Obama Loves Germans, Hates U.S. Troops?

In the past week John McCain has taken some shots at Barack Obama. The catalyst for this criticism came during Obama's world tour, when the candidate, at the behest of the Pentagon, canceled visits to U.S. Military bases in Ramstein and Landstuhl, Germany. Obama had received permission to visit these military bases during the planning phase of this particular trip. A couple days before the planned visit, however, the Pentagon contacted the Obama campaign to clarify their rules prohibiting partisan candidates for election from visiting military facilities. As such, candidates are not allowed to have "campaign visits" on military bases. Obama's people were informed that he could visit as a sitting U.S. Senator but not as a candidate for president. Regardless of his status, were he to visit, he was actively discouraged by the Pentagon from visiting the military hospital at Landstuhl, and therefore would not have been able to meet with wounded soldiers and military personnel even should he have chosen to go in the capacity of a U.S. Senator but not as a presidential candidate. Are you confused yet? It seems so were they. Clearly getting the impression that any visit would be viewed by the Pentagon as a campaign stop and acknowledging that the entire trip was in support of, and paid for by, Obama's presidential campaign, Obama, after meeting with his advisers, elected to cancel the trip.

In the words of his campaign staff, "Senator Obama had hoped to and had every intention of visiting our troops to express his appreciation and gratitude for their service to our country.”
“Senator Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors perceived as a campaign event when his visit was to show his appreciation for our troops and decided instead not to go.”
Based on all this information his decision to abide by what he felt were the wishes of the Pentagon, and his choice to not politicize the sacrifices of his fellow countrymen and women in the armed forces as a manner to further his campaign for the presidency, seem thoughtful and reasonable. He concluded that the visit in light of all this would be “inappropriate.”

This of course was not acceptable to McCain. I guess McCain would have rather Obama show up in a flight suit with a "Mission Accomplished" banner. His campaign responded with the expected one-sided jingoistic indignation. “Barack Obama is wrong," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. “It is never ‘inappropriate’ to visit our men and women in the military." McCain went on to say, “If I had been told by the Pentagon that I couldn’t visit those troops, and I was there and wanted to be there, I guarantee you, there would have been a seismic event."

Apparently McCain would have called in favors from Zeus God of Thunder, or old prep school classmate Moses to do the “seismic” damage. Alternately, he could have elicited help from the dinosaurs he used to play with as a younger man. To be fair I think there are any number of different things, outside of Pentagon intervention, that would have kept John McCain from making a similar visit. I think a particularly rousing episode of Matlock, or a nice nap, the opportunity to feed stale bread to ducks, a sale on shoes with Velcro straps and quality insoles, or a blue plate special at Applebee’s all would have forced John McCain to cancel such a visit. What I am trying to point out here is that McCain is old. Sorry if I was being subtle.

Of course his old man bluster did not stop there. His campaign released this ad

My focus will just be on the last part of the ad. The part where Obama is criticized for finding time for the gym after canceling his visit to the military base. WTF are they talking about? Obama did not cancel the trip because he didn’t have time; he canceled the trip because he was pressured by the Pentagon to do so. Why don’t they just rattle off all the things he did when he wasn’t visiting the base. “Obama found time to poop but he couldn’t spare a moment to cry with wounded war veterans.” I betcha that bastard even found time for lunch. The nerve. (I also love how the worst thing they could come up with was Obama going to the gym. It’s not like he was a strip club or a meth lab. Damn that Obama and his commitment to physical fitness. Do you think McCain is mad because they didn’t have gyms in his day? If you wanted some exercise, you had to go out and build the pyramids like everyone else. See what I did there? )

Needless to say this all utter bullshit. McCain and his people know it as well. This is all politicking to play on the idea that Obama doesn’t care about troops, where of course McCain is Captain America. The pentagon is also suggesting that they never out right denied Obama previously granted permission to visit the base, although they did “discourage” him from visiting the hospital. He still could have gone to the base as a senator despite the fact that they had made it clear to his campaign that any visit from Obama would be viewed as a campaign trip and thereby would be in violation of Pentagon policy. To say he could visit as a Senator but not as a presidential candidate is ludicrous semantics. Right now he can not be one without the other. (Just like when he visited military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was a presidential candidate, as well as a senator taking part in a congressional delegation. It was just that in those instances, apparently the Pentagon apparently did not care.) He can’t just take off his running for president cape and suddenly return to the mild mannered junior senator from Illinois, particularly when the visit was scheduled as part of his presidential campaign and was paid for with campaign finances.

