Friday, December 12, 2008

What to call these strange animals ?

Remember Greg Felton?

He is back with some more of the same noxious observations and demonizations that characterized his appearance in what is considered a respectable venue, the Vancouver Public Library, as part of "freedom to read" week activities.

This is what he says about Obama, the kikes and the bitch:

For all of the hype about his representing “change,” Barack Obama is proving to be just another Israeli satrap. His [sic] decision to surround himself with Clinton-era retreads like faux-Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, Mossad mole Rahm Emanuel, warmongering concubine Hillary Clinton proves that his fawning and grovelling before AIPAC was not an aberration.

Like any American politician, Obama is well aware of the master/slave relationship in Washingtelaviv, and that his career, not to mention his life, depends on him doing as he’s told.

Of course, to admit that Obama will continue Bush’s anti-Muslim, made-in-Israel foreign policy doesn’t play well in a country desperate to believe in anything positive. Thus, to avoid any substantive analysis of Obama’s obsequiousness, media coverage of him is deliberately stripped of substance and reduced to image worship.

Interesting, though by no means surprising, to note where his vile stuff is published.

Though make no mistake: he is only expressing explicitly what some high brow newspapers of an "independent" mind do implicitly. Take for example the Guardian's coverage of Obama's visit to Israel:

When a presumptive US presidential candidate arrives in Jerusalem, he willingly dons a jacket designed by Israeli tailors. He is compelled to call the country a miracle, to visit the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem and to link the memory of the 6 million Jews who died in Europe to Israeli victims of Palestinian violence today. It was no accident that at Yad Vashem Barack Obama met the policeman who stopped the rampage of a Palestinian bulldozer driver that injured 16 Israelis on Monday.

On this sneer, Norm Geras had this to say:

Even by the Guardian's standards in its coverage of Israel, this is foul stuff. Never mind miracle... Is there anything wrong with a visitor to Israel paying his respects at Yad Vashem to the memory of several million dead?...

But notice something else in the general presentation here: though Obama dons the jacket 'willingly', it seems that he is 'compelled' to do the things he does - to say miracle, visit Yad Vashem, make the lamented link. Really?... We are to believe that the Israelis have a way of getting visiting politicians to do what they otherwise mightn't? Being Jews, they'll have the knack for that, I suppose.

What I'm saying is just this: That the only difference between Greg Felton and the likes of the Guardian is not that of substance but of degree.

There is a story generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw in which a gentleman asked a lady whether she would spend the night with him for a million pounds.

" Yes , indeed" says the lady, wreathed in flattered smiles.

"And for 50 pounds"?

"Sir", she responded in outraged virtue, "Just what do you think I am?"

"Madam, I believe we both agree on what you are. We are now just haggling over the price."

Felton is like the fifty pound hooker, who never pretends to be a lady. Unlike the Guardian, which likes to put on airs... and to keep up appearances.

4 Comments:

At 3:58 PM EST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great post Noga!

 
At 11:16 AM EST, Blogger Marcia Miner said...

This is always a very troubling topic, but I am very clear as an American, a former teacher and an inveterate library patron that the ALA statement is an absolute necessity in a democtracy. i support it 100%. I cannot speak for Canadian Library statements of policy.

http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/statementspols/ftrstatement/freedomreadstatement.cfm

My role is to speak out against the ideas profess by that author (the less his name is mentioned the better), but I cannot speak against the public library of the head librarian for featuring a bigoted local writer during "A Freedom to Read" week. If he were not a B.C. local, it might have been easier to exclude him.

 
At 11:18 AM EST, Blogger Marcia Miner said...

edit: professed

 
At 11:21 AM EST, Blogger Marcia Miner said...

edit: "or" the head librarian (very sorry..phone rang)

 

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