From the category archives:

Palin

Just got up, just heard Steve Inskeep of Morning Edition on NPR angrily asking the Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor (whom Horowitz dispatched on this site last night) what the goals were, when it was going to be over, aren't you empowering Hamas, etc. I missed the beginning of the interview, it doesn't matter. Inskeep was short with the ambassador, almost trembling with contained feeling. Inskeep is the son of an English teacher and grew up in Indiana. He's a real American, as my good friend Sarah Palin used to say. And he's at NPR, which administers the IV drip every morning on what Elite Blue Staters Are Allowed to Think. And he's angry. This would never have happened before. Inskeep would have checked himself and thought about the mantra, Israel's right to exist, Arabs have never missed an opportunity, what would Daniel Schorr with his Zionist mama say, blah blah blah…

It's over baby. The whole thing is over. I'm telling you. America is waking up at last and realizing that the warm cuddly furball it adopted in 1948 is a monster. A few weeks ago one of my anti-Zionist friends murmured in an email to me, "I hate that f—ing country." I was shocked; it's not something I feel. But I think that sentiment is now seeping out through my country, and affecting people like Inskeep. The American street is rising up. And everyone who has taken the wrong side of this easy important choice called the Gaza Slaughter, from Mayor Bloomberg to Jeffrey Goldberg, is suddenly going to find themselves on an ice floe to nowhere. Just ask the neoconservatives. (Jeffrey, get right with the lord, we need you.) It really is the end of the Israel lobby, or a new phase. What Jack Ross said here yesterday is right. J Street and MJ Rosenberg are in the driver's seat; Obama is going to have room to be tough on Israel. 385 Palestinians have lost their lives for a reason. A horrifying thing to say (but it is what Norman Finkelstein said a month ago).

As Ross said, it might even be the end of the two-state solution, this moment when Americans see ethnic cleansing/genocide/apartheid, give it whatever name you please, and look at their wives or husbands and say, I hate that frakkin country, why have we believed a word they told us. I know, I'm dramatic, my wife always tells me that. But I'm right. And guess what's the next shoe to drop? The Nakba. You heard it here first.

(Photo is from Shifa Hospital, 2 days ago, likely by Suhaib Salem of Reuters.)  Gaza

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Big-Media Clothing Budgets Are Fair Game

by Philip Weiss on November 8, 2008 · 1 comment

I find Andrea Mitchell of NBC oddly charming. She is unpretentious, straightforward and racked by insecurity, which I always find appealing, so long as you're not grabbing my arm.  She works hard, she's smart, and she doesn't pretend to be a thinker. The other day after someone had tee'd off on Sarah Palin's clothes budget, she grinned and said: "Fortunately we're in television, we're not running for office." Charming. But incorrect, I would argue. Why aren't big media clothing allowances fair game, especially if the media are speechifying about how much ordinary people spend? After all, Sarah Palin only raided Neiman Marcus because she was on television.

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Palin Balked at Meeting Donors. Who?

by Philip Weiss8 November 2008

Tonight on Hardball, Chris Matthews read from Newsweek’s inside account of the McCain campaign and said Sarah Palin reportedly balked at meeting big “donors,” saying she thought that this was a “corrupt” practice. The story’s not up yet on the…

3 comments

What You’re Seeing Is a Progressive Movement

by Philip Weiss3 November 2008

There are going to be 1 million people in Grant Park in Chicago tomorrow night. (If Obama loses, imagine what they’ll do to the city, then imagine what people will do to New York.) On MSNBC, Chuck Todd was saying…

7 comments

CNN Shocker: Khalidi Accused Israel of ‘Occupying Palestinian Territories’

by Philip Weiss29 October 2008

Now Sarah Palin is going after Rashid Khalidi as a “radical” professor. Gee, I know Khalidi and he’s not very radical. He’s sober, even a little middle of the road. If you have any doubts about the disastrous effects of…

31 comments

I’ll Take My Stand (for the Palin Wardrobe)

by Philip Weiss22 October 2008

From an aesthetic standpoint, I must say that Sarah Palin’s expenditures worked. She looks glamorous, soigne, natural. I had been noticing this before the story broke. I thought, For a hick, that girl sure knows how to put it together….

7 comments

Palin:Obama=Netanyahu:Rabin (Sure Hope Not)

by Philip Weiss10 October 2008

David Bromwich has a moving piece on Huffpo about the actual dangerousness of Palin’s loose talk about Obama, linking him to terrorists. David Gergen has been saying this too. Bromwich says it’s a form of delegitimation which we also saw…

11 comments

Netanyahu Shares His Vision of Bantustans With Brit Reporters

by Philip Weiss8 October 2008

The Financial Times is a great newspaper. They have a piece on Bibi Netanyahu’s plans for a Palestinian “entity.” Netanyahu himself jumping up to the white board. Well it’s subdivided “into a collection of disconnected economic zones with dedicated business…

3 comments

At a Palin Rally, Racism

by Philip Weiss7 October 2008

How ugly will America get? I’m a cockeyed optimist. But this is worrisome. Dana Milbank in the Washington Post: Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts…

2 comments

‘I’ve Lost My Analytical Center of Gravity’

by Philip Weiss3 October 2008

Alison Weir’s differences with me remind me of a meeting I had the other day with a Jewish Arabist. I’m disguising some facts about him to protect his identity, still I wanted to convey some of his thinking. He worked…

17 comments

Biden Is Noble, But Panders

by Philip Weiss3 October 2008

I was blown away by Joe Biden last night. He was truly presidential. He got more and more confident as the evening went on. He grew into it. I wondered why he had not been able to defeat Obama earlier…

6 comments

Matthews Calls Bush–and Palin–a ‘Cover’ for Neocon Agenda

by Philip Weiss30 September 2008

Chris Matthews inched up to the line on the neoconservatives tonight in a conversation with Pat Buchanan about the briefing of Sarah Palin. Don’t you think, Matthews said, that McCain’s foreign policy guru Randy Scheunemann is scripting her on this…

3 comments

‘Daily Kos’ Denies the Existence of the Israel Lobby

by Philip Weiss26 September 2008

This is a truly pathetic piece in Kos about Governor Palin’s meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres and gushing about the Israeli flag in her office. Kos finds this laughable and dubious, another hick Palinism, and so is able to extract…

17 comments

While America Slept, Neocons Darted Chip Into Palin’s Brain

by Philip Weiss14 September 2008

The Telegraph in London reports that Sarah Palin was schooled by neoconservatives over the last two weeks, resulting in her suggestion to Charlie Gibson that Georgia was worth a military confrontation with Russia, and that she first came to the…

26 comments