So if Obama did not believe that he would be in violation of Pentagon policy, why would he have not gone? It is not, as the McCain people would suggest, that the visit was not a priority or was only tentatively on the schedule provided it didn’t interfere with Obama's gym time. It is not like Obama was going to go but then got too caught up playing Guitar Hero. McCain suggests that Obama didn’t go because had he gone in a senatorial capacity the media would not have been allowed and he would not have been afforded the photo ops and press coverage, and therefore it wasn’t worth Obama’s time. Again the message is Obama is only interested in troops if it garners him positive and plentiful media coverage.

This theory is flawed as well. Certainly there could have been, and would have been, media outside the base filming his comings and goings. Furthermore, they have these things called digital cameras that make it really easy for just about anyone to post footage or pictures online, and I am sure Obama’s Senate staff as well as many of the soldiers would have had such devices on hand had the candidate visited the base. (To be fair, McCain may not be aware of advances in photography. He may still think gunpowder is required for the flash). The only possible rationale for Obama to cancel his visit is that given the pressure from the Pentagon, he thought it was the right thing to do.

The argument by Obama's people about not wanting to use the circumstances of the wounded soldiers for political reasons is simply spin and bullshit. I am not suggesting that he did not have personal interest in visiting the base but that can not be separated, as he rightly concluded, from the political interests of his campaign. People are always used by politicians for political purposes whether it is visiting farming communities or kissing babies. Every campaign stop serves political purpose, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. If Obama going to a military hospital and meeting with injured American soldiers helps galvanize people to demand that the candidates have an exit strategy from the clusterfuck that is the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I am all for it. On the other hand, Obama’s thoughtful decision to cancel the visit does not bother me either. He will have plenty of time to meet with troops as the next President of the United States.

Paris Should Be Burning . . . In Hell

She sucks. She exemplifies everything wrong with this country. Call me a prude, but there was a time when leaked footage of a wannabe starlet sucking some loser's cock was enough to be a career-ending scandal. Now it gets you your own show (see "Keeping up with the Kardashians" for the most recent example). Michael Richards (who had a respectable body of work, most notably his turn as Stanley Spadowski in the Weird Al masterpiece "UHF") calls some guys niggers and he will never work again. Isiah Washington calls someone a faggot in a private altercation and gets booted from one of the top shows on TV. (Don't ever get me started on The Dog, bra.) I am fine with this. There should be consequences for this type of ignorant and reprehensible behavior. (I don't expect Mel Gibson to be in a Fiddler On the Roof revival any time soon either.) What I don't understand is how she gets away with it. Paris has been repeatedly taped using these same terms in a derogatory manner and there has been no fall out. She gets repeated DUI's and has her sentence commuted by the LA county sheriff's office in direct violation of the Judge's orders. She's the Teflon Diva. The only thing that sticks to her is sperm. People watched her on the Simple Life and made fun of her for not being able to do menial tasks, forgetting that she was making millions of dollars to not be able to do what regular people make minimum wage for. Who is the idiot? Is it her because she doesn't know how to do her own laundry, or is it assholes like us because we tune in for it. Say what you want about Britney, but at least she has sold some records. Paris keeps failing up. Her album flops, her movie career has been an abject failure, her show got canceled, and yet she is as famous now as she has ever been. And why is she famous, what was the launching pad for her "success": THE FACT THAT SHE WAS FUCKING RICH IN THE FIRST PLACE. It's fucking insane. It is enough to make me cancel my Hilton Honors reward program, (but I am only 12,000 more points from a free weekday stay at the Kankakee Hampton Inn.) We are so obsessed with money and celebrity that we have returned to some sort of perverted Great Gatsbyism where we celebrate people just for already being rich and moderately attractive. Its like the entire country has become one big high school where we worship the attractive popular rich kids despite the fact that we secretly hate them. And the ridiculous end result becomes: they get fucking RICHER. Paris Hilton became famous because her parents had money and in doing so she has become legitimately wealthy in her own right. She made literally millions of dollars off the sale of her own sex tape after failing to get a an injunction to prohibit its sale. She has made millions on top of that for her show, her book, endorsements and the like. She get tens of thousands of dollars to make an "appearance." In the words of weight loss guru Susan Powter, "Stop the insanity!" So turn off Laguna Beach, the Hills, My Super Sweet 16, and all this other contrived melodrama where these douche bag kids are deified because their rich dads married their shallow trophy wife moms and had vapid attractive children. Remember you are supposed to hate these people. This is the real world, where the cool kids grew up to reveal themselves as the assholes they always were and the rich kids just developed drug habits.



I am so worked up I willingly posted something from Fox News!

Red, White and Confused

So another Fourth of July has come and gone. Many of us felt compelled to demonstrate our patriotism by donning Red, White and Blue apparel. (Of course this could just as easily demonstrate your appreciation for France, Great Britain, Australia, and probably countless other countries that share that totally unique color triptych). I myself wore a natty red/white/blue striped polo shirt from Old Navy only to have someone come over to our 4th of July barbecue wearing an actual Polo version of the shirt that looked almost exactly the same, albeit his was much more expensive than mine. (I'm not sure who the real winner in that scenario was). Of course we celebrated America's independence in true Midwestern American fashion, by grilling cased meats. In this instance Hot Dogs and Bratwurst were the meats of choice. We also saw fireworks. I can tell you without exaggeration that the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.

Of course Major League baseball, America's past time after all, was eager to demonstrate its love of the ol' U.S. of A as well. (At least everyone but those dastardly Blue Jays. It is only a matter of time until you follow the Expos into oblivion!). Many teams altered their caps in some ways to reflect the stars and stripes and honor our fine country. My beloved Cubs integrated a similar design into the C on their slightly darker blue caps. Here is Canuck expatriate and, shockingly, All Star pitcher, Ryan Dempster modeling the cap

Subtle, tasteful, refined. It is patriotic without being too much on the nose if you will. Across town, however, the uniform decision was a little different.

Am I the only one that saw these uniforms and went WTF? How is camouflage patriotic? It certainly insn't inherently so, unless it is actually being worn in service to your country. I don't think losing to the Oakland Athletics qualifies.
Buehrle looks like a militia member. These guys look like extras from the cinematic masterpiece "Commando" (still Alyssa Milano's finest work).


Is it just me, or does seeing a bunch of Latin American guys in jungle camo suggest more "Viva la Revolucion" than it does "Oh, Say can you see . . . " Camouflage isn’t even distinctly American (maybe that weird pixilated newfangled stuff is, but I digress). In fact major military use of camouflage was first incorporated by the British in the 19th century, the same evil empire we won our independence from. If the Sox really wanted to pay homage to American independence in military fashion, they should have gone with a uniform more in the style of Patriot Pat (minus the football, of course. That would just be silly).

Swisher seems to get that the camo alone doesn’t do it. He employs the use of ridiculous wrist bands to really bring the point home.


And of course I am making jokes, but to me this speaks to a bigger issue: confusing militarism with patriotism. The White Sox suggested the uniform was to honor U.S. troops. This sentiment strikes me as hollow. It is unfortunate that the United States has thousands of its young men and women embroiled in major military operations in two countries (don't forget about Afghanistan, people) right now. I won't get into the false pretenses under which we engaged in warfare, or the false promises of success and victory, at least not in this post. But I will argue that the correlation between patriotism and unexamined, unquestioned military action has been packaged and sold to the American people. It makes me profoundly uncomfortable that a team in my city (I would feel just as strongly were it the Cubs) would seem to unwittingly play into that “pro-America = pro-military” agenda. If Jerry Reinssdorf and Ozzie Guillen want to honor the troops the should do so not by having their athletes play dress-up, but rather by using their influence to help bring them home.

Time to hate the donuts

At this point I am sure that just about everyone has seen the various Dunkin' Donuts commercials featuring Rachel Ray. Now I don't care how you feel about Rachel Ray, whether you think she is a bubbly culinary guru or the annoying developmentally delayed dwarf-like offspring of Alvin and the Chipmuks is immaterial to the discussion. Nor is it relevant how you feel about the ad campaign itself. The ads for the most part have been thoroughly unremarkable. One ad, however, came into fire in recent weeks from the ever embarrassing Fox "News" Network. Talking (empty) head Michelle Malkin took xenophobic umbrage at a particular ad in which Rachel Ray wore a scarf that Ms. Malkin felt resembled a keffiyeh.

"What is a keffiyeh?", one might reasonably ask. A keffiyeh is a traditional Arab headdress, or scarf, often worn by men in the middle east. 'Fantastic," that same reasonable person responds, "So explain again what the issue is? Why is this a problem?"

