Category: Awards

"I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. … He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” – Cornel West.

The classic West bullshit: "my dear brother". I am sorry to say I put West in the same category as Gingrich as intellectuals whose reputation as such I could never find any serious evidence for. And I have really tried hard to understand West, charming and eccentric as he is.

No save get, as the computers used to say.

“So when does Seal Unit 6, or whatever it’s called, drop in on George Bush? Bush was responsible for a lot more death, innocent death, than bin Laden," – radio host Mike Malloy.

(Hat tip: C4P)

Many readers are echoing this one:

I'm not a big fan of Michael Moore, but can you actually argue that his statements about bin Laden are factually wrong?  His timing and emphasis may be bad, and we kinda know where he's coming from that's not included in his statement, but what he said is actually true.  We did arm him. We short-sightedly thought bin Laden's only gripe was with the Soviets and that he and the Mujahideen could be controllable, bought off, or would at least turn off the heat once they got what they wanted – ousting the Soviets.

Yes, it is factually wrong. Here's Doug Mataconis:

The evidence, in fact, is fairly clear that the “Afghan Arabs” like bin Laden didn’t interact with the Americans at all. The allegations, on the other hand are based on little more than circumstantial evidence and exaggerations. This idea that the CIA trained Osama bin Laden back in 1980 is simply a myth that needs to die along with bin Laden himself. Moore was wrong, and Sullivan was, it seems to me, entirely correct to call him out for it. This is a myth that has taken hold on both the far left and the far right and it’s time that people stopped lying.

Joyner adds nuance:

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “lying,” since people are just repeating what they’ve heard. The confusion comes from the Western conflation of the generic “mujahadeen” into a coherent Mujahadeen, much as we’ve done with the various Taliban groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"The monster we created-yes, WE-in the 1980s by ARMING, FUNDING, &TRAINING him in the art of terror agnst the USSR, finally had 2 b put down. … Which reporter has the courage to say it? "American-armed terrorist from the 80s, Osama bin Laden, was killed earlier today by America," – Michael Moore.

"In '94 people were elected simply to come here to kill the National Endowment for the Arts. Now they’re here to kill women," – Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), on Republican efforts to revoke taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood. And she throws in a Nazi reference for good measure.

In response to Wasserman Schultz's "death trap" cant, Weigel digs up a quote of hers at the time of the Tucson shooting:

I think we need to be leaders by example, and when we do that, then hopefully we're gonna be able to push the shock jocks and others outside our process to take a page from our book. And if we have a more productive civil discourse, then we can really live up to President Obama's words and Christina Taylor Green's dreams, her expectations for our democracy.

"This [Ryan] plan would literally be a death trap for seniors,” – incoming DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

So the response to the "death panels" is a "death trap". Makes you see what Matt Miller was talking about.

(A glossary of Dish awards can be found here. Reader suggestions and nominations in all categories are always welcome.)