Camille Gets A Crush On Michelle

Two for one:

It flashed through my mind that Michelle Obama would be the most graceful, stylish first lady since Jacqueline Kennedy.

And she’s fierce! Michelle in combat goes straight for the jugular. There’s none of that bitter, self-pitying feminazi irony that Hillary indulges in — as in her smugly caustic reference in the recent CNN debate to the onerous "impediments" that women face. (Oh, right — men are to blame for the privileged Wellesley and Yale Law grad having failed her D.C. bar exam.)

Correction Of The Year

From the Sentinel Review in Ontario, Canada:

In an article in Monday’s newspaper, there may have been a misperception about why a Woodstock man is going to Afghanistan on a voluntary mission. Kevin DeClark is going to Afghanistan to gain life experience to become a police officer when he returns, not to shoot guns and blow things up.

The Sentinel-Review apologizes for any embarrassment this may have caused.

More gems here.

The Italians In Iraq

A testimony to the genius of their military in Mesopotamia:

Rory Stewart, once a deputy governor in the provinces of Maysan and Dhi Qar, urged a swift exit from Iraq. ‘Embarrassment rather than good policy is now leading our engagement.’ His sincerity and his charm came across very powerfully and he told us a salutary tale.

In 2004 his compound had been under constant attack, receiving 100 incoming mortars a day. The nearby Italian force, 20 minutes away, usually took at least seven hours to arrive with reinforcements. After a year’s absence he returned and found everything transformed. The area was completely pacified thanks to the Italians. But it wasn’t their ‘good intentions’ that had done the trick but ‘their cowardice and incompetence’. This had forced the Iraqis to assume control. His funny, modest and disarming speech attracted grateful waves of applause. Andrew Neil responded by pointing towards the back of the hall. ‘The Italian ambassador and his bodyguards are waiting for you there. And they’re experts in special rendition.’

Quote For The Day

"Can you tell me: did you in your researches come across the name of Wm. F. Buckley Jr., editor of a New York, neo-McCarthy magazine named National Review? He has been showing me great & unsought attention lately & your article made me curious. Has he been supernaturally “guided” to bore me? It would explain him," – Evelyn Waugh, in a letter to Tom Driberg.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

I think you owe black Democratic voters an "I was wrong" entry for your condescending indictments of us as an uninspired, scared, Jesse Jackson-loving cohort of imbeciles. This for not backing Obama en masse from the moment he announced his nomination. Turns out many of us, behaving as any responsible voter should, were cautiously considering the options, offering nominal support to a person we know and respect (HRC), and waiting for Barack to earn our votes. He is doing that now. Still, I cannot get past your thinly disguised, incendiary implications of fear in our hearts: fear that Barack would wipe out our "cherished" vision of black leadership remaining in the brittle hands of Al Sharpton, Jackson, and other self-interested, Civil Rights-era holdovers; fear that Obama was not really one of "us," that he did not deserve our support because he had not experienced fully the black experience and, by definition, had not earned his way with speeches and protests and civil disobedience on the behalf of lying young black girls. You were wrong!

Turns out we are a little more enlightened than you or some of your other black readers (who verified your belittling views with isolated stories of black resistance to the Obama campaign) thought.

My posts along these lines were all designed to ask questions and figure things out, not to condescend to anyone. I’m sorry if it came off that way. I still think that in some instances, such as, say Andrew Young, there is a generational resistance to the post-racial politics Obama represents. But I’m sure black voters need no advice from me on whom to vote for.