Flying over the country today on JetBlue, I got to watch more than my share of daytime TV, including a couple of reasonably decent National Geographic docs, endless Michael Jackson blather, and Arianna Huffington attacking Hillary Clinton at the TBA Conference because Hillary would not set a date certain for leaving Iraq (not wanting to give the “insurgents” such information). The audience broke into wild applause for this idiotic statement advocating a policy which would only lead to the victory of fascism. Does Arianna even understand the implications of what she says? Does she care what this would mean to the Iraqi people? I doubt it.
Why would Arianna care what would happen to the Iraqi people? Or, for that matter, to the American people? When the al Qaeda bomb hits Manhattan, Arianna will be concerned because…why again?
Because it might endanger her career.
“Flying over the country today on JetBlue, I got to watch more than my share of daytime TV…”
Oh, my word, Mr. Simon, what would you consider your “share” of daytime TV? I shudder to consider such a fate…
In a rare act of aggression, I threw my TV into the dump in 1979 and haven’t looked back. Don’t recognize one person on the covers of the magazine racks, but somehow it hasn’t seemed to make much difference. I am able to pass for normal in any number of venues. In fact, it came in handy once, when I was asked to escort Jessica Lange around town because I was the only one on staff who hadn’t a clue who she was…nice woman. A bit introverted. Fond of children.
But you remind me: in-plane TV is yet one more reason not to fly. It’s small potatoes compared to the dozen or so Arab musicians loitering about the rest room door, but still, it reeks just the same.
DAYTIME TV???
Oy vey.
~D
Ya got off easy. They were watching Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris Matthews in first class.
She’s changed her position so often, who can believe she’s sincere. Did she ever offer any rationale for her move from the right to the left? At this point, it just looks like the endless quest to be popular. Or maybe she just prefers to be in the clatch of the party out of power.
She doesn’t seem to have a core anywhere. Just an overriding need for people to talk about her. So then of course she doesn’t have to work out the implications of someone taking her applause lines seriously.
As one cloistered New Yorker once put it…
Arianna doesn’t know anyone who lives in Iraq.
… and therefore Iraqis do not exist in her world.
“The play’s the thing!”
alcibiades,
Great name. And I agree completely. By the way has Socrates finally tamed you, or should we run for the hills? [ : ) ]
Roger,
Glad to hear you had a safe flight, besides the television thing. These days televisions sneak up on ya anytime, anyplace. I was attacked a few days ago while in the dentist’s chair. On top of getting my tooth drilled I had to hear my least favorite commentator explain to us the glory of the European Union model for East Asia in order to become but another counterweight to the U.S.’s– capitalistic-but kinda fascistic-definitely uncultured-though he does visit every year and it is where his children attended university–steamrolling hegemon. He must have written his talking points a few weeks ago, before France, and was too stubborn to change them.
Curious. Does JetBlue have service to Asia?
After you landed did you hop into a Taxiyellow, and later hop out onto the sidewalkgray?
Books to read on a long, twilight flight to nowhere:
(ht-uranari)
Just cruised PuffPost. Arianna and David Corn currently are huffing and puffing because neither Howard Dean nor John Edwards said word one about Iraq in their speeches at TBA.
Arianna says: As I’m about to board my plane–do you think she flys JetBlue?–back to LA, my take-away from the TBA conference is that the Democratic faithful are like parched earth, desperate for some drops of truth about Iraq from their elected representatives.
David laments: Edwards denigrated a foreign policy that delivers the rhetoric of freedom and not the reality of economic progress and true liberty. Is a six-year-old girl in Sudan really free, he asked, if she goes to bed each day hungry? (He’s kidding, right?) But throughout his 25-minute-long speech, Edwards did not make a single reference to Iraq. How, you might ask, can anyone speechify about US foreign policy without mentioning Iraq?
Oh, and Erica Jong reports that, as usual, Bill Maher is right.
I flew across the country on Jet Blue yesterday, where I watched, for the first time, the Jon Stewart Show. Just awful. Can he go one second without a Bush/Oil joke?
As for Arianna, Roger, you saw her at UCLA back in April. Did you think she would change? And what gives her the credentials to pontificate so vehemently? Typical Liberal Elitist. I can’t fathom to think that I would side with Hillary over somone, but thus we have Arianna.
Most here in Los Angeles – especially where I work – just love her.
Can you imagine if LA had Antonio Villaraigosa as Mayor, and the state had Huffington and Governor and Cruz Bustamante as Lieutenant Governor? It might be a more awful place to live than it already is.
“TBA”? “Daytime television”? “Arianna”?
Do not compute.
Please explain.
Oh, I got it. “Arianna” has one of those blog things. With interesting guests, like this dude:
http://huffingtonstoast.com/author/ward-churchill/
Arianna worry about Iraqis? I don’t think they are in her demographics.
We’re counting on Hillary now as the voice of reason. Well, I hope she means it. She knows what to say, but it’s so hard to see through the ambition.
Buddy,
After you landed did you hop into a Taxiyellow, and later hop out onto the sidewalkgray?
Funniest thing I’ve read in a while!
But if you’re unfamiliar with them, you may know JetBlue better by their former name: Valuejet. Thanks, I’d rather walk…
Next time, fly Jet Red. They show Fox.
I doubt if Arianna give a rat’s behind about the Iraqi people. If it was 1952 she would be saying screw the South Koreans lets’s get the hell out of there.
I heard this morning that the Downing street memo will be brought up in Congress to use as possible grounds of impeachment of Bush. And guess who is bringing it up? John Kerry of course.
They say it is a smoking gun. From what I have read of it, it is a smoking gun for how some folks just can not let go. The bush and Blair people picked the most compelling evidence. We know that already. We also know that a lot of Senators of both parties has access to the same information Bush had.
The idea however is facts were thin so they were fixed.
Note to any passing liberal: read the frigging resolution that Congress voted on to authorize military action in Iraq.It does not say that Saddam is about to nuke Seattle. It does not say that he has more capabilities than China. It would seem to me that if they knew for sure the weapons were not there and were deliberatley trying to lie to people they would have done a better job of covering their asses. But this was was not just about weapons, it was about Saddam’s refusal after years of jacking around to comply. The idea is no one was supposed to have to try to figure it all out, he was supposed to allow the UN to do its job.
The resolution also says he is not in compliance with UN resoution 1441. He is abusing his people. He tried to kill a president, stuff like this.
But this is Arianna’s world.
Talk about facts:
The Dmeocrats were in control of our foreign policy for eight long years and not only did they not resolve the situation of what to do about Iraq and Saddam, they left office with a policy intact that virtually guaranteed confrontation.
Repeat:
The Democrats did nothing, absolutely nothing to dissuade anyone of the idea or belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Also the Deufler repoort does make it plain that the illict programs were left intact with the intention they would be used in the future, which means Hussein’s regime had every intention of continuting to defy the United Nations. The report even mentions that Saddam was testing stuff on real people. Which of course makes you wonder, what stuff? Where is it? No one seems to know the answer to that.
And what do Bush’s critics have to say? Impeach Bush, pull out the troops and let the country sink into anarchy. We love anarchy, it will help our case.
Silly woman should shut up, she has not the slightest idea what she is talking about. At least Hillary is not as stupid as she is, or as that sore loser Kerry is either.
Hillary has been pretty consistent in her support of Iraq. On the other hand, I only seek out Arianna for clarity on foreign policy after I’ve been exposed to Sean Penn or Tim Robbins or some of the other policy wonks at the DNC.
I live in the North Bay (Bay Area) and all my friends are in Berkeley. I cannot talk with them about anything touching on Iraq or Islamofascism because their take on these matters is well to the left of Arianna (well to the left of Fidel, for that matter).
It is profoundly disheartening to me that all that has happened, and all that is happening, in Iraq, Lebanon, the Ukraine, Europe (I regard the non and the nee as further evidence of the wave of Bush-pushed democratization sweeping the globe) has altered their view not one iota.
When U.C. Berkeley decides democracy is a good idea, we will know we have won.
But this event is unlikely in my lifetime.
Jamie Irons
Who’s Arianna Huffington?
Speaking of jets, blue and otherwise, there is a Virgin Atlantic flight about to land in New Brunswick (diverted from a scheduled landing at JFK), but it appears this terror alert may have a false alarm.
Jamie Irons
PeterUK
Who’s Arianna Huffington?
