Samantha Power Has Done a Great Service by Naming Hillary

by on March 7, 2008 10

The writer Samantha Power has done us all a favor by throwing the word "monster" into the race. It is worth the loss of her advice-giving, which maybe she can resume after purdah. There is something monstrous about the Clintons' appetites, ambition, and lies. They are extreme characters, the psychological expression we use now instead of monster. It is great that Power has named Clinton, she has given people a literary touchstone. Hillary's statement on "60 Minutes" that she takes Obama at his word he's a Christian, and her sharp cry to the people of Ohio that she will bring down gas prices--these were shameless, calculating moments. Yes I think that Obama is cold and arrogant, but he seems real and there is a sense of sincerity and intellectual honesty about him, of a personal code that is larger than his hunger for power. The only times Hillary has seemed humble, and she has, movingly, is when she has been on the losing end. Gee I hope she gets to develop this side of her character.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in US Politics

{ 10 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Charles Keating says:
    March 7, 2008 at 4:25 pm

    Hillary fits easily into one of those old KZ pics of Irma Griese, the same H head, H body, same perverted idealism towards her own mundane benefit. The means and ends change, but not the story.

  2. Jim Haygood says:
    March 7, 2008 at 4:29 pm

    Stories told by the Arkansas state troopers about guarding the governor's mansion during the Clintons' residency were published in the American Spectator in 1994. They have the ring of truth — particularly one about foul-mouthed Hillary throwing a lamp at philandering Bill. Things have never been the same since. I wonder how much stuff she busted up on the third floor of the White House.

    Trooper Larry Patterson stated that Bill and Hillary Clinton frequently argued with each other using harsh expletives, sometimes in the presence of their daughter Chelsea. Some of the anti-Semitic slurs with which she commonly laced her tirades against Bill were “Jew mother****er,” “Jew Boy” and “Jew Bastard.”

    So Bill was not only our first black president; he was the first Jewish president too. ;-)

  3. Charles Keating says:
    March 7, 2008 at 5:00 pm

    Haywood, that's on point–and hilarious.

  4. Charles Keating says:
    March 7, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    Oops, sorry I mean Haygood.

  5. Michael Blaine says:
    March 7, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    And let's not forget what was revealed in an article Phil pointed us to: That Chelsea Clinton is dating the son of a convicted felon.

    These are not the sort of people who ought to have access to the White House again.

    Michael Blaine
    http://www.rudelystamped.blogspot.com

  6. Issacms says:
    March 8, 2008 at 7:39 am

    Are Jews Less Attached to Israel? Maybe Not

    By Anthony Weiss
    Wed. Mar 05, 2008
    Article tools

    A new study is challenging the notion that American Jews are growing less attached to Israel.

    According to a study released by three researchers at the Steinhardt Social Research Institute, a prominent demographic research center at Brandeis University, an analysis of survey data going back more than a decade suggests that American Jewish attachment to Israel has remained consistently strong.

    “Things seem to be pretty stable,” said Leonard Saxe, who is the institute’s director and one of the authors of the study.

    Written by Saxe, Theodore Sasson and Charles Kadushin, the study comes in the wake of recent publications — including a survey conducted by sociologist Steven M. Cohen — arguing that American Jewish attachment to Israel is decreasing. More broadly, it is the latest in a long series of demographic studies and articles that have vacillated between optimism and pessimism over Jewish population size, attachment to Israel, Jewish affiliation among the children of intermarried couples and a whole host of other issues concerning the future of the Jewish community.

    The Steinhardt Institute was founded in 2005 to settle precisely these kinds of contentious demographic issues; however, the institute, with Saxe as its director, has instead emerged as the consistently more optimistic pole in these debates.

    The recent boom of interest in Jewish demographics can be traced to the 1990 National Jewish Population Study, which found that 52% of Jews who were marrying took non-Jewish spouses. This number induced panic about the future of Jews in America, though several critics — Cohen included — argued that the number was inflated.

    Then, the 2000-01 NJPS, co-authored by Cohen, found that the number of Jews in America had dropped to 5.2 million from 5.5 million in 1990. This number, too, was challenged: Not long ago, Saxe and Kadushin argued in a recent study that the number was likely more than 6 million and possibly as high as 8 million, depending on how one defined “Jewish.”

    As of late, Saxe and Cohen, a research professor of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, have clashed over the significance of intermarriage, with Cohen arguing that intermarriage leads to an erosion of Jewish identity and Saxe countering that it is Jewish background, not intermarriage, that is the truer measure of whether Jews stay Jewishly involved.

    The tiff over attachment to Israel is the latest clash between the two. In 2007, Cohen and Ari Kelman, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis, published a study showing that attachment to Israel was lower and lower among younger and younger non-Orthodox Jews. From this, Cohen and Kelman concluded that as the younger, less-attached group aged, Jews overall would become less attached.

    Now, Saxe, Sasson and Kadushin are challenging that finding. Their study, which looks at telephone surveys commissioned by the American Jewish Committee going back to 1994, found that levels of attachment to Israel among American Jews had consistently remained high through the years, with those saying they felt “close” to Israel remaining well over 65%.

    They also find that the so-called “age cohort” differences between younger and older Jews have been consistent through the years, suggesting that as Jews age, their attachment to Israel grows.

    Cohen, however, refused to concede that Israel attachment is stable, saying that the AJCommittee’s surveys weren’t an accurate reflection of American Jews at large and that the study didn’t show the long-term effects of intermarriage. He defended his demographic pessimism, saying, “I think I’m in a bit better touch with the reality.”

    Saxe, on the other hand, defended himself as a “tough-minded empiricist” and said that with the rise of new technology, easier travel to Israel and the huge numbers of young adults traveling to Israel through the Birthright Israel program, which began in 2000, the elements were in place for attachments to grow much stronger.

    “We think something fundamental is changing,” he said.

  7. liberal white boy says:
    March 8, 2008 at 7:52 am

    Amen
    It's 3:oo Am and the phone is ringing.
    It's the Israeli Ambassador calling our President. He has been advised by his Government that Bill and Monika's phone sex tapes have been stolen from the Mossad vault. Unless the Commander and Chief of the United States begins an all out assault on Iranian suspected nuclear weapons sites the thief will release the tapes to the media. Now who do you want answering the phone?
    link to homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com
    />

  8. Charles Keating says:
    March 8, 2008 at 9:39 am

    LOL. Reminds me of Wilson's love letters.

  9. Joely says:
    March 8, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    Thanks for your analyses, this one included. I find hope in the fact that someone is willing to parse the truth and lay it out.
    Namaste.

  10. USpace says:
    March 9, 2008 at 1:01 am

    .
    Firing Powers was a mistake, Obama has shown himself to be subservient to the PIAPS.
    Great post. Obama’s aide was right. Hillary is a monster. Of course not the same kind of monster as Hitler, Mao or Stalin, but a monster nonetheless.
    .
    absurd thought –
    God of the Universe says
    don't call monsters monsters

    never expose their evil
    never upset a monster

    .
    absurd thought -
    God of the Universe says
    claim to care for people

    call yourself progressive
    your policies hurt poor folk

    .
    absurd thought -
    God of the Universe says
    elect women presidents

    who cover for their husbands
    who rape other women

    .
    if you’re MAD
    punish your country
    VOTE for Hillary

    .

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