of Service.  For more on this and other trivial items that are suddenly important after eight years of whistling while actual civil liberties were being non-hypothetically violated on a regular basis, watch the Glenn Beck Show tonight on FOXNews.

*beck v. trans. beck-ing, beck-ed, to be baselessly attacked by an idiot with a megaphone, then have those accusations alter your life for the worse because it’s politically expedient for your spineless superiors to demote or fire you

Alternatively (and to maintain my honor):

beck, v. trans. beck-ing, beck-ed, to baselessly attack an innocuous public official, then have those accusations alter that official's life for the worse because it's politically expedient for their superiors to demote or fire them, esp. when done by idiots with megaphones. Also intr.

(x-posted.)

Comments

[happyfeet]

I hear you Mr. SEK but this part ...

Andersen writes, "These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers." Andersen quotes a Hyde Park neighbor, "Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both."

... it suggests that it's not a closed question how much input Ayers had on that book M'chelle's husband wrote about his daddy what abandoned him so many years ago.

I agree that Andersen brings nothing to bear on the question of authorship per se. But did our little president man collaborate with a domestic commie terrorist cum domestic commie academic on his bestselling book? I don't know the answer to that. But Andersen suggests he did.

I would like an investigation and also many news stories what explore this possibility. Where is NPR's hard-hitting investigation?

but yes also that was cheesy of Cashill

[Bob Reed]

OK, so I just noticed SEK addressing the topic upthread, my mistake. But, I notice that he didn't address this part of the excerpt:

"To flesh out his family history, Obama had taped interviews with various family members. Andersen writes, 'These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers.' Andersen quotes a Hyde Park neighbor, 'Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both.'"

I don't see how anyone can claim that these anecdotal references would be motivated by Cashill's earlier assertions; regardless of whether Andersen also cited other related quotes from Cashill...

And please don't read any malice, or other ill intent, into my commentary; snark perhaps, but no malice or ill will. And I'd appreciate witholding your ad hominem inference that I'm stupid as well...

[Bob Reed]

Oh and one more thing:

Why hasn't the President or his people refuted or otherwise addressed this allegation, now that Andersen has seemingly confirmed Ayers as the ghostwriter of Dreams!...

I realize he's busy transforming the nation into a workers paradise like, you know, Cuba or Venezuela, as well as essentially surrendering our strategic advantage to the Russians, and by extension the Chinese as well; but I would think they would be slapping something like this down...

You know, in a similar fashion to their demostrated vindictiveness with Fox news (a mistake by the way, especially in light of this poll- http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=170621), anyone who opposes Obamacare, or anyone who simply doesn't support any part of their legislative agenda.

[SEK]

happy, there's a big, huge problem with this part:

Andersen writes, "These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers." Andersen quotes a Hyde Park neighbor, "Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both."

Namely, that those two statements aren't connected. That neighbor is not the person who made the first statement---in fact, no one did. Those are Anderson's words, and they're based on a claim that, as his legally-vetted language demonstrates, no one wants any part of. As I noted in the post above, Anderson uses the conditional phrase "would be significant" because he can provide no solid evidence that the claim is true. As someone who has taught journalism, I can assure you that his decision to write "would be" over "was" wasn't a stylistic one.

But did our little president man collaborate with a domestic commie terrorist cum domestic commie academic on his bestselling book? I don't know the answer to that. But Andersen suggests he did.

But Anderson only "suggests" because that's the best he can do in the absence of evidence. Given that even he doesn't have enough faith in his credibility of his source to write "was" over "would be," I don't think he or Cashill will ever be able to do anything other than write pathetically tendentious "literary analyses" (Cashill) and suggest that they might could be meaningful (Anderson).

[SEK]

Sorry Bob, didn't see your comments. I think I addressed the first one in my response to happy: disconnected sentences juxtaposed so as to seem related, legalistic language revealing Anderson's own qualms with the credibility of that source, etc. But as to this:

Why hasn't the President or his people refuted or otherwise addressed this allegation, now that Andersen has seemingly confirmed Ayers as the ghostwriter of Dreams!

I know! Which reminds me, where's his long-form birth certificate! I kid, I kid . . . but the current administration has consistently bit its tongue in the face of unadulterated crazy, so I'm not surprised that it hasn't dignified Cashill's, and now Anderson's, nonsense with a formal denial.

