“The Elevator Music”… Or not
India Uncut is one of my favourite Indian political blogs. So, it pains me when Amit acts like an InstaIdiot.
For example, he favorably quotes a piece in Weekly Standard titled “The Wit and Wisdom of Barack Obama“. Anyone who even has a cursory interest in American politics will realize why I call this InstaIdiot. As John Cole put it
Is it appropriate for the magazine that has delicately and lovingly fondled George Bush’s scrotum for eight years to ponder about the wit and wisdom of anything other than a tree stump?
In any case, Amit asks:
Should Obama be held to higher standards? I say yes, because those higher standards are an implicit promise of his campaign.
So, (i) candidate A is far better than the other candidates in the field, but (ii) he doesn’t meet all your higher expectations from his candidacy. Does that mean one should choose the other guy? To repeat Patrix’s question:
Barack Obama is a card-carrying civil libertarian. The question is, will our Eminent Blogger warm up to him now?
Update: Some balance from our EB:
The rest of [the Obama speech] was flat-out brilliant. He spoke of race in America with a nuance and subtlety that is rare in political discourse […]
Even if many of his [economic] ideas are wrong, I admire this man immensely. He could have taken the safe way out and “denounced and rejected” Jeremiah Wright. But instead, as the Philadelphia Enquirer put it, he “condemned the sins but embraced the sinner.” That takes courage and conviction, so hats off for that.
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