Parts of the American Right makes arses of themselves. Again.

Dear oh dear. Apart from my long held suspicion that most Americans don't even know what the word socialism actually means and wouldn't know socialism if they fell over it, it is always dangerous to over-egg the pudding. Look at Obama's speech to American school children, the subject of an absurd amount of idiotic and childish hyperventilating over - well over nothing as it turned out. As The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web Today section observed: "The White House must've loved this. All they had to do was release the prepared text of the speech, and as long as it actually was a pep talk and not a political or ideological rallying cry, many of their opponents would be made to look like nuts. And indeed, the speech, which came out yesterday, is totally innocuous. Mission accomplished." It also notes that Obama's supposed effort at "socialist indoctrination" had no less than five product placements in it, and was "a celebration of American capitalism and its fruits." Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at NYU's Stern Business School and a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, writing in Forbes said: The Silly Season ceases to be "silly" when what passes for political debate in America turns not merely stupid or witless, but certifiably demented. I write of the kooky reaction of many conservatives--politicians, citizens and commentators in the media--to the plan by President Obama to address the nation's schoolchildren tomorrow. (And I write, pleasenote, as a nonlefty libertarian who did not support Barack Obama in the presidential election.) Varadarajan makes the good point that the Right in America was justly appalled by the insane and vicious behaviour of many Democrats in regards to President Bush, but are now behaving in a similarly demented fashion.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous