Jesse Helms, one of the most controversial and prominent Republican Senators of the past half-decade, passes away at 86.
UPDATE: A 2001 review of Sen. Helms' career by Michael Graham. Plus, more from WTVD-TV, CNN and CBS News.
SECOND UPDATE: From 1997, a (not entirely flattering) profile of Sen. Helms by Fred Barnes.
About fifteen years ago, I came across a book written by an African-American feminist denouncing various forms of perceived “white supremacy.” In one section of the book, the writer actually condemned interracial dating between black men and white women as an example of “white supremacy”, arguing that black men only desired white women as a result of media manipulation.
According to the writer, the media exclusively promoted blond-haired, blue-eyed white women as the epitome of American beauty, and intentionally downplayed the beauty of other racial groups. Because of this, she argued, black men were conditioned to think that only white women were beautiful—and thus, their dating choices were influenced not by affection or common interests, but by the underhandedness of white-dominated mainstream media.
My reaction then was, “So what?” It’s still my reaction today.
It’s impossible to deny that it took a while for Madison Avenue to deviate from “traditional” definitions of beauty. It’s nice to see Queen Latifah and Halle Berry as spokespersons for major makeup companies, because not all that long ago, they would have been turned down as spokespersons. It’s a great sign of American progress.
However, this doesn’t mean everything that took place in the “old days” was evil. It can be argued that the preponderance of blue-eyed blondes in previous generations of advertising was not the result of racism, but of business.
Let’s face it, years ago advertisers were exclusively focused on selling products to the majority of American consumers. Who were those consumers? “Typical white people,” as Barack Obama would put it. If a majority of American consumers had been black, African-Americans would have dominated advertising back then. However, since the majority of American consumers happened to be white, American advertisers went hunting where the ducks were.
Advertising has always been about selling fantasies—fantasies of beauty, power, wealth, agelessness. Years ago, American advertisers knew there was a general cultural fascination with blondes—a fascination that, as British author Joanna Pitman noted in her 2003 book On Blondes, has actually existed for centuries. Advertisers exploited that fascination for years—and, from a business perspective, they weren’t wrong to do so. If hiring a blonde model to advertise a product helped to move more of that product, then the decision to hire the model was not an act of racism, but of common sense.
In an increasingly diverse country—a country whose white population is anticipated to drop under fifty percent over the next fifty years—it makes sense for advertisers to broaden the definition of what is considered beautiful. If hiring Halle Berry to advertise your makeup brand will lead to increased makeup sales, you’d be a fool not to hire her.
There’s a clear logic in the new way of doing business—but there was a clear logic in the old way of doing business, too. The old advertising model was not necessarily evil. The social results weren’t necessarily evil either.
Were black men—like white men, consumers of the dominant media culture—influenced by Madison Avenue’s old-school standards of beauty? Of course! Black men are, after all, men, and they will naturally respond to projections of beauty.
Was Sammy Davis Jr. subtly influenced by Madison Avenue’s standards when he dated Kim Novak and married May Britt? I’m almost certain he was—but as Dick Cheney would say, “So?” Plenty of white guys were influenced by Madison Avenue’s standards when they dated and married blondes. Davis was behaving just as anybody else would.
Advertisers used blondes to sell images of happiness—and millions of American men of all races emotionally responded to those images. That’s not nasty or noxious; it’s natural.
Today, Madison Avenue is promoting a broader definition of beauty to reflect the increased diversity of America. That’s also good. Beauty can be found in all races, and it’s wonderful that capitalism compels American business to reflect this variety of beauty. Perhaps the beauty standards of previous eras prevented nonwhite women from being perceived as sex symbols. No one can seriously argue that this is the case today.
Promoting blue-eyed blondes as the American standard of beauty was good for business years ago. Promoting women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds as the American standard of beauty is good for business today. Those who were promoted as beautiful years ago became the objects of cultural desire; this will be the fate of those advertised as gorgeous today. It’s a phenomenon that’s real—and really no big deal.
Barack Obama rips off George W. Bush. I've seen it all.
UPDATE: More from the New York Times and Washington Post.
Dan Quayle kinda likes Barack Obama. Lord love a duck... (Dan, no matter how much you praise Obama, the mainstream press will never like you, pal.)
Jonah Goldberg and Mark Levin on conservatives and civil rights. Levin is right that conservative skepticism about the 1964 Civil Rights Act was based more on libertarianism than it was on racism--but the problem is, regardless of what the motivation was, conservative skepticism about the Act led to, among other things, four and a half decades of really bad PR for the American right.
