PrintJune 20, 2010
Clarice's Pieces
The pixels were hardly dry in last week's Clarice's Pieces when candidates for this week's edition made themselves apparent.
(1) Do you see and hear what James Clyburn does?
(a) He hears racist epithets
South Carolina's James Clyburn has a recent history of seeing and hearing things no one else can verify.
In March he heard things on the Capitol steps when the tea party gathered to express their disgust as ObamaCare.
Democratic leaders and their aides said they were outraged by the day's behavior. "I have heard things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to get off the back of the bus," said House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking black official in Congress.
He was not alone in hearing and seeing racism where no one else could, save a few journalists and columnists who, in the end, were foolishly relying not on what they saw or what several videos of the event showed, but on the word of James and his friends. James and his colleagues had every motive to tar their political opponents with what (before such meritless overuse) used to be the kiss of death, but somehow a credulous press failed to consider that.
After a time even the Washington Post's ombudsman was forced to admit more evidence of those incendiary charges needed to be forthcoming if the charges were to be credible.
(b) Now he sees "elephant dung"
This week, Clyburn saw "elephant dung" in the fact that a little known and apparently somewhat addled man who'd been charged with a felony succeeded in winning the Senate Democratic primary.
"I saw the patterns in this," Clyburn said. "I know a Democratic pattern, I know a Republican pattern, and I saw in the Democratic primary elephant dung all over the place.
"And so I knew something was wrong in that primary," the congressman continued. "And this result tells us that. People intentionally circumvented the law, the rules and regulations, did not file any disclosures, did not file any of their campaign finances, yet they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running this campaign and broke every law."
He might have been simply projecting. After all in the Republican primary, Senator Jim De Mint was challenged by Susan Gaddy, a Democrat activist who was a former precinct president and an Obama supporter.
It really didn't matter. De Mint trounced her and is likely to handily beat whoever won the Democratic primary.
Thom Maguire finds the result of the Democratic vote less than surprising.
IN DEFENSE OF LOW-INFORMATION VOTERS: First, a black veteran beat an old white judge on the Democratic side in South Carolina - is that really so shocking? OK, no one knew the vet was an inarticulate alleged felon, but so what? The Dems in South Carolina were simply picking a lamb to be sent to slaughter in November, since Republican Jim DeMint is going to win easily. How much research should an individual voter put into that choice?
Apparently, not much. Despite all sorts of claims about failed voting machines, "elephant dung" and other imagined error and skullduggery, the likely answer is that most of the Democrat voters didn't know much about either Greene or his opponent and Greene was first on the ballot.
This may hurt the egos of a lot of politicians. Others, I suspect, are now changing their names to ones like A.A. Abel Acme.
But the award for the archest comment on the whole Greene kerfuffle belongs to Human Events.
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Greene was not a "legitimate" candidate and called his victory "a mysterious deal." (Yes, how could a young African-American man with strange origins, suspicious funding, shady associations, no experience, no qualifications, and no demonstrable work history come out of nowhere and win an election?)
(c) He does not challenge those members of his caucus who want a see no evil hear no evil ethics process on the Hill
Stung by a series of inquiries, nearly half the members of the Congressional Black Caucus want to scale back the aggressive ethics procedures that Democrats trumpeted after gaining control of Congress.Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, and 19 fellow black lawmakers in the all-Democratic caucus quietly introduced a resolution last week that would restrict the powers of the new independent Office of Congressional Ethics. The office, formed by Congress in 2008, is run by a panel of private citizens.
Clyburn didn't support the measure, but he didn't oppose it either. Maybe he was too busy seeing things that don't exist to bother with Democratic corruption that does.
****
In the media this week, Tavis Smiley deserves special attention.
According to this PBS bright light "every single day in this country" Christians commit violent acts of terrorism.
This seemed a bit much for even the PBS ombudsman Michael Getler. Newsbusters:
"I don't think he made his case, or even came close," Getler said. He rightfully noted that the 2000 Columbine massacre, Smiley's only example of supposed Christian terrorism, "had nothing to do with Christianity." In fact, as Brent Bozell noted in his column today, the shooters even "mocked students who cried out for God to save them."Though Getler should be applauded for noting Smiley's total failure to offer a convincing argument, he seems to suggest that a convincing case could be made, but simply wasn't in this instance. "One would think," Getler states, "that Smiley would have been better prepared to make what was certain to be a controversial case."
Oh well, a Congressman and a PBS star are not the only people who were idiotic this week.
Hyundai put on the most outrageous ad, a satiric soccer mass in Argentina with worshippers adoring a soccer ball and eating pizza as a substitute for a Catholic Host. It eventually pulled the ad. But how could the company not have known how insulting and sacrilegious it was?
I wonder if before it was yanked that ad was shown in Somalia where militants of the Hezbal Islam group killed two football fans and arrested ten others who were watching the World Cup game between Argentina and Nigeria at a private home in Mogadishu. Seems the Islamists in Somali believe soccer is not compatible with Islamic law.
"Football descended from the old Christian cultures and our Islamic administration will never allow watching it. We are giving our last warning to the people," Sheikh Abu Yahya Al Iraqi said, while addressing crowds in the Suqa Holaha village north of Mogadishu, hours before the World Cup kick off on Friday.
Do you suppose Tavis missed this? Or that Hyundai's next ad will feature a soccer ball atop the Black Stone of Mecca?
