Freedom Line Blog

I and others have rightly blasted some of Colin Powell’s cheap shots in his Meet the Press interview yesterday, but I missed one of them until just now. He accused Republicans of deliberately “making it hard for these minorities to vote, as they did in the last election.” He also said “the courts struck most of that down.” Both parts of that allegation are incorrect. As Hans von Spakovsky(among others)  has repeatedly noted, there is no evidence that any voter ID laws have disenfranchised legitimate voters, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. And courts have repeatedly found voter ID laws to be perfectly reasonable, legitimate, and constitutional, with the DC Circuit issuing yet another ruling just last week in favor of such laws and against the Obama administration. Of course, when the Supreme Court itself heard a challenge to voter-ID laws, it ruled 6-3 in favor of the law’s constitutionality.

Now, let’s move on to Powell being aghast at Sarah Palin’s use of the expression “shuck and jive.” Granted, as soon as I heard Palin use it, I realized she had made a big error. I do think the term can carry racial connotations. What’s key here is the context. If you use the expression to describe a black man currying favor with whites, that’s a rather insensitive remark, to say the least. But if Powell is so concerned about governors using the term, he really ought to make sure he denounces current New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And if he’s of the opinion that the statement of one governor (or former governor) is ipso facto evidence or even proof of a deep racial insensitivity on the part of the governor’s whole political party, then surely Powell today will clarify his remarks by blasting Cuomo’s Democratic Party as well. After all, Cuomo’s remarks were more directly descriptive of the sort of behavior that creates a racial/racist caricature than Palin’s ever were. “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference,” he said, adding “all those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you are in someone’s living room.” As the original “shuck and jive” slander specifically referred to minstrel-show-like movements, Cuomo’s use of the term hit far closer to the racist home than Palin’s ever did.

And, as many others have noted, Obama’s own press secretary used the term “shuck and jive” as well. So why hasn’t Colin Powell denounced him?

(NOTE: One of those videos to which I linked had an extended piece on the controversy over Obama’s birth certificate. I do NOT, NOT, NOT, endorse anything having to do with those allegations. It was just the only link I could find in a QUICK search that included both parts of the interview that I address in this post.)

A man shot a grizzly bear in self-defense. A real grizzly, not Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin. If it had been the latter, I have no doubt Eric Holder wouldn’t be too concerned. As it is, though, the Justice Department is prosecuting the man to the full extent of the law (or, one could argue, far beyond what the law can reasonably be interpreted to mean).  This is, in a word, sick. Demented. Twisted beyond all recognition. The DoJ’s Wendy Olson should be the one on trial for prosecutorial abuse, not the one putting the Idaho rancher on trial for protecting his own children. She also should be permanently ostracized from polite society. Sneered at, scorned, ignored, isolated, publicly disdained. And, when she no longer has Holder and President Obama around to give her a job, she should be professionally scorned as well. Maybe even asked to go live with the grizzlies — as long as she might last.

Credit to comedian Kathy Griffin for performing in a VH1 salute to the troops at Miramar Marine base, but even more credit to the Marines who booed loudly once she viciously attacked Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol.

Referring to Bristol’s strong performance on “Dancing with the Stars,” Griffin said, “She’s the only contestant in the history of the show to actually gain weight.”  Despite the Marines’ hostile response, Griffin persisted by saying, “She’s like the white Precious,” referring to the morbidly obese Academy Award nominee in last year’s film.

Fortunately for Griffin, the Marines were too polite to grab the microphone and say, “Bristol Palin isn’t the white Precious, but you are the female Carrot Top.”

Do a quick Google search of the terms “Obama,” “corpsman” and “Washington Post.”

Not a whole lot jumps to the forefront, at least from The Washington Post itself.  Notably, it provides a transcript of the very speech in which Obama’s teleprompter failed to phonetically spell out the military term “corpsman,” leading the supposed intellectual Obama to mispronounce it “corpse-man.”

The same Google search results in an avalanche of separate commentaries on the matter, of course, as well as readers’ follow-up comments to the Post transcript pointing out Obama’s embarrassing (and revealing) error.  But the Post itself apparently considers it unworthy of substantive note.  Evidence undermining the Obama Myth is unwelcome there, apparently.

But Sarah Palin?  Toward her, the Post can’t seem to relent in its obsession over her use of hand notes during a speech.  Who knows, perhaps Palin just didn’t want to waste the untold thousands of dollars necessary to secure a teleprompter and an entire staff of speechwriters as Obama does.  But even with all the King’s horses, all the King’s men and all the King’s teleprompters, Obama still couldn’t manage to pronounce “corpsman” correctly.

Imagine for a moment the Post’s hysterics if George W. Bush had committed an error that revealing.  Or if Sarah Palin had.