The Christian Science Monitor

Et tu lefties? Obama takes flak from his liberal ‘friends’

By Brad Knickerbocker | 11.21.09

From the start of his presidency (and even before) Barack Obama has been mercilessly hammered from the right. He’s a socialist! No, he’s a fascist! No surprise there. It’s a stir-‘em-up industry that keeps many bloggers and talk show hosts gainfully employed.

But these day, Obama’s getting it from the left as well — an annoyance that’s moving toward anger in some cases and that could result in speed bumps if not derailment of some key policy goals.

Pick an issue — war in Afghanistan, healthcare reform, civil liberties, gay rights, closing the Guantanamo prison camp, global warming, the economy — and the criticism from liberal activists and commentators is growing at a time when Obama’s job approval rating has just dropped below the 50-percent mark, according to a Gallup Poll out Friday.

Some examples:

• New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a Princeton economist and Nobel Prize winner, says the financial bailout has been “botched.”

“Throughout the financial crisis key officials — most notably Timothy Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed in 2008 and is now Treasury secretary — have shied away from doing anything that might rattle Wall Street,” he writes. “And the bitter paradox is that this play-it-safe approach has ended up undermining prospects for economic recovery.”

• On gay rights, a bunch of liberal activists and bloggers are organizing an effort to postpone donations to the Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America (the successor to the Obama election campaign). No more money, they say, until the Democratic Congress passes, and President Obama signs, legislation enacting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, repealing the US military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays in uniform, and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act seen as a roadblock to same-sex marriage.

• The 5 million-member liberal group MoveOn.org threatens primary election challenges to “any Democratic senator who blocks an up-or-down vote on healthcare reform with a public option.” That could complicate things for Obama on a wide range of issues if he loses the bare filibuster-proof Senate majority next year.

• Global warming activist Bill McKibben says Obama has “punted on the hard questions around climate,” and he accuses Obama of an “unwillingness to lead.” Meanwhile, charges McKibben in a Mother Jones essay, there has been “the endless spinning of his climate negotiators … fibbing about the science.”

• At the left-leaning web site Truthout.org, regular columnist Tom Engelhardt writes what he calls “The Afghan Speech Obama Should Give (but Won’t).” Here, he fantasizes Obama telling the American people: “I have decided to send no more troops to Afghanistan. Beyond that, I believe it is in the national interest of the American people that this war, like the Iraq War, be drawn down.”

Meanwhile, the typically tart-tongued Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” accuses Obama of “dithering” on Afghanistan — a play on former vice president Dick Cheney’s recent charge.

“Is he just too darned intellectual?” Matthews asks. “Too much the egghead? Why did he bow to that Japanese emperor? Why did he pick Tim Geithner to be his economic front-man? Why all this dithering over Afghanistan? And who thought it was a wonderful idea to bring the killers of 9/11 to New York City, the media capital of the world, so they could tell their story?”

Nobody ever said being president was easy, or that your campaign friends — many of them activists with agendas of their own — would always be your buddies. Which brings to mind something attributed to Harry Truman: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

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Obama on critical trip to Asia – but will he read Sarah Palin’s new book?

By Jimmy Orr | 11.18.09

What’s the most critical question facing President Obama as he travels across Asia?

Perhaps an economic question. After all, China is the US’s second largest trading partner. Maybe a national defense question. Kim Jong-il’s repeated threats to fire nuclear weapons at Japan or Hawaii is unsettling. Or it could be a military question. Like the contentious issue of whether the US should maintain its 30,000 troops in Okinawa?

All important global issues. But then there’s that other global issue too – Sarah Palin. And the Sarah Palin Newsweek cover. And Sarah Palin’s appearance on Oprah, her interview with Barbara Walters, her conversation with Rush Limbaugh. And most importantly, Sarah Palin’s new book.

The president was overseas, so he was unable to camp out in a snowmobile suit at the Grand Rapids’ Barnes and Noble today to get a signed copy of “Going Rogue.”

But surely he’s going to read the book. Right? After all, he’s an author himself and a voracious reader.

Thankfully, CNN’s Ed Henry caught up with President Obama and asked him that critical question. The president’s answer? Shocking.

“I - I probably won’t,” Obama said. “But I don’t get a chance to read things other than briefing books very often these days anyway.”

Although Palin probably won’t lose any sleep over his plan not to read her book, she should be heartened by his prediction of its success.

“She is going to do very well with this book,” he said. “That’s clear.”

Although the president won’t be reading it, think of the joy around the White House Christmas tree this year if he just happens to find a spare signed copy for Michelle.

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See also:

Is the Sarah Palin Newsweek cover sexist?

Sarah Palin on the Oprah Winfrey show — the five best outtakes

Sarah Palin “Going Rogue” and making dough

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Is Sarah Palin Newsweek cover sexist? Palin says yes.

