Thursday, July 3, 2008

Conservative columnist Tony Blankley questions the patriotism of environmentalists.. In honor of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, this morning on her radio show, Diane Rehm hosted a segment on patriotism in America and asked her guests to give their personal meaning of the term. Author and journalist Haynes Johnson stated, “I don[base ']Äôt like people who beat their chests and say they[base ']Äôre more patriotic than their fellow Americans.” But conservative columnist Tony Blankley disagreed, saying one person can be “more patriotic” than another and even suggested that environmentalists are not patriotic: BLANKLEY: I would take it [to] another area where I think patriotism is slipping…people who have views on the environment may feel that they’re more loyal[] to the environmental principle than they do to American advancement. We see this very specifically on the question of the Kyoto treaty. Listen here: Transcript: (more…) [Think Progress] 8:14:14 PM    comment []

Earnest Harris: Mobile Phone Monkey Business: A Japanese Primate Plays Obama This presidential election has already generated unprecedented interest overseas, and if this week's events in Japan are any sign, that interest will only increase, along with all of the cultural baggage, misunderstandings and mashed up references that come with it. The ethnic tensions stretched taut by the campaign and that have roiled U.S. culture for the last half year rippled across Japan when reports surfaced that a television ad for Japanese cellular telephone provider eMobile starred a monkey as Barack Obama. In the spot, a large crowd at a political rally is surrounding a speaker, who is firing up the crowd from a podium. Members of the crowd excitedly cheer and hold up placards with the word "change" emblazoned upon them. The speaker, leading the chants at the podium and dressed in a nice blue suit, is a monkey. The response from black people in Japan and others, once news of the ad spread, was swift. Cries that the depiction was raw racism and an insult to Obama and all Blacks drew a denial of any knowing wrongdoing from eMobile. Spokespeople for the company assured the press that there was no racist intent on the company's part and it meant in no way to demean Obama or Black people. The company pulled the ad within hours after the story broke. One of the first outlets to key on the ad was the website and blog Black Tokyo, which is edited by Zurui, a Black American who has lived in Japan for many years. "While change is good, having the candidate depicted as a monkey is not!" he wrote soon after the ad first aired: In an update: ...Am I crazy to think that the monkey is supposed to represent Barack Obama? Given the track record for companies in Japan that use monkeys and blacks or monkeys as blacks in advertisements...maybe not!...It is in poor taste to use the monkey in a parody of Senator Barack Obama's election campaign. Even the guy in America that made the 'racist' buttons and t-shirts (he lost his venue with the Republican Party) understands this. At the end of the day, a monkey will still be equated to representing a Black male. If a few in the Republican Party get it, maybe a few Japanophiles will too! eMobile defended itself by pointing out that it had used the monkey in previous commercials. It added that some of the flap might be accounted for by cultural misunderstanding. "We had no bad intentions but this is a cross-cultural gap issue and we have to accept it," eMobile CEO Sachio Semmoto told the British Telegraph. The monkey in the ad is the snow monkey and is actually considered a holy animal by some Japanese. Popiular American TV show Animal Planet reports that "Snow monkeys play a prominent role in Japanese culture; they are considered to be messengers of the Shinto gods and symbols of success and good fortune." One poster at "Animal New York" named Aaron, who claimed to be familiar with Japanese culture, wrote that Barack Obama is well-liked in Japan...the Japanese are not at all conscious of anti-black racism or European-American born stereotypes against those of African descent. That is not to say that here is a lack of racism in Japanese culture, because there certainly is toward non-Japanese in general, but rather to insist that the manifold racist connotation of monkey/black is entirely of Western origin, and that association would be entirely lost on the vast majority of Japanese citizens... Others commenting on the site, as well as comments from people on the street done by CNN indicate there is some truth to his comments. Many of the Japanese stopped on the streets in Japan seemed to make no link between Obama and the monkey. Indeed they were surprised when informed of the outcry linking the two. <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=700c9c0b5cd79a92055b254bd9a44012";><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=700c9c0b5cd79a92055b254bd9a44012";/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=700c9c0b5cd79a92055b254bd9a44012"; style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> - Earnest Harris [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 6:35:22 PM    comment []

DOES PAUL HAVE A POINT? WILL YOU DON A LAPEL PIN? Paul Slansky: A Modest Proposal for the 4th: Take Back Old Glory In Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches, there were two kinds of these odd beach-dwelling creatures -- those with stars on their bellies and those without. The ones with the stars saw themselves as inherently superior: When the Star-Belly Sneetches had frankfurter roasts Or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts, They never invited the Plain-Belly Sneetches. They left them out cold, in the dark of the beaches. Then along came a stranger, one Sylvester McMonkey McBean, who had a contraption that applied -- for a price -- stars to the bellies of the decoratively challenged: Then they yelled at the ones who had stars at the start, "We're exactly like you! You can't tell us apart. We're all just the same, now, you snooty old smarties! And now we can go to your frankfurter parties." Then the snobby Sneetches had their stars removed -- yes, McBean's machine could do that, too -- and starlessness became the coin of the realm, after which it all descended into on-again-off-again chaos until it was impossible to keep track of who'd been who and they decided to just all get along as equals -- albeit impoverished equals, as they'd given all of their money to the con man who'd repeatedly applied and removed their stars. But enough, for now, about Sneetches. Of all the stupid things done by the anti-war crowd, the most gratuitously moronic was allowing the sanctimonious hypocrites of the right to co-opt the nation's most basic icon, its flag. The emblem of the country's highest aspirations was mindlessly ceded to the holier-than-thou zealots who used it as a bludgeon against the less fanatical. Having unburdened itself of patriotism, the left proceeded over the years to also give away religion, national security and, finally, the elections themselves, but this devolution, into the pathetic puddle of unprincipled, acquiescent wimpiness that the Democrats have become, started with -- or rather, without -- the flag. It's hard to remember a presidential election in which that cavalier surrender hasn't exacted a serious price. Eventually the lapel was established as the battlefield, and the degree of one's patriotic fervor is now presumed based on whether or not said lapel sports a flag pin. The flag pin wearer clearly loves his country -- for Christ's sake, he's wearing its flag! -- and as for the flagless, well, one can only wonder why they hate America so much that they won't allow its proudest symbol on their persons. Republicans love to demagogue the flag, and this year that and fear-mongering are all they have. The presence or absence of the mini-Stars 'N' Stripes has the potential to erupt into a weeks-long October distraction, with the contemptible castrata of the media not just providing the stage but also trilling in the chorus. But we can prevent it, and so easily that there's really no excuse not to. All of the conventional political wisdom of decades is mere rubble in the wake of the Bush-Cheney catastrophes. Whether or not they have health insurance or can afford the gas to drive to their jobs is more important to many past "values" voters than whether or not homosexual couples can call their unions "marriage." Significant numbers of previously intolerant evangelicals are now focusing on saving the earth instead of merely hating hordes of its occupants. Formerly dark red states are purple and may well turn blue. The right is reeling, they can't find a single thing to point to that's better than it was before Bush, so while they're busy dealing with issues of basic survival, let's just slip in there and take back the damn flag. Take it back from the war criminals and their apologists and enablers that have wrapped themselves in it even as they've been methodically destroying the republic for which it stands. Barack Obama, who earlier took some flack for his empty lapel, is on the cover of the latest Rolling Stone with flag pin gleaming. We should follow his lead. Everyone who's voting for Obama -- and especially those who are public figures (i.e. Keith Olbermann, Jack Cafferty, Rachel Maddow) must immediately procure a flag pin and not be seen without it before November 5th. If you can't do it with pride, do it as an act of subversion. When everyone's wearing the flag it will be neutralized. It will cease to provide cover, and then all those with a need to display their moral superiority will have to find a new symbol to set them apart. A new image to mount on a pin and attach to fabric that says, "I am, in my essence, better than you." I suggest the Star-Belly Sneetch. <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=bf791425dcf318f80f3325d1bb217323"; height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=bf791425dcf318f80f3325d1bb217323"; style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> - Paul Slansky [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 6:29:59 PM    comment []