Peter, this is the downside of living in the UK: diverted by learning about distracting characters like Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Alan Turing, the Archbishop of Canterbury, W.H. Auden, and countless others, you have no time to become acquainted with important people like Arianna.
I’ll bet you don’t even know who Michael Jackson is!
Jamie Irons
“Who’s Arianna Huffington?”
Nobody.
But ya gotta admit she’s well preserved.
Re: PeterUK at Jun 3 at 8:01 AM:
She played opposite Eddy Albert on “Green Acres.” Some say the actress was Eva Gabor, but have you ever seen those two women in the same place at the same time?
Correction to rludite on JetBlue: JetBlue has no lineage back to Valuejet. That distiction belongs to AirTRAN. In its planning stages JetBlue was known in the industry as New Air.
Jamie,
Didn’t he use to be the little black kid who sang with the Jackson Five?
Peter,
Pretty good for a Brit.
Though now, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Jackson is famous for other things…
If I were inclined to believe in conspiracies, I would conclude that the MSM is trying to destroy our minds by paying obsessive attention to the man.
But I’m not inclined to believe in conspiracies.
Jamie Irons
Stan Laurel and Peter Sellers were Brits.Al Franken isn’t.
Arianna’s 15 mintues were up long ago. Her vapid announcements onm Iraq are the only “buzz” she can generate these days. Pathetic.
Jamie, I can empathize. I live in West LA and teach public school. There is NO tolerance for pro-War or pro-Bush speech. They say I am “angry.” Another Conseravtive – one of the few – had his “Support the Troops” sticker ripped off.
Speaking of mindless news-sinks, I almost feel sorry for MJ….and the Runaway Bride, and the Wendy’s Finger Chili Lady…living in a country so free, so nonjudgmental, that they probably had little idea they were doing anything actually wrong until John Law come a’knockin’ on de door. Some oppressive atmosphere. Some fascist police state.
While I’m sympathizing with the ‘whirled people’(as Saul Bellow called them), I also can’t help but feel a secret admiration for those quick trials in PRC where obvious nasties are sentenced, then walked straight outside and shot behind the ear. Yet I’m against capital punishment. I guess I want ‘em just wounded a little. Oh hell i don’t know. Howard Dean has made me dark and disturbing.
Well my wife is always accusing me of being too serious anymore.
“Howard Dean has made me dark and disturbing.”
Thanks Buddy, I now have the perfect excuse.
I think it’s clear that Arianna doesn’t care about anything other than getting attention.
Roger:
Your expecting far to much of Ariaana. Granted, she is sharp as a tack but she is a political gadfly and you should not expect too much from her. If her ex had won his race she would still be his beard and she would still be a Republican. Her politics are for the “little guy” and her blog is for the Hollywood-Manhattan elite. I think her site will do very well but if you think you will get moral clarity from her you are aiming way to high.
Arianna had a confrence on the drug war. Some righties mostly lefties. Tim Robbins. Fer instance.
She is against drug prohibition. I tried to get her to read some of the stuff I had written about the biochemical side of addiction. She sounded interested (mostly in getting me to pay to come to the confrence). However, it didn’t seem to influence her thinking so I assume she was humoring me.
I any case it was just the cause dujour. It didn’t catch fire right away so she dropped it.
I think it is all about getting attention.
Hillary learned her lesson from Bill’s deadline on Bosnia — if memory serves me, he said we’d be out sometime in 1998, but had to backtrack w/some embarassment — guess when our mission finally ended in Bosnia? December 2004, which no fanfare.
I’m a hanging by a thread Democrat and watching parts of that conference really scared me! lol
Natalka, listen to your heart, it won’t let ya down. Well, unless it tells you to stay Democrat, that is.
Give it another look when it gets a foreign policy. And an economic policy.
Hey Buddy – Oh, I’ve always disliked the Left, being a rabid anti-Commie by birth, but today’s Left, which is morally & intellectually bankrupt, is still not representative of the Dem party, even though it DOES bother me that they are like a Trojan Horse within the Party, BUT they do not have the power, only the noise, UNLIKE the Religous Right within the Republican Party — which makes me uncomfortable to a somewhat lesser degree.
Anyway, it was nice of you to say Hi