After reading mistermix’s post about Obama and Sarkozy stating the obvious about Netanyahu, I went to check my favorite Likud party media outlets — TNR, Kaplan, Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg and TNR (including even Peretz) haven’t written about it, Jackson Diehl of Kaplan has actually written a column asking why Obama and Sarkozy would say such a mean thing about such a nice guy as Binny.
Who does Diehl think he’s writing for at this point? Is there anyone who reads his stuff who doesn’t think he’s a shameless AIPAC/Likud party shill? Even the Weekly Standard isn’t interested in this stupid story, yet even the liberal Washington Post editorial board is using it as a pretext to bash Obama’s policy on the Middle East. What an embarrassment that once proud paper has become.
scav
This title could have gone a couple ways, I’m just too jazzed I got it — missed the topic underneath by a lightyear, more or less.
ETA: was actually a little tentative, I thought there might be photographic evidence that I’d have to shut my eyes fast to avoid.
DougJ
@scav:
Love me like a rock.
cathyx
Is it Paul Simon day today and nobody told me?
scav
@DougJ: The get down on my knees and love me love me love me love me was bleeding over into Kodachome and giving me nightmares. Belusconi kept fighting Cain for the presidential podium. aaaaa!
DougJ
@DougJ:
He’s the one boomer-friendly singer-songwriter I really like.
Villago Delenda Est
I got the Presidential Seal, I’m up on the Presidential Podium
My momma loves me, she loves me
(I totally wore out a vinyl copy of “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon” some 35 years ago.)
We come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we come on the ship that sailed the Moon…
MikeJ
@DougJ: Not Dylan? You use him a lot too. Hell, I think you’ve used Hurricane at least three times.
Mino
I’m wondering if it was a brush back of Israeli intentions towards Iran.
I don’t see Obama being led by the nose into a war, and Bibi seems to have a war-jag on.
Napoleon
I think that the right made one of their collective decisions to ignore what Obama said because in order to raise a stink about it they need to, unfortunately (from their perspective), report that leaders of countries that are our allies think Netanyahu is a liar.
Three-nineteen
I figured at some point you’d use “The minute Congress called my name”, but it didn’t happen. Maybe next term when they try to impeach Obama.
Brachiator
Let’s see if this gets any play in the GOP presidential debates, as the candidates declare how much they heart Bibi.
DougJ
@Napoleon:
That is my take too.
MikeJ
@Napoleon:
On the one hand, more proof that the french are blah blah cheese eating blah blah vichey blah surrender. On the other hand, Sarko is a right winger who ran against and beat a real live honest to soçialist.
R-Jud
@Napoleon: A right-wing leader of one of those countries, no less– although I imagine they would not consider any Frenchman legitimately right-wing.
ETA: Drat. Jinx, MikeJ!
Villago Delenda Est
@R-Jud:
Probably not even Louis XVI.
Mike Goetz
Mild exasperation=hate now?
What did Obama say that was so terrible about Bibi?
trollhattan
@MikeJ:
C’ha, it’s teh French, not some actual bonafide ally! (Whoops, I spokeded French.)
Cat Lady
Who are they talking to? Follow the money. Kaplan (the company not their paper) is losing money because of the regs requiring for profit higher ed corps to actually prove they’re providing what they’re promising and they can’t, so they’ve gotta get rid of Obama’s administration. It’s just reflexive ODS at this point.
ruemara
@Mike Goetz:
He did not praise Bibi’s fashion sense and impeccable honour. This is deep anti-semitism.
redshirt
I just want to add to the public record that the Right Wing’s adoption of Israel over the past 20 years is just surreal. That Sarah Palin would have an Israeli flag in her Governor’s office just boggles my mind.
These people are insane, and will literally believe anything. How can you work with/reason with them?
xian
@Napoleon: indeed. And note that all politicians lie (or “prevaricate” or “shade the truth” or “spin”), so when a pol calls out another pol for lying, that really means he lies in private. He is not a man of his word. You can’t trust him. You can’t do business with him.
