Whitaker's 12/19/98 Articles

Bob Whitaker's Weekly Articles – December 19, 1998

December 19, 1998 – OF COURSE THE IRAQ ATTACK'S TIMING IS POLITICAL

December 19, 1998 – LINDSAY GRAHAM DOES GOOD ON CROSSFIRE

December 19, 1998 – A CHRISTMAS REBEL

OF COURSE THE IRAQ ATTACK'S TIMING IS POLITICAL

On a CNN talk program about the bombing of Iraq, a liberal Democratic senator accidentally told a great truth. He was asked by the moderator what he regretted, and he said, "I regret that there are not more Senator McCain's in the Congress."

How true, how profoundly true! Every liberal Democrat regrets that. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, is one of the Democrats' greatest resources. He sponsored the McCain-Feingold Bill, which would limit all Republican campaign spending. At the same time, the McCain-Feingold proposal would leave the unions free to back liberals with their members' dues.

McCain wanted to take care of smoking by taxing hell out of cigarettes. That tax would fall on working people and give the money to Washington bureaucrats. This time, good old reliable McCain was attacking anybody who would dare say that our beloved president would time his attack on Iraq for political purposes. Like all respectable conservatives, McCain was more vicious than any liberal in attacking conservatives who dare to tell the simple truth.

Conservative respectables like McCain say that if the president timed his attack for political purposes, his cabinet members would resist him and tell on him.

Yeah, right! You notice the number of high-level political appointees who blow the whistle on liberals?

Respectable conservatives especially point out that it is a moderate Republican, Bill Cohen, who is Clinton's Secretary of Defense. Surely good old Bill Cohen would tell if Clinton were doing something political with our armed forces.

In the real world, Cohen would sell out FIRST. You are far more likely to find a conscience in a LIBERAL than in a moderate Republican. Selling out is what moderate Republicanism is all about.

Everything about Bill Clinton is political. Of course this attack took place when he needed it. And nobody around him is going to object.

I have been in high-level political counsels. If you tell the public what is going on, you never get back in the circles of power.

Before you get self-righteous about this, please remember the people ELECT rulers who withhold the truth from them this way.

Look at the women who told on President Clinton. Our beloved and heroic "people" tore them to pieces. Democracy is a system of government where people get what they deserve. But, surely, our noble heroes in uniform would tell if the president put their soldiers in harm's way for political purposes, right?

Wrong.

To a respectable conservative, anybody in a soldier suit automatically attains some kind of godhood. But back here in the real world, the guy in uniform is just another human being.

Nobody, but nobody, gets a general's star in this day and age unless he is an excellent bureaucrat. That means he puts politicians' interests first. It is no accident that the one American general who was known as a heroic whistle blower was not actually a general. "General" Billy Mitchell was a colonel. He was given a temporary eighteen-month promotion to general while he was assigned to command the Army Air Force in the 1920s.

Mitchell was expected to keep his mouth shut, like any other general. Instead, when he found out what was going on, he blew his top and went public.

No general since has ever done that. No general ever will do that again. And if it is silly to say the generals would tell on Clinton, it is madness to say his POLITICAL ADVISORS would. The story is that they would never, never allow Clinton to put our soldiers' lives in danger for political purposes.

Let us forget for a minute just how ruthless this Administration's politics are, and look at one other simple fact:

Almost all of these appointees are LAWYERS!

Have you ever heard a lawyer discuss the repeat criminals he and his colleagues put back on the streets? He will look you in the eye and say that, sure, they will kill people when he helps them hit the streets again.

But, he will tell you, that's just the way things are.

He will not hesitate for a second to do everything he can to get those murderers, rapists, and psychopaths back on the streets ASAP.

These are thugs, gang. Like all thugs, they use the Constitution and all the cliches, but the bottom line is that they will not hesitate to get people killed, and they will get people killed for far less than a presidential appointment.

LINDSAY GRAHAM DOES GOOD ON CROSSFIRE

Being old and crotchety is no fun unless you get to crochet. But now I have to say something good about somebody. Oh, well. Let's get it over with.

Representative Lindsay Graham of South Carolina was on a Crossfire segment December 15, and he did the best job think I have ever seen a conservative do.

First, let us review what the routine Southerner or respectable conservative does on this sort of program. He crawls a lot. He tries desperately to deal respectfully with the frantic accusations of the leftist.

Once Arianna Huffington took a different tack and knocked the liberal for a loop. When one Clinton supporter was loudly restating the Clinton spin, she said he was "getting hysterical." The fellow stopped suddenly. Like all liberals, the LAST thing he expected was to be called down by a respectable conservative! For a liberal on a talk show, having a conservative say something like that is like getting bitten by a bunny rabbit. It's a completely unexpected shock.

Arianna really took the wind out of that lib's sails.

She never did it again.

Needless to say, no other respectable conservative ever did such a thing again either. A good Republican never repeats anything that worked the first time.

Until Lindsay Graham on Crossfire this week.

To start with, Graham very carefully made sure that, when the camera turned to him, he was drinking coffee. Usually when one is introduced, he sits there with a silly gin on his face, trying to look serious. Graham made it clear he would take all this only as seriously as it deserved.

Bill Press, the Crossfire liberal, is in a constant state of hysteria. But of course no respectable conservative would ever mention it. After all, being picked on is what a respectable conservative or a Southerner -- and God knows it is if you're both -- is there for.

But as Graham spoke, he waited for Press to draw his breath to interrupt, and he said, "Now, please let me finish." Press, of course, said he wasn't about to interrupt, so Graham said, "Well, I guess I misread your body language then."

Press treated Graham as he had never treated any conservative before. He actually let Graham talk.

Bill Press had found out that, if he tried to push him, this rabbit would BITE.

And Graham continued to make fun of Press. Liberals and Yankees cannot STAND that. Humor reflects a sense of proportion, and the one thing liberals and Yankees depend on is that respectable conservatives live and die by the words and moods of their liberal masters.

Someone with a sense of proportion puts THEM in proportion, and in reality, they are very, very small.

When dealing with self-important liberals, it is important to remember that:

"Satan, proud spirit, cannot bear to be mocked."

So Graham's humor was devastating.

At the end of the segment, Lindsay described the crazy soap opera story Clinton had concocted about Monica Lewinsky being a stalker. He ended by saying, "When we get back from the break, I'll tell you how this comes out."

Poor Press. Fortunately, he had a nice obedient moderate Republican to deal with after the break.

A CHRISTMAS REBEL

On December 25, I will be celebrating Christmas.

This makes me anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

If I were not anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews, I would not use the "The C Word" here. I would be celebrating The Season, as in "Season's Greetings."

I do not appreciate receiving a card, on the holiest day of my faith, which wishes me, "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays." But then again, I'm a white gentile, and white gentiles don't have feelings, right?

Have you ever considered what a rabbi would think if you sent him a card at Passover that said, "Season's Greetings?" I don't think he would appreciate it.

I am told the people who send "Season's Greetings" cards don't want to offend anybody. After all, I might be Jewish.

A name like Robert Walker Whitaker might easily be a Jewish name, right?

I have known a lot of Jews in my long life. I got along with most of them, just as I got along with most gentiles. But I never met any Jews who were particularly desperate to claim me as a long-lost relative. They are happy enough to consider me a goy, so why can't the people who send me greeting cards?

The Jews I get along with best wince if somebody says, "Jewish person." Subtlety has never been my strong point, and subtlety has seldom been characteristic of people I got along with.

One of the people I used to pal around with put it best: "Greenish means a little bit green. Bluish means a little bit blue. I'm not Jewish, I'm a Jew." The Jews I get along with are JEWS.

