Interlude: Baracka Macaca

The old ‘60s hippie anthem advises that “When you go to San Francisco/Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Well, Barack Obama should have stuffed a couple of bunches of peonies in his friggin’ mouth before he went anywhere near the Bay Area. Mr. Obama, who thought he was in a closed fund-raiser and could speak his mind in an unfiltered fashion, forgot the cardinal rule of contemporary life: If you go down a dark alley to take an emergency whiz at 2:00 a.m. in a rain storm, your act will surely be viewable on YouTube before the pavement dries. Yes, there was a troll with a cell phone in the midst of Obama’s crowd, and Barack done got busted bad.

Don’t get me wrong: Obama did nothing other than speak the truth. But you can’t tell a bunch of angry, ignorant, gun-toting, snake-handling, rural bigots that they are angry, ignorant, gun-toting, snake-handling, rural bigots. You have to tell them instead that America is the Light of the World only because America reflects the glow that they shed on this great land by dint of their patriotic fire.

How could things get worse than having delivered this Unspeakable Truth to the Great Unwashed of Appalachia before a crowd probably gay, left-wing, atheist, millionaires in that most Un-American of all possible cities? Hillary—not exactly just plain folks herself—now has an opening to label Obama an “elitist” to an audience that has been trained over the years by the forces of reaction to believe that “elite” is synonymous with “socialist.” Hillary is taking full advantage of that opening. No Clinton ever saw an orifice he wouldn’t thrust himself into.

Good Lord, do I hate politics!

Reflections: The Banality of PC

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Will Smith is angry over celebrity gossip Web site articles that he said misinterpreted a recent remark he made in a Scottish newspaper about Adolf Hitler.

In a story published Saturday in the Daily Record, Smith was quoted saying: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'"

Will Smith needs to stick to his guns; he needs to stop being angry and immediately begin insisting that he was right in the first place. Human beings, no matter how morally depraved they are, do talk themselves into believing that their agendas are good ones. We convince ourselves of that every time we tell that harmless little lie; make that nasty little comment about a co-worker; perhaps even enact those little thefts, eh? Like that roll of tape from the office to use on Christmas presents, because there just wasn’t time to stop at the store. And besides…they owe you, don’t they?

Hitler is an extreme example, but the principle is the same. Will Smith was exactly correct: Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.'

Hang in there, Will. Your statement was a philosophical and psychological bull's-eye. Political correctness may (very rarely) have its place, but we must not let the hideous magnitude of Hitler’s self-justified crimes so overshadow our own rationalized transgressions that we allow ourselves to dismiss them as “trivial.” Because they are not.

(The full article from which the excerpt above was clipped is here.)