By Jimmy Orr | 11.17.09

Maybe Sarah Palin should be pleased with Newsweek’s cover shot. After all, it could give her ammo for a sequel, perhaps entitled “Going Rogue II: Sarah Palin Unloaded.”

The former Alaska governor isn’t happy with Newsweek for featuring her on the cover of its magazine. Whether she’s upset with the article or not isn’t known. But the photo they chose? That’s another story.

Run to the hills

Newsweek decided to use a photograph originally used for a Runners World article published last August. No, it’s not like she’s all sweaty, haggard, and ready to collapse at the end of a marathon or anything — in fact, it’s just the opposite.

It’s more like a glamour shot. Sure, she’s in running gear but it’s apparent that she hasn’t begun the workout yet. She’s posing in her old office clutching two Blackberries and leaning on an American flag. This was an OK photo for Runners World, she says, but not for a serious news story. It’s sexist and out of context.

“The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page. “When it comes to Sarah Palin, this ‘news’ magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness — a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation.”

“The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention - even if out of context,” she adds.

Newsweek bad

She actually took it easy on Newsweek. She could have wondered aloud about their financial situation. According to the Washington Post third quarter’s earning report, the news magazine is losing money and its subscriber base is expected to drop to 1.5 million in January 2010 from 3.1 million earlier this year.

Not to mention that it appears that the news magazine ran the photo without permission from Runner’s World.

Reads an Editors Note at Runner’sWorld.com: “On the cover of this week’s issue of Newsweek is a photo that was shot for the August 2009 issue of Runner’s World , in which Sarah Palin was featured on the monthly ‘I’m a Runner’ back page. Runner’s World did not provide Newsweek with the image. Instead, it was provided to Newsweek by the photographer’s agency, without Runner’s World’s knowledge or permission.”

Perhaps this is something that Runner’s World isn’t that upset about after all. It’s interesting to observe that right after the “Editor’s Note” is a promo to see their original photo slideshow of Palin.

Too sexy!

Some people have rushed to Palin’s defense, however. Like the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody.

“You’ve got to hand it to the folks at Newsweek,” Brody writes. “They have accomplished being biased and sexist at the same time. Quite a feat. This cover has got to be a new low right? They don’t use a photo of Palin on the campaign trail. No instead they take the sexy Runners World photo.”

Didn’t she pose for it though?

“Yes she posed for it but don’t tell me they didn’t purposely use that photo to make a point?” Brody said before asking the whereabouts of “sexy photos of Tim Pawlenty with an unbuttoned shirt relaxing on a couch in the Twin Cities.”

Yeah, where are those, anyway?

Payback

Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift says reactions like Brody’s aren’t surprising. It’s something that conservatives will jump on.

“Why do right-wing men rush to Sarah’s side to defend her?” Clift asks. “My theory is that this is payback time. They’ve been called sexist and racist, and subjected to media ridicule of their allegedly retro views. Palin is their way to push back against the elites that have marginalized them.”

What about that photo?

As for the use of the photo, Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham defended the decision saying it was “the most interesting image available.”

“We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard,” he said.

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See also:

Will President Obama read Sarah Palin’s book?

Sarah Palin on the Oprah Winfrey show: Five best outtakes

Sarah Palin ‘Going Rogue’ and making dough

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Sarah Palin on Oprah Winfrey Show: Five best outtakes

By Peter Grier | 11.16.09

Not all of Sarah Palin’s interview with Oprah Winfrey made it onto Monday’s show.

Sure, Oprah’s broadcast had lots of good bits, from Palin’s statement that a run for the White House in 2012 is “not on my radar screen right now,” to the conciliatory Thanksgiving dinner invitation she says she proffered Levi Johnston, the father of daughter Bristol’s baby.

But the outtakes have great stuff, too. Some are posted on Oprah’s website.

Among the most interesting items:

Sarah’s journal. In discussing how and why the ex-governor of Alaska came to write her memoir, “Going Rogue,” Ms. Palin said “I have a journalism degree and have journalled all of my life.”

Oprah jumped at this, asking Palin when she first started writing down her thoughts. For a second, the question hangs there, giving the impression that perhaps Oprah has caught Palin out in some kind of misstatement.

But Palin jumps back in, saying she’s kept a dairy since she was in elementary school, and that recently she and her sister went over the diary entries. Lots of them dealt with chopping wood.

“Almost every day I have some kind of entry about having to stack firewood in order to heat the home,” Palin told Oprah.

Sarah Palin and the sorcerer’s stone. Palin said that many lies and much innuendo was spread about her in the media during the 2008 presidential campaign. Many of the false statements could have been disproved easily, Palin said.

Take the report that Palin banned books from the public library when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Palin told Oprah the story was completely untrue, and was spread by a Wasilla blogger who disliked her.

“Look at that list of books I supposedly banned – ‘Harry Potter,’ it wasn’t even written when I was the mayor,” said Palin.

For the record, Ms. Palin was mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first volume of J.K. Rowling’s popular series, was published in the US in 1998.

