Friday, 8 August, 2003'Conan, what is best in life?'To crush your enemies, to see dem driven before you, and to hear duh lamentation off duh wimmen.Yeah, well, what with Arnold Schwarzenegger announcing his candidacy for Gubernator of California, the pundits are falling over each other "clever" movie references. "Lexington" in this week's Economist probably has the best (or least bad, depending on your point of view) of the lot, with "Running man"; "Total Recall" had been used months ago. I thought I'd better reach even further back. Going by my gut, the recall campaign against Governor Gray Davis was started for all the wrong reasons; Davis was re-elected only last year, due in no small part to the spectacular incompetence of the Republicans in fielding a candidate who was even less popular than Davis. Observers said it was practically impossible, but somehow the California GOP managed it. Under the circumstances, the degree of voter apathy was no big surprise. Then Darell Issa launched what has been called a snowball; perhaps he felt that if he had been the Republican candidate last year he might have won, or perhaps he hoped that people would be even more fed up with Davis by now, and he would now be in with a chance. Be that as it may, "Darrell Issa got run over by his own snowball," as a reader wrote in to Daniel Weintraub, a columnist on the Sacramento Bee who is running a weblog titled California Insider (link via Evan Kirchoff). There has been a rash of people announcing their candidacy, but with Arnold Schwarzenegger at last throwing his hat in the ring, Issa has ignominiously pulled out of the process he started. posted 0434 Z-8 [more..] Thoughts on 'Islamofascism' On 20-Sep-2001, The Nation published an article by Christopher Hitchens titled "Against Rationalization." In it, Hitchens wrote the following line: But the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it.Hitchens later encapsulated this concept in the term "Islamofascism," which rapidly gained currency in the world of punditry, both in the mainstream media and in Blogoslavia. posted 0216 Z-8 [more..] |
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