Thursday, January 15, 2015

Anti-imperialism as the Prime Directive?

Men Are Not Potatoes references Jon Stewart's skewering of the Obama administration's complete and egregious no-show at the big shindig in Paris.

Meanwhile, an interesting theory on why the White House preferred to show a naked flagpole in the City of Lights:
"It’s not that Obama is saying, pace Malcolm X—a movie whose influence on the president has been noted by more than one close observer—last week’s murderous rampage in Paris is nothing more than France’s chickens coming home to roost. Nor does Obama have any imaginable interest in showing up in Paris for what could have easily been misconstrued as an anti-Muslim immigrant rally, or a rally in support of some racist cartoonists. At the very least, the rally no doubt at first struck him as politically naïve, as though France thought it could wash its hands of colonialism and everyone else would play along. Let the Europeans, each with their own sordid histories of racism, colonialism, and mass murder, extend their sympathies to the French. In the president’s apparent estimation, a violent Muslim backlash against French colonialism and racism is on the French."
It doesn't require any Huckabee-esque allegations of secret Mau Mau connections to understand that, in the circles Barry has always moved in, "imperialism" and "colonialism" are among the dirtiest of words.