[happyfeet]

oh. You're right. Cashill made a botch of his post and Andersen needs to step up with some irrefutable proof I think.

I feel like I should have caught that.

But it's quite possible that all of this - Andersen's book - Cashill's botch of a post - Mr. SEK's deconstruction of both - it might all be part of an ongoing and increasingly neurotic avoidance of the question of whether or not VV is indeed as cute as pickles.

[SEK]

If you've come here from Jeff's place, here's the other post happy---who, by the by, is wrong about VV being cute as a pickle---is talking about.

[Bob Reed]

Thanks for answering SEK, but what prevents Andersens choice of wording, as if he was in the past speaking about the future, is just not poor style or an attempt to strike a more melodramatic or prophetic tone; what's keeping that stylistic tact from being just another rhetorical flourish?

To assume so unfairly damns him as a conniving liar, unless, you have forst hand knowledge of the truth...

With all due respect

[Bob Reed]

Talk about poor writing!

"...is just not poor style..." should be, "from being just poor style"...

Pardon me...

[SEK]

what prevents Andersen's choice of wording, as if he was in the past speaking about the future, from not just being poor style or an attempt to strike a more melodramatic or prophetic tone; what's keeping that stylistic tact from being just another rhetorical flourish?

Because it's a speculative claim in an unauthorized biography and we live in a tort-happy world. As I noted in the comments to the other post, Andersen writes in a particularly sue-happy sub-genre and his publishers, not to mention their lawyers, exercise extreme timidity when it comes to speculative claims so that, should a lawsuit ensue, the shield of plausible deniability protects both them and their author.

All of which is the roundabout way of saying that anytime you read a conditional statement in an unauthorized biography, you can rest assured that it's because the author's basing his speculation on evidence that neither he nor his publisher's nor his publisher's lawyers are convinced comes from a credible source. If Andersen thought otherwise, he wouldn't have talked about what the implications would be, but what they actually were. So we're not only dealing with an unnamed and anonymous source, we're dealing with an untrustworthy unnamed and anonymous source and that, as the kids say, is almost certainly to be made of FAIL.

[SEK]

Hit post too quickly. I meant to add:

With all due respect.

Contrary to what you may believe if you only know me through the tall-tales they tell at Jeff's place, I don't believe I'm due any respect I don't earn. All I ask is that people remain civil in their disagreement, lest we have a repeat of what happened when I moved and was offline for a week and everyone exploded at everybody else.

[SEK]

FYI y'all what been writing at places I've been asked not to post to: if you don't know from publishing, your opinions on what's stylistic vs. what's a product of our tort-happy culture aren't worth the pixels they're not printed on. Of course, they could be correct, if a publishing house hated capitalism and wanted to be sued six ways to Sunday every week for a period to be determined by the party of the suit, then it would make sense for them to court libel and inevitable bankruptcy willy-nilly . . . but given that Andersen specializes in obscenely topical unauthorized biographies designed to make a quick buck, do you really believe his publisher's lawyers aren't fine-combing his book in order to maximize his book's profit potential while simultaneously minimizing the odds of a future lawsuit?

Seriously, it's odd how quickly pro-market types can embrace patently anti-market explanations when they're politically convenient. But then, what do I know, I'm just the guy who treated Bob Reed with respect before he learned that his civility was a rank front. (I may not post there, Bob, I can read what you've written, and I would like to thank you for reciprocating the benefit of the doubt I offered you with insults.)

[JeffG]

"Slam-dunk rebuttal"? SEK says Anderson spoke to Cashill. Cashill denies this.

[Shakes]

What do you think would happen to a person if they came forward and put their name to these allegations. Suppose you could testify to the fact that Obama and Ayers were friends that worked together on the book.

I think that person would be destroyed.

[SEK]

God, but you have become tiresome. If you read the other post I wrote, in which I quote an excerpt from Andersen's book, you'd know that Andersen claims he spoke to Cashill. For the lazy:

In the end, Ayers's contribution of Barack's Dreams from My Father would be significant—so much so that the book's language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similiarity to Ayers's own writings . . .