The Barack Obama-James Dobson feud heats up.
UPDATE: More from Ross Douthat, the Washington Post and World Net Daily.
Peggy Noonan and John Fund try to rally conservatives behind John McCain.
No matter who wins the 2008 election, it’s obvious that the era of “limited government” is over.
Whether John McCain defeats Barack Obama or is defeated by him, it’s embarrassingly clear that in the 2010s, the Republican Party can no longer position itself as the enemy of big government. No one will buy that argument anymore, not after eight years of big-government, big-spending George W. Bush.
Limited government was a major GOP marketing slogan during the 1980s and 1990s. Ronald Reagan declared that government was the problem, not the solution to problems. Newt Gingrich peppered his speeches with small-government rhetoric. Reducing the size and scope of government was an appealing idea--but the problem was that Republicans really didn’t believe in it.
How else does one explain the big-government madness of 2001-2006? The GOP controlled the White House, the House and the Senate during those years (although they temporarily lost control of the Senate after Vermont Sen. James Jeffords abandoned the GOP in ’01), but they did next to nothing to reduce government spending and waste. The GOP seemed to say to their Democrat counterparts, “Anything you can do, we can do better!” Of course, they ended up doing it worse.
No wonder the electorate returned the House and Senate to Democrat control two years ago. If Congress is to be controlled by out-of-control spenders, then why not let the party known for out-of-control spending run the show, instead of the party known for its hypocritical rhetoric?
Limited government is a dead concept. No one in Washington truly believes in the idea: at least Democrats are honest about their loathing of small-government principles. When supposedly fiscally conservative Republicans went to Washington, something happened to them. Their knees became weaker as their desire for power became stronger: the urge to buy votes, to curry favor, to be liked compelled them to spend and spend and spend until there was virtually nothing left in the Treasury.
From now on, “fiscal conservatism” will have to mean more responsible spending, not less spending. The GOP cannot be trusted to reduce the size and scope of government. Even if the GOP regains control of the House and Senate under an Obama administration, the specter of big government will still be with us. Even if Bobby Jindal wins the White House sometime in the 2010s, he won’t be able to fully restrain Washington.
The GOP won’t be a dominant party again until it figures out what it truly adheres to and what it doesn’t really believe in. It’s clear that the party doesn’t actually embrace the concept of smaller government, so why not drop this concept from conservative rhetoric? Going forward, the GOP should market itself as the party committed to intelligent spending, not the wasteful and slothful spending of the Democrats.
If Republicans try to peddle limited-government rhetoric in the 2010s, they will continue to lose elections. Bush has completely destroyed the GOP’s credibility on limited-government issues. The GOP will never be able to resurrect the party’s pre-Dubya image, so it’s foolish to even try.
The GOP will still be able to sell certain conservative concepts after Bush has left the stage. Controlling federal taxation to stimulate the economy and ultimately send more money to Washington’s coffers? That will always resonate with voters, just as protecting the unborn child’s right to live and keeping the country safe from further terrorist attacks will always resonate.
However, the party cannot seriously present itself as an entity that supports limited government. In fact, if one is intellectually honest, one has to ask whether most Americans really want limited government.
Do average Americans hate the federal government? In the 1980s and 1990s, the answer was clearly yes. In the late-2000s, it’s hard to make the same claim. Today, it seems that most Americans accept government as a necessary evil; ideally, they’d like government to be smaller, but they understand that this will never happen in reality.
Since limited government is a fantasy, average Americans simply want the federal government to be run competently. Bush’s low approval ratings stem in part from the perception that he hasn’t managed the government effectively, despite his successes in the War on Terror. If Obama manages to succeed Bush as President, and governs as incompetently as his thin resume and lack of experience would indicate, a “reality-based” Republican Party would be well-positioned to exploit Obama’s errors.
If Obama drops the ball on a grand scale, he will make voters temporarily forget Bush’s perceived ineptitude, just as Jimmy Carter’s incompetence caused voters to temporarily forget Richard Nixon’s flaws. Reagan seized upon Carter’s failures to become President, rehabilitating the GOP’s Watergate-wounded image in the process. If Obama reveals himself to be a “hot mess” as President, the GOP could find itself back in the high life again.
Conservative Republicans should work their tails off to elect McCain President: he is simply more qualified than the wet-behind-the-ears Obama. However, if fate decrees that Obama is to succeed Bush as President, then conservatives should prepare to take advantage of the opportunities that an ineffective Obama administration would provide.
Monica Crowley on President Bush's accomplishments. She's right that the "progressives" who insist that Bush is the worst President of all-time are mistaken, but on the other hand, Bush cannot be rationally compared to the excellence that was Ronald Reagan. History will record Dubya as being about the same as his father in terms of achievement.
Karl Rove and Daniel Henninger on Barack Obama.
UPDATE: Robert Novak on "Obamacons."
Michael Graham on Barack Obama's odd new campaign symbol.
UPDATE: More from the New York Times, Matt Margolis and Michael Goldfarb.
Comedian Dody Goodman passes away at 93.
William Kristol on the latest anti-McCain ad.
UPDATE: More from Jeff Jacoby.
Controversial comedian George Carlin passes away at 71.
What is this, 1992?
The 2008 election seems to be taking place in a time warp. We have a slick, dishonest Democrat promising hope and change. We have an older war-hero Republican who is perceived as representing the past. We have a third-party contender who threatens to draw away support from the GOP candidate. What’s going on here?
We also have tremendous economic anxiety, coupled with a public perception that the current Republican President doesn’t care about what average Americans are going through. We have a news media openly shilling for the young Democrat would-be President. We have entertainers who seemingly disregard those who would prefer that celebrities not shoot their mouths off about political topics.
In addition, we have a sharply divided Republican Party. The moderates are at war with the conservatives; those who value pragmatism and those who value principle are at each other’s throats, squabbling over petty issues and ignoring the big picture. The GOP seems to be on a suicide mission—and according to the most recent polling, the party’s desire for self-destruction may well be fulfilled on November 4.
They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I hope folks on the right who have yet to get over their contempt for John McCain heed history’s lesson.
Back in 1992, the right had washed its hands of George H. W. Bush. Livid over David Souter’s appointment to the US Supreme Court and his broken no-new-taxes pledge, conservatives backed Pat Buchanan’s insurgent bid for the Republican nomination; even Rush Limbaugh broke with tradition and endorsed Buchanan in the primaries because Limbaugh regarded Bush as insufficiently conservative. The right was disappointed by Bush’s second-term nomination; many conservatives believed there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Bush and Bill Clinton. Some on the right ultimately defected to Ross Perot, while others stayed home, thus throwing the election to Clinton.
Clinton’s election may be looked upon as a golden age for some Americans, but for conservatives it was a nightmare. Clinton’s victory led to the appointment of liberal ideologues on the federal courts, the national humiliation of the United States during the Lewinsky case, and—arguably—September 11 (in the sense that Clinton’s refusal to launch an aggressive effort against Islamofascism in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing ultimately led to the 2001 World Trade Center bombing). Why would conservatives want to repeat the same mistake?
This is what I do not get about the right’s failure to unify behind McCain. Other than being a moderate Republican, what exactly is McCain’s biggest sin? McCain’s done plenty of things I’ve disagreed with (McCain-Feingold was particularly disgusting), but he hasn’t done anything a rational person would consider unforgivable.
McCain isn’t conservative enough for the base. I understand that, but McCain didn’t obtain the GOP nomination through underhanded means. The right is responsible for failing to unify behind a conservative contender during the primaries. The right unified behind George W. Bush in 1999, but they were somehow unable to do the same in 2007. The right couldn’t figure out whether to get behind Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson—and while conservatives were basically playing “Where’s Waldo?”, McCain came back from the political crypt to secure the GOP nod.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why conservatives would want to repeat 1992. Obama could damage the right the same way Clinton did in the 1990s; just as Clinton and his media minions smeared Newt Gingrich back in the day, so too could Barack and his Fourth Estate cronies put a beatdown on Republicans bold enough to challenge his hard-left vision. Wouldn’t it be wiser to simply avoid this mess, rather than have to deal with it again?
I always thought the whole point of the modern-day Republican Party was to stop the country from moving to the radical left. Who’s more likely to lead the US down a radical path—Obama, or McCain? The answer seems obvious—but not to those conservatives who seem to believe that Obama and McCain are twin brothers from different mothers.
I hope conservatives come to their senses and unify behind McCain after the Republican National Convention. The stakes, and risks, are way too high to repeat the mistakes of 1992. Four to eight years of a President Obama will be an unrelenting nightmare for conservatives. In other to avoid this nightmare, the right must help McCain achieve his dream.
Dancer and actress Cyd Charisse passes away at 86.
William Kristol remembers Tim Russert.
UPDATE: More from Thomas Sowell, Robert Novak and the New York Times.
I guess you have to count me as one of the so-called "black conservatives" (What does that term actually mean, anyway? It's one of these media terms, like "neocon", that has no clear definition) who is not conflicted about the Obama campaign. I respect what Obama has accomplished in his life, and I do agree that if he becomes President, it will mark a profound change in American life, but I'm not voting for him because I don't agree with him on anything. John McCain is closer to my personal views, so that's who I'm voting for.
Where is the logic in voting for someone whose views you disagree with? If I think Obama is going to damage the already troubled economy through income-tax increases, show excessive caution in his antiterrorism efforts, and appoint Supreme Court judges who will make rulings similar to the nonsensical recent ruling that gave Constitutional protections to terrorist suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, then why would I want to vote for him? For me, voting for McCain over Obama is no different than voting for George W. Bush because I disagreed with Al Gore and John Kerry. No conflicts here.
Legendary NBC News journalist Tim Russert passes away at 58. More from New York Times, Scott Allen Miller, David Broder, Byron York, William Kristol, The Wall Street Journal, Jim Geraghty, Stephen Hayes and the Boston Herald.
David Brooks on Barack Obama's lack of "change." Plus, more on Obama from Ward Connerly, Linda Chavez, Rich Lowry, Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan and Kim Strassel.
Sorry, Ann, but President Bush is not the man.
While Bush’s critics are wrong to depict him as one of the worst Presidents of all-time, Ms. Coulter is equally wrong to paint him as one of the best ever. Nothing Bush can do in the final months of his Presidency can change history’s inevitable verdict—that he was basically his father with a second term.
Yes, Bush deserves a ton of credit for keeping America safe in the seven years since 9/11. It is true that the otherwise-controversial Iraq War has succeeded in keeping terrorists from hitting our shores again. However, his successes here cannot overshadow his failures in other areas.
Does Coulter seriously think that, when folks look back upon the Bush years, they will not remember the embarrassments and ideological double-crossing that defined this Administration? Will the Harriet Miers nomination, the refusal to secure the border, the Dubai Ports World mess, the No Child Left Behind Act and the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit just disappear from history’s view?
I appreciate Coulter’s desire to annoy the left, but doesn’t she realize that she’s annoying many on the right as well? Coulter seemingly does not understand that legitimate criticism of the President and hatred of the President are two different things.
Yes, Cindy Sheehan, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore and virtually every Democrat in the House and Senate went way overboard condemning Bush over the past seven years. Bush has replaced Richard Nixon as the most demonized Republican President in recent memory.
However, there are nonpartisans—and even some conservatives—who have real gripes with Bush. The 43rd President needed to show the leadership of the 40th President—and in so many ways, he did not.
Those of us who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 wanted him to match, if not exceed, Ronald Reagan’s accomplishments. If Coulter really believes that Bush has equaled or surpassed Bush, she should try to avoid the lightning bolt headed her way.
Coulter is an unapologetic “thirty-percenter”, someone who still sees Bush as the hero of 9/11, as opposed to the flawed President who has numerous wins and losses on his scoreboard. She seemingly doesn’t understand why a number of folks on the right are tired of Dubya.
Conservatism is about excellence—the pursuit of it, the celebration of it, the desire to reduce the size of government so that more Americans can achieve it in their personal lives. Conservatives revere Reagan because his Presidency defined excellence. Honest members of the right cannot say the same about Bush.
Bush, like his father, was above mediocrity but below excellence. Both Bushes seemed to have no grand vision for the country, no real direction for the “shining city on a hill.” They were effective middle-managers, but they weren’t world-class CEOs.
Coulter loves to tick off “progressives.” It’s a skill, a talent, one she has honed to near-perfection. Yet, she still doesn’t understand that “progressives” are not the only ones alienated by her rhetoric.
Those of us who believe that conservatism should stand for more than merely pointing out the flaws of liberalism are also antagonized by Ann. We wish there was someone who was just as funny, just as intelligent, just as sarcastic as Coulter, but with a willingness to go beyond the political surface. Saying that Bush will be remembered as one of the best Presidents of all-time—despite abundant evidence to the contrary—is akin to saying that all Republicans rule and all Democrats drool. Can’t we do better than that?
David Frum, Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru and other conservative commentators have argued in recent months that, in order for the conservative movement to survive, its leaders must explain why conservative ideas are better instead of merely attacking “progressive” concepts. One can’t avoid the sense that Coulter regards these commentators as whiners and spoilsports desperate to curry favor with liberals by attacking other conservatives. She’s condemned those she regards as insufficiently conservative before—remember how she attacked her erstwhile colleagues at National Review after her falling out with the publication?—and she’s bound to do so again. However, she cannot silence those who point out the flaws of the Coulter vision.
