Posted on June 6th, 2009 by D. Aristophanes
What to make of it when David Horowitz and Gary Kamiya agree in basic terms on the usefulness of Obama’s diplomatic approach to the Muslim world?
Granted, D-Ho and Kamiya aren’t exactly on the same page when comes to the specific parts of the Cairo speech that they like — in fact, they seem to have interpreted it in opposite ways. Which maybe says as much about Obama’s mad skillz at soothing just about everybody in the room, regardless of their ideological bent, as it does about the double-plus goodness of the speech itself.
Still, Horowitz seems to recognize the basic utility of diplomacy and inclusiveness in America’s dealings with the Middle East, even if he sees a muscularity in Obama’s speech contra Kamiya, who instead focuses on its novel (for an address by an American president) and important concessions to Muslims in general and the Palestinians in particular.
Given the past eight years of reliably retarded hard-right sabre-rattling towards the Muslim world, it’s fairly astonishing to see a character like Horowitz — as rhetorically committed in the past to violently breaking Muslim spirits rather than listening to their concerns — veer so dramatically away from the insane ravings of a Pam Atlas. Which isn’t to say that D-Ho hasn’t always been far more lucid and approachable than Pam, even when, at the height of his post-Radical Son madness, like an ex-smoker on steroids, he built a bizarre and paranoid enemies list that somehow linked George Clooney to Osama bin Laden.
But if Horowitz’s output has never been as incoherent as the intellectual train wrecks produced day after tweaked-out day by Pam — who is essentially a peripatetic delivery mechanism for any random anti-Muslim sentiment or conspiracy theory that springs up on the internets, is sifted through her garble filter to strip it of any shred of internal consistency, and repackaged with a pair of tits on the box — it hasn’t been for lack of trying. D-Ho’s view of the world has long been far closer to Pam’s — in kind if not in expressive form — than to Kamiya’s.
Which is why I think it is fairly important that Horowitz is stepping broadly towards Kamiya’s position and away from Pam’s, on so fundamental a topic as US relations with the Muslim world. If the Cairo speech was a ‘crucial step forward’ in repairing those relations, as Kamiya believes, could Horowitz’s praise of the same speech be such a step forward towards a real marginalization of the Pam Atlases of the world? A step in the direction of a national dialogue on foreign policy that is more wonkish and serious than finger-pointing and loony? Maybe I’m making far too much of this, but it wasn’t very long ago that the Horowitz response to the Cairo speech almost certainly would have been nothing but a more eloquent version of Pam’s coked-up histrionics.
I recall that back in 2004, when it looked as if Kerry might beat Bush, friends and I would talk about how nice it would be if we could get to a place where political arguments focused on disagreements in the policy margins — instead of being front-loaded by the wingnuts who dominated the rules of engagement with garish loyalty tests that derailed any meaningful idea exchange before it got off the ground. Obviously, we know how that turned out. Instead of a return to sanity, the wingers became newly emboldened and it wasn’t until the 2006 elections that the tide really started turning.
How long did the inmates run the asylum of our national dialogue? A long fucking time, and it blew goats so profoundly that it’s no wonder many of us have been unwilling to pronounce that the nightmare is over. If only for fear that, like black mold in your bathroom, the crazy would come back in full bloom if we didn’t keep scrubbing and worrying at it as if it was still a powerful force.
Well, I am going to go out on a limb and pronounce that we have finally returned to a place of political normalcy after our long nightmare. A place where ideas matter and seriousness is not a starving orphan in the corner. I say this not because there are no longer wingnuts amongst us — the wingnuts will always be with us (and thank God for that, since occasional outbursts of earnestness aside, I’m pretty much in it for the lulz). I say it because, if you really take a good look around, you’ll find that kooks like Pam and Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck and Dick Cheney have finally been fully outed as the freakshow monstrosities that they always were, and at long last, all but a handful of people finally get the joke.
Even David-fucking-Horowitz gets that throwing in with the crazies just ain’t good for business anymore. That’s got to be worth something.