"There was a good deal of literary back-scratching going on in Hyde Park," said writer Jack Cashill, who noted that a mutual friend of Barack and Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, thanked Ayers for helping him with his book Resurrecting Empire. Ayers, explained Cashill, "provided an informal editing service for like-minded friends in the neighborhood."

The emphasis is mine, the duplicity, Andersen. The problem, Jeff, is that you're now forced into a corner: either you stand with Cashill, who's an idiot, or with Andersen, who lied in print about speaking to said idiot. Cashill can deny being Andersen's source, but that just makes Andersen less credible, not more, because lying about having spoken to an idiot is worse than just having been taken in by one.

Seriously, when you look around and find yourself surrounded by liars, hacks, and dupes, it's time to reevaluate your surroundings. The fact that you've come out of your self-imposed retirement/perpetual pity party to attack me bespeaks of a lameness wide and deep, Jeff. I mean, you obviously don't care what I think, which is why you return from the dead to discredit me, then post a comment here to make sure I know you've risen.

[SEK]

Shakes, you realize, don't you, that you can go to Amazon and search for "309" to see the people Andersen interviewed, don't you? One of them is the source, but I doubt we'll find a month from now that John Kerry, Ed Koch or Rick Lazio's been the victim of a hit by a secret Obama operative. You'll also note that Andersen lists these people as the sources for three chapters and doesn't specify who had input into what, thereby making it damn near impossible to know what came from where. This is the sort of thing that undergraduates and celebrity biographers do when they want to obfuscate---when they want to prevent future researchers from being able to independently confirm their findings. If you want that to be the banner you run under, that's fine, but don't be disappointed when anyone with a hint of self-respect refuses to take you seriously.

Also, for those of Jeff's readers who, like B Moe, think I invented that quotation in my previous comment and subsequent post: you can read the passage I invented by clicking on the above and searching for "165." I would've mentioned this last night, but stupidly, it turns out, assumed you would have assumed you'd figure that out on your own.

[Ahistoricality]

Cashill denies this.

What a stupid thing to do! Either he's a liar, because it's there in print, or he's a really, really bad journalist/writer, because he misrepresents his sources. Either way, there's no winning.

[Luther Blissett]

Scott, I don't want to feed the wingnuts, but there's no way to conclude that Cashill was the *only* source of this information. The passage about oral histories being given to Ayers is unattributed. So you can conclude that Andersen (a) lied; (b) listened to a crazy; or (c) received this information from a non-crazy. But there's not enough evidence to draw any conclusion at this point.

[Pablo]

Slam dunk?
Ooooooh, sorry.

But I'm with you Ahisoricality. Big helpings of both stupid and malicious here.

[SEK]

I'm not about to refute patent nonsense on a point-by-point basis, but it did inspire me into asking some general questions:

1. Ain't it funny how retired partisan hacks/professional pity-party planners will claim that they don't care what their critics say or think about them, then come out of retirement to attack one of their critics and post a comment on his site to be certain that the critic whose opinion is ostensibly immaterial knows he has been attacked?
2. Ain't it funny how partisan hacks will respond to inquiries from other partisan hacks but not from people critical of them?
3. Ain't it funny how partisan hacks will use the non-responses of fellow partisan hacks against people critical of them? 
4. Ain't it funny how partisan hacks will receive an email from other partisan hacks in which it is revealed that someone lied about having spoken to someone else and claim that this lie makes that first someone more credible?
5. Ain't it funny how partisan hacks will claim not to have spoken to someone, then state in an email that they know that that someone's "retelling of the story was based on what he had been told by someone very close to the action"?
6. Ain't it funny how partisan hacks will insist that the source of an unauthorized biography might could be its subject?
7. Ain't it funny how partisan hacks will think that a "highly successful career as a celebrity journalist" means that someone overbrims with integrity?
8. Ain't it funny how partisan hacks will believe what other partisan hacks say even when the latter contradict themselves mightily in the span of two sentences?  

The answer to all the questions but the first is, obviously, that serial dishonesty in the service of a bankrupt ideology ain't funny in the least.  I exclude the first because that's not a question of political propriety—it's pathetic in the most ordinary fashion . . . like the most hated kid in high school, the one who loudly declares that he doesn't care about what people think about him but privately fantasizes about Columbine.