Napoleon
@Mike Goetz:
If you actually read what he said not much really. It was Sarkozy who called him a liar and that he could not stand him. Obama said “You’re sick of him? I have to work with him every day.” It was actually a canny way of seeming to agree with Sarkozy without actually explicitly agreeing with him. But of course if the right went full in on this story such fine distinctions would be swept away.
scav
@MikeJ: Yes but ces singes mangent du fromage socialiste are going to abreuvent leurs sillons with Sarko+ heh heh heh heh shrug
Punchy
I heard Sharon Bialek is going to accuse Netanyahu of sexual harrassment.
eemom
AWESOME title!
Much as I adore “Loves Me Like A Rock,” I actually thought you were referring to another, more obscure Paul Simon song that uses that phrase. Do you know what that song is??
DougJ
@Punchy:
What does Sully think about this?
scav
ma foi! I have been trapped by the dreaded soc1aliste FoutrePressDuMot!
David Hunt
@Mike Goetz:
It’s what he didn’t do, that being ordering his Secret Service detail to shoot Sarkozy on the spot, then have the body hauled back to Washington and beheaded so that the head can be mounted on the Whitehouse wall and the rest of the body sent to the National zoo to be sodomized by gorillas. Of course, anyone with any intelligence could would be able to spot the momentary hesitation in giving these orders as proof that Obama is really an anti-semite whose true loyalty is to al Queada, etc., etc…
R-Jud
@Cat Lady: Wow, Kaplan sounds even wilder than these guys.
Part of me thinks we should just let the PFPs have all the business degree programs. The other part knows that biz degrees help keep non-profit colleges afloat financially, tho.
Back on topic: Paul Simon, fuck yeah!
El Cid
This isn’t fair to Jackson Diehl. He’s also a slavish liar for whatever right wing regime or group or coup you can find in Latin America, fully willing to fabricate stories if it makes Hugo Chavez look bad. (After all, how could someone like Diehl afford access to the intertubes so as to verify the contents of a document he was quoting?)
eemom
edit: Not the EXACT same phrase but close.
R-Jud
@eemom: Run That Body Down! One of my favorites from his first album.
lamh35
Hey DougJ,
Aren’t you a fan of hip hop? If so, some sad news, tmz and other ent outlets are reporting that a rap legend has died.
Dwight Myers, aka “Heavy D” died suddenly today.
Dude was the soundtrack to my teenage years.
eemom
@R-Jud:
splendiforous! You are my soul mate.
ruemara
@lamh35: Serious? Man, first one of the Boyz dies in an accident, now Heavy D passes? Way too soon.
DougJ
@eemom:
No, what is it?
JGabriel
Napoleon:
Possibly. Alternately, it could be read as a warning: “You’re fed up with him? Fine, but I’ve got to work with him every day, so give me some fucking room to maneuver.”
The truth is, we’re working with a report of gossip of what people heard of a translation of what Sarkozy & Obama said. Probably best not to read fine details into it.
.
DougJ
@lamh35:
I do like hip hop, but I don’t know Heavy D’s stuff that well.
R-Jud
@eemom: His stuff from that period is just so much fun to play. It’s never just three chords.
cathyx
With all this Paul Simon today, I had to break out my Paul Simon Greatest Hits cassette tape and am currently enjoying it while I type.
kindness
@Punchy: Too soon.
Calouste
@ruemara:
I wonder if the RWNM is going to trott out the anti-semitism tag against Sarkozy considering his grandfather was Jewish and 57 family members of his were murdered by the Nazis.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@DougJ
To address the question you implied @top, Why isn’t the rest of the non-Kaplan right going apeshit over Obama’s remarks re:Bibi?, isn’t the answer obvious: these are the days of miracles and wonders.
JGabriel
@cathyx:
I actually think Simon’s peak work as a solo artist was the one-two punch of Heart & Bones and Graceland.
.
MikeJ
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I would not give you false hope on this strange and mournful day.
Villago Delenda Est
@Calouste:
They do it to George Soros, who actually evaded the Nazis.
They have no shame at all.
MikeJ
And how on earth did we have this thread with no mention of “papa say “Oy, if I get that boy I’m gonna stick him in the house of detention.”
redshirt
@Calouste: Of course they could. They would accuse a concentration camp survivor of anti-semitism if they didn’t completely follow the Right Wing Party line – whatever that is at the time.