What I am saying is that I get along with Jews, or anybody else, who depend upon their own pride in their own identity for dignity. By the same token, I do NOT get along with people whose personal dignity requires them to destroy my holidays or my identity.

Now that we have gotten rid of The C Word, what will be next to go? Nowadays, no business would DARE wish its customers a Merry Christmas. They wish everybody Happy Hanukkah and Happy Kwanzaa all the time, but never, never Christmas. That would be Hitlerite, you know.

But, like all Evil Bigots, businesses still have a code symbol for the Hitlerite Holiday

Despite all the Happy Holidays and Season's Greetings and Happy Kwanzaa's and Happy Hanukkahs, the stores manage to slip in a SANTA CLAUS!

Now we all know that Santa Claus is a code term for Saint Nicholas, a CHRISTIAN Saint. Here we have a store brazenly putting forth a code saint on The Day Of The C Word!!

But we are wise to their game.

You and me BOTH know what they are talking about when they show Santa Claus. They are hinting at The C Word. HITLER celebrated Christmas!! How many poor Jewish children see that Santa Claus and feel excluded from the mainstream of American society?

I am sure that there will be a movement to get rid of that Santa Person. Alan Dershowitz will be brought onto national talk shows to explain how so many of his childhood traumas came directly from memories of that Evil Red Man and all that was associated with him.

This may sound absurd -- for the moment. But I remember when people used to laugh when we said integration would lead straight to racial quotas. I remember when no one thought that a Southerner who flew a Confederate flag was doing anything unusual, much less evil and fascistic.

In the real world, something that all liberals and respectable conservatives say is absurd one day is absolutely required by liberals the next day. Respectable conservatives not only forget it was once considered ridiculous, but they beg liberals to forget that they ever questioned it.

We used to say that integration would lead to removing antimiscegenation laws. But all the cool people agreed that integration had nothing to do with intermarriage. Now respectable conservatives BEG liberals to forget they ever questioned this.

Remember, nobody is as fanatical today about getting that Confederate flag down as Jack Kemp or George Bush, Senior and Junior. And when the liberals want Santa Claus out, nobody will demand it more loudly than the Christian Coalition.

Santa Claus is clearly, unambiguously a symbol of The C Word, and we all know it. It is only a matter of time.

Unless, of course, we drop this nonsense and go back to the old way of being an American. In the old days, you knew someone had arrived in the American Mainstream when they turned the old insulting term into their own brag word.

Like "rebel," for instance.

Yankees called it The War of the Rebellion. They called us Rebels. So by the time I was raised, I was proud to be a Rebel. The University of Mississippi proudly called itself the Rebels. In fact, they got so proud of being rebels that black students at Ole Miss now demand they get rid of THAT title!!

Let me give you a little list. It is a very, very partial list. It is a list of the names that some groups now call themselves. Every one of these names was once used as an insult by their enemies. Because of their pride in themselves, each group took the name and have used it as a term of pride for so long it is now official:

Methodists	Lutherans
Cajuns	Rebels
British Tories	Tarheels
Sandlappers	Yankees
British Whigs	Sooners
Mormons	Crackers

In the days before respectable conservatives took over the opposition, what each new group in America did was to meet the insults with its own pride. The Irish did not demand that all Anglo-Saxon symbols in America be torn down. They added their own Saint Patrick's Day. If you hear them use terms like "Mick," it's as a term of pride now.

We Rebs and Irish allowed them to keep their symbols and we gloried in the words they tossed at us. My pride in myself does not depend on making someone else tear down their flag.

I cannot make blacks feel equal. I cannot make liberal Jews feel American. No matter how completely these groups rip down all of my most precious symbols, it will not make them a whit more secure in themselves.

I don't live or die by whatever term some Yankee decides to use to refer to me.

Blacks and liberal Jews must learn this lesson. Until they can learn to live with The C Word, the Fat Red Man, and the Confederate flag, blacks and liberal Jews will remain outsiders, because, in the end, their alienness is not in my mind, but in their own.