Democracy in the Palin family. Palin told Oprah that at various points in her political life she has gathered all her family together, and the kids and her husband Todd have voted on her course of action.

“I’ve abided by the results of some of the polls that the kids have partaken in,” she said.

Joining Sen. John McCain’s presidential ticket was not one of those moments, though. When Palin thought Senator McCain was on the verge of asking her to be his running mate, she called her husband, who urged her to seize the opportunity.

“He said, yep, he would be there for me, and with me, and he has been,” said Palin.

Joe Lieberman sets Palin free. Palin said she found prepping for the vice-presidential debate onerous, in the sense that she thought the McCain campaign was force-feeding her answers to various questions. At one point, McCain’s good friend Sen. Joe Lieberman (I) of Connecticut came into the darkened hotel room where aides was peppering her with data.

Senator Lieberman said that the effort was “overly scripted,” and threw everybody out of the room, Palin told Oprah.

According to Palin, Liebrman said, “I think I know you well enough already, Gov. Palin, to know that you need to be free, you need some liberty, you need to speak from the heart.”

Lieberman told her to trust herself and have fun.

“Those things were so simplistic but so absolutely real and helpful at the time,” said Palin. “I was so thankful for his words.”

Sarah Palin impersonates Tina Fey. Palin told Oprah that at first she was only dimly aware of the popularity of Ms. Fey’s impersonations of her on “Saturday Night Live” (SNL). At one point, she saw a clip of the show, with the volume down.

“I thought it was me,” said Palin.

Later, when she went on SNL to try and neutralize the act a bit, she met Fey backstage. At the time, Fey was holding her three-year-old daughter Alice.

Alice looked at her mother, then at Palin, then back again.

“I said, ‘We’re confusing your daughter’,” said Palin. “And we were.”

Then Palin told Oprah that for years, people in Alaska had been telling her she looked like that gal on Saturday Night Live. So one Halloween, she dressed up as Tina Fey.

“Yeah, I did. I went one year as Tina Fey,” Palin said.

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See also:

Sarah Palin: ‘Going Rogue,” making dough.

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Clinton-Palin coffee date: Beer Summit 2 in the making

By Mark Sappenfield | 11.15.09

President Obama sought to bridge America’s racial divide over beer.

Now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she would welcome sitting down to a cup of coffee with Sarah Palin.

On two separate Sunday morning talk shows, Secretary Clinton said that she would “look forward” to chatting at a café with Ms. Palin – the former Republican vice presidential candidate, soon-to-be millionaire author, and closest thing that politics has to a lightning rod in a red pant suit.

It was, almost certainly, a moment of Sunday morning small talk. Yet if cable news’ coverage of Obama’s Beer Summit is anything to go by – with their countdown timers to zero hour and careful deconstruction of each man’s beer selection – CNN, Fox News, and MSBNC are surely mustering all of their resources into seeing if there is any possible way to bring about Clinton Kaffeklatsch (a.k.a. “Beer Summit, the Sequel”).

Palin: Let’s talk

In her comment Sunday, Clinton was responding to an excerpt from Palin’s forthcoming book, “Going Rogue,” in which Palin wrote:

“Should Secretary Clinton and I ever sit down over a cup of coffee, I know that we will fundamentally disagree on many issues. But my hat is off to her hard work on the 2008 campaign trail. A lot of her supporters think she proved what Margaret Thatcher proclaimed. ‘If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.’ ”

For the self-described hockey mom, the comment amounts to a self-imposed two minutes in the literary penalty box. In August 2008, Palin said that Clinton was essentially whining when Clinton suggested that she was not being treated fairly by the media because she was a woman. (See the video here.)

Speaking about Clinton’s complaint, Palin said: “When I hear a statement like that, coming from a woman candidate, with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism, or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think ‘Man, that doesn’t do us [as women] any good.’ ”

Even then, she hedged her criticism in respectful tones, prefacing her comments by saying: “I say this with all due respect to Hillary Clinton, and to her experience and to her passion for changing the status quo also…”

In “Going Rogue,” the olive branch (or is that a biscotti?) Palin extends to Clinton suggests that her kind words about Clinton in 2008 were indeed heartfelt and not merely the perfunctory prologue to a political assassination attempt.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton notably refused to heap criticism on Palin, even when given the opportunity to do so.

Which raises the question: What in the world would two such political polar opposites discuss. Not healthcare reform and “death panels,” one would assume.

In the Palin-parlance of March 2008, perhaps they would do a little “whining” about the media. In the last speech before resigning as Alaska governor, Palin accused the media of “making things up.”

And, in the end, perhaps Clinton did have a point: In a survey conducted for Lifetime TV last December, 65 percent of women said that male and female candidates are held to different standards on the campaign trail.

See also:

A sneak peek at ‘going Rogue’

Republicans ‘Going Rogue’ in upstate New York

Palin ‘effects change’ – one Tweet at a time

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