We have to stop using “logic” to understand their behaviors. It doesn’t apply.
lamh35
@DougJ: oh ur a newbie hip hopcat maybe? Well aside from being a legend in old school hip hop, there would be no P Diddy without Heavy D, literally, Heavy D brought Sean Combs over to Uptown Records and that’s where Puffy met this dude called Andre Harell and there u have Biggie, Mary J Blige, et al.
He was the original “Overweight Lover”…damn. Just 44 years old. Way too young.
cathyx
As I’m listening to the Paul Simon tape, it’s uncanny how many songs apply to the Herman Cain saga.
Villago Delenda Est
@cathyx:
One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, perhaps?
cathyx
@Villago Delenda Est: You started all this Paul Simon stuff you know.
scav
or even for the press conference (might have helped)
handsmile
@Napoleon: (#(9)
I don’t imagine that American “Likud party media outlets” or the GOP care very much about the opinions of foreign governments, putative allies or not, on the subject of Israel or Netanyahu. in fact, any and all disapproval would be a badge of honor affirming their conviction of israel’s rectitude on all matters.
I suspect that the relative absence of Obama condemnation from the right-wing Wurlitzer on this issue is related to Israel’s saber-rattling on Iran and the imminent release of the IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear development. Evidenced last week both by Israel’s test launch of a Jericho long-range missile and remarks by President Shimon Peres that “the possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option.”
Today, Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak deflated these fears by announcing that “Israel has not yet decided to embark on any operation….War is not a picnic. We want a picnic. We don’t want a war.”
Powder is being kept dry by Israel’s most servile patrons in Washington and the corporate media.
Also, while this may be a trivial factor, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-FL) yesterday released her block of $200 million in security assistance to the Palestinian Authority. She expressed satisfaction with Obama administration answers that these funds supported both US and Israeli national interests. Uncomfortable questions may have been raised about why a GOP congressional chair would have given aid and comfort to the enemy.
As always with the Middle East, eleventh-dimensional chess doesn’t begin to describe it.
David in NY
@DougJ:
For the record.
In case you missed the reference, @R-Jud:, eemom was referring to “Run That Body Down.”
Which is close: “Whooo you foolin’ …?”
What I thought of first, too.
Maude
@David in NY:
No one did I’d rather be a hammer than a nail?
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh35: Damn, that sucks. RIP.
Brachiator
@DougJ: Now that We Found Love was fairly popular in the day
eemom
I once heard that Paul Simon came up with Mother and Child Reunion while eating a chicken and egg dish in a Chinese restaurant. Dunno if it’s true, though.
eemom
@MikeJ:
When the radical priest come to get me released we wuz all on the cover of Newsweek.
Villago Delenda Est
@eemom:
OK, you beat me to the “Me and Julio down by the schoolyard” reference…
MikeJ
@Villago Delenda Est: Technically the comment she responded to beat you to it.
WaterGirl
@xian:
Exactly!
Sly
@Villago Delenda Est:
He buckled under pressure and called together the Estates-General instead of handling France’s problems like a boss. Fuckin’ pansy-ass commie.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sly: He intended to do it all along. He was a secret Republican.
A Conservative Teacher
Well, one thing is for sure- religion has nothing to do with it.
bob h
Perhaps they understand that Obama’s sale of the bunker-buster bombs to Israel (that will in time be used on Iran) is more important.
invisible_hand
call me a wilting flower, but i think goldberg has taken a stand in the last few years firmly against the likud party line. likud is simply not invested (and are even opposing) the formation of a palestinian state. and while goldberg’s analysis is obviously slanted at times, he has earned the right to be counted among the more reasonable on this issue.
No One of Consequence
(damn, I go to sleep to early, or just missed this thread!)
… Lord I am a surgeon, and music is my knife…
– NOoC
Pococurante
@invisible_hand:
Exactly. JG has been sharply and repeatedly critical of Bibi, the Likud, the settlers, and the settlements. He’s vocal on TV and radio panels, not just on his blog.