Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Received wisdom

So what causes a guy to shoot up a mosque? It's not a what, it's a who:
In his rambling, 70-page manifesto, the Australian white supremacist who massacred some 50 Muslims in New Zealand last week cited, as inspirations, British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, the People’s Republic of China, a videogame called Spyro the Dragon, fellow white supremacist terrorist Dylan Roof, and the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Bering Breivik. Conspicuous by her absence from this list was Chelsea Clinton.

Someone should tell New York University students Leen Dweik and Rose Asaf. “This, right here, is a result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,” Dweik told the former First Daughter outside a memorial for the dead, in a video that instantly went viral. “Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.”
Right here in River City. Based on the available evidence, I'd always thought the next interesting thing Chelsea Clinton said would be the first interesting thing she said, but apparently I've not been paying enough attention. There's more:
For those of us who consider Chelsea Clinton a cringe-inducing banality, that she could be accused of anything so momentous, never mind a racist slaughter in the Antipodes, was puzzling indeed. And so it was with great curiosity that I read the Buzzfeed piece in which the pair explain their actions. In it, they accuse Clinton of having “stoked hatred against” all Muslims, everywhere, with a single tweet criticizing just a single one, Ilhan Omar. When the Democratic congresswoman complained about lawmakers being forced to pledge “allegiance to a foreign country,” she wasn’t repeating a hoary anti-Semitic trope which has instigated all manner of desecrations and violent attacks and pogroms. No, according to these NYU coeds, exemplars of American higher education as impressive as those Yale students who screamed at a distinguished professor for hours over Halloween costumes, Omar was “speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby in this country.”
It always comes back to Ilhan Omar. If you want to know who has real power, understand who cannot be criticized.

4 comments:

3john2 said...

Chelsea Clinton, poster-girl for the college admission scandal. Sure.

Chelsea Clinton, poster-girl of violent hate. Not so much.

Gino said...

chelsea wouldnt be part of the college scandel. her parents went to harvard, so she would get in on legacy grounds anyway.

Mr. D said...

Actually, none of the Clintons attended Harvard. Bill was Georgetown undergrad and Yale Law. Hillary was Wellesley undergrad and Yale Law. Chelsea went to Stanford. Barack Obama went to Occidental and then Columbia undergrad and Harvard Law. Michelle went to Princeton and Harvard Law. Malia is apparently going to Harvard, too.

Aunt Becky’s issue was she was a B-lister, not an A-lister. That and her daughter is what Moon Unit Zappa was making fun of all those years ago.

Bike Bubba said...

Regarding Chelsea Clinton and elite schools, what comes to mind for her is that she seems to be a great example of the fact that the "nose to the grindstone" often required to get into elite schools does not generally correspond to saying anything worth hearing once she gets out. For that matter, her mother qualifies as such as well, and Bill's ability to say things almost worth hearing almost certainly derives a lot more from Hot Springs than Georgetown or New Haven.