Well, Malkin criticizes, "Dunkin' Donuts' spokeswoman Rachel Ray's clueless sporting of a jihadi chic keffiyeh in a recent DD ad campaign. I'm hoping her hate couture choice was spurred more by ignorance than ideology." She goes on to ask, "Is Ray's blunder worth boycotting DD over? "

So to be clear, Rachel Ray wearing a scarf that was not a keffiyeh (which is completely besides the point) but resembled one, demonstrated Dunkin' Donuts' implicit support of terrorism and Islamic Jihad and radical Muslim fundamentalism. Obviously Ms. Malkin, who is evidently going after the market of Neocons who find Ann Coulter not Asian enough for their fetishist conservative fantasy play, would be completely ignored by Dunkin' Donuts'. I mean this is a huge company that embraces diversity, right? (The affiliation with Baskin Robins alone supports that. 31 flavors? Tell me that isn't symbolic of their support for the brotherhood of man.) They wouldn't pander to the paranoid fantasies of some right wing nut job, right?

The DD response:

"In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial."

WTF? While I completely agree that wearing paisley in any way is almost always questionable, come on Dunkin' Donuts, grow some Munchkins, will ya?

To clarify this supposed issue, below are Malkin's "thoughts:"

"The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons." (It's nice how she allows that much of her reading audience might be clueless.)

Outside of the weird suggestion of some anti-Zionist fashion conspiracy, much of what she says is factually accurate. Arafat did wear a keffiyeh, and many Palestinian men wear it still. There have been honest to goodness terrorists that have worn them as well. However, for centuries millions of peaceful Muslim men have also worn keffiyehs all throughout the Middle East. Additionally the renowned terrorist organization, the British SAS Special Forces, also wears keffiyehs, or "Shemaghs" as they call them.

If you follow Malkin's logic though, you must presume that all men who wear keffiyehs are terrorists or at least support terrorism. Which of course is only a small jump to believing, as I am sure many of her regular readers do, that all Muslim men are terrorists.

So if Rachel Ray had worn something that resembled a Catholic priests' vestment, it would have been equally fair to charge Dunkin' Donuts with supporting pedophilia? Of course not, and it would have been incredibly offensive to Catholics to suggest so, just as it is incredibly offensive to Muslims to make an intrinsic connection to keffiyehs and terrorism. Just because bad people may sometimes wear something it does not mean all people wearing them are bad, whether it is keffiyehs, vestments or camouflage. To use another example, wearing a beret does not make you a revolutionary. (It does however make you a d-bag.)

I understand that objects take on symbolic meanings and associations that were never initially intended or expected. I doubt the inventor of the eye patch ever thought he would be so pigeonholed to the pirate demographic. But lets be clear, a keffiyeh is not a swastika (originally a symbol denoting luck or good fortune), and that is no less true regardless of how you feel about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

I do not expect Michelle Malkin to understand this. She is after all an Asian American (Filipino) who wrote a book titled "In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror." It serves her agenda to have people blindly accept the bastardized leaps in logic that she takes. Critical thinkers are not her demographic. To be fair, and we should try to be even if she is not, Malkin is not the only one to tackle the issue of Rachel Ray's neckware. She is but the loudest voice among the chorus of dozens fear-mongering ugly-American right wing dolts. To not be fair, Malkin sucks ass.

But I expect more of Dunkin' Donuts (if for no other reason than I really like the toasted coconut donut and the Early Fishin' commercial) and I expect more from my people as well. Why is it okay for companies to always cater to the lowest common denominator? Why should Dunkin' Donuts only be worried about offending idiots? Why are they not worried about offending their multitude of Muslim franchisees both in America and abroad? (Disregarding the significant percentage of Dunkin' Donuts franchises that are Muslim-owned in the U.S., Dunkin' Donuts also has franchises in largely Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.) Why can only the ignorant and uninformed threaten to boycott? Why isn't the fall out among the intelligent and thoughtful considered when these decisions are made? Well I am offended. I am offended by their kowtowing to the stupid and reactionary, and I am offended they didn't consider that people like me may be equally offended if not more so by the cowardly, munchkinless if you will, decision to pull the ad in response to xenophobic, if not blatantly racist, pressure. Apparently they were worried about a possible boycott, and I say that's what we give them. I for one will not be patronizing Dunkin Donuts any longer, or at least until they demonstrate that they will no longer cater to Michelle Malkin and her ilk. Who's coming with me?

Ignorance and intolerance do not become patriotism just because you wrap them in the flag.