When Coulter peddles obvious nonsense like the notion that Bush will be remembered as an all-time great, she risks turning herself into the Maureen Dowd of the right. Is that the legacy Coulter wants to leave? If so, it won’t be a great one.
The Boston Globe on the newest Barack Obama scandal.
UPDATE: More from Karl Rove, George Will and Larry Elder.
William Kristol on McCain vs. Obama.
UPDATE: More from Michael Graham, Pat Buchanan, Thomas Sowell, Star Parker, Robert Novak, David Limbaugh, the New York Times and John Fund.
President Bush just might go out the way he came in.
If Barack Obama becomes the next President, Bush will have been succeeded by a man who exploited the same anti-White House sentiment Bush exploited to win the office. Obama is the Democrat equivalent of the 2000 Bush: a “change” figure who has positioned himself as an alternative to the supposedly unbearable leadership of the last eight years.
The parallels are striking. Bush was embraced by those who could not tolerate the lies of then-current President Clinton concerning the Monica Lewinsky case; Obama is embraced by those who cannot tolerate Bush’s alleged lies about the Iraq War. Bush was backed by online activists who were filled with contempt for all things “progressive”; Obama is backed by online activists whose loathing of all things conservative exceeds normal capacity.
Bush’s 2000 supporters were livid over a failed effort to impeach and remove Clinton. Obama’s supporters are still angry that Democrats never even tried to impeach and remove Bush.
Both candidates have been involved in racial controversies. Bush was raked over the coals for his February 2000 appearance at the then-anti-interracial-dating Bob Jones University; Obama has taken heat for his longtime affiliation with Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, an entity as far to the left as BJU is to the right. (In both cases, the candidates received well-deserved heat. Bush had no business appearing at BJU; he had to know that the left would seize upon his appearance as “proof” that he was a silent racist. Similarly, Obama should have washed his hands of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s noxious—and obnoxious—church once he decided that he wanted to be the leader of all Americans, not just grievance-minded blacks.)
Both candidates have a history of being, well, less than skilled when they speak. Bush gave us “Is our children learning?” and “You’re working hard to put food on your family”; Obama has already given us “I’ve now been in 57 states” and “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died”—with presumably more to come.
In their respective primaries, both Bush and Obama triumphed over far more experienced candidates. Dan Quayle famously remarked that Bush would need “on-the-job training” as President; Hillary Clinton has made similarly dismissive remarks about Obama, her current support for him notwithstanding. The Bush-McCain fight for the 2000 GOP nomination was every bit as contentious (though not as long!) as the 2008 Obama-Clinton brawl; those who backed McCain never fully got over their unhappiness with the result, and there are indications that the bitterness awakened by the Obama-Clinton battle will also linger for some time.
Both the 2000 Bush and the 2008 Obama claimed to represent a new style of politics, one that would emphasize what makes Americans similar, not what makes them different. In both cases, such claims were nonsense. Bush and Karl Rove focused primarily on turning out the evangelical and conservative vote: they knew that loyal Democrats were unlikely to cross the aisle, and thus devoted themselves to acquiring as much red-state support as possible. Similarly, Obama and his advisors must know that committed Republicans will never vote for the man who is officially America’s most liberal Senator, and thus the Obama team will have to count on significant “progressive” turnout in order to win.
During his October 11, 2000 debate with Al Gore, Bush claimed that he did not believe “…our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building.” Obama has already taken the Bush 2000 approach, denouncing the Iraq War (which is now, from a certain perspective, a “nation-building” operation) and vowing to bring American troops home.
Both Bush and Obama had supporters who were, shall we say, irrationally exuberant. In October 2000, Rush Limbaugh proclaimed that Bush would defeat Gore as soundly as Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980. Today, Obamaniacs insist that their guy will blow out McCain, never bothering to explain how Obama will win the South and Midwest. Bush’s supporters were convinced that he had what it took to revive the Reagan years; Obama’s supporters clearly believe he is capable of resurrecting the Kennedy era.
Who would have guessed, all those years ago, that Bush would become the Clinton figure in this race—a Commander-in-Chief people are generally tired of, a hyper-controversial figure loathed by his political adversaries, an anchor tied around the neck of the fellow party member trying to succeed him as President? Americans had their fill of Clinton in 2000, and they’ve had enough of Bush today. Bush took advantage of anti-Clinton sentiment to become the 43rd President of the United States. Obama is using similar tactics on his way to becoming the 44th.
Hillary Rodham Clinton "suspends" her campaign and "endorses" Barack Obama. Something tells me the other shoe has yet to drop. More from
