It’s interesting to note the things we grant permission to rile us. Yesterday, the fine ladies at Smart Girl Politics were spittin’ cotton over some joker at Playboy writing an online column about hot conservative chicks he’d like to know in a Biblical sense. As if anything at Playboy has the slightest connection with Scripture save the “play now, pay later” sections. And in the interest of accuracy, the exact term used was decidedly less than respectful. But I digress.
The furor reminded me of Groucho Marx’s line in Duck Soup: “Remember, you’re fighting for this woman’s honor… which is probably more than she ever did.” Let’s embrace honesty. When you’ve had zero hesitancy throughout your professional career in regard to using your looks as a method of getting attention and ahead, claiming offense over someone taking this and using it as something to riff on, regardless of how crude it may come out, is a house built on sandstone with the emphasis on sand. Throwing a public hissy fit because someone said bad things about you on the Internet? Way to play into the cliché, people.
Meanwhile, back in the real world Frank Gaffney who résumé brings weight to his words — he worked at a high level in the Defense Department during the Reagan administration — has written some sobering observations about Israel’s mindset in the face of President Obama’s upcoming Middle East visit. After noting the present administration’s growing antipathy toward Israel Gaffney comments:
… with the U.S. administration’s refusal to come to grips with what truly is the most serious threat to peace in the Middle East — Iran’s rising power and growing aggressiveness, reflecting in part its incipient nuclear-weapons capabilities — the stage inexorably is being set for the next, and perhaps most devastating, regional conflict.
Given how Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has already told Obama he will take whatever measures he deems necessary to defend not only Israel’s right to exist but its existence period against the madman Ahmadinejad, adding to Israel’s sense of isolation is unwise in the extreme. We are already seeing antisemitism grow throughout Europe. Ahmadinejad plus Hamas’ rhetoric, along with the latter’s direct violence, are mere overt expressions of the basic sentiment held throughout the Arab world. Israel has very few friends on this planet. If the United States continues its present course of evidencing a dead heart toward Israel, it will feel abandoned to singlehandedly avert the next Holocaust. And it will do so even if it involves unleashing its nuclear arsenal.
In the face of such a potential reality, do the words of some joker at an aging nudie magazine genuinely matter? Ignoring the oxymoron, Smart Girl Politics needs to be smart and man up. Either thank the bozo for the free publicity since to be honest Playboy’s Web site gets more hits a day than all of your sites and blogs combined in a day (or week, or probably several), or give him the same dissatisfaction Rush Limbaugh gave Wanda Sykes by refusing to so much as acknowledge her vicious tirade against him at this year’s White House Public Relations & Marketing… er, Correspondents Dinner. You want attention? Sorry, more important things to worry about.
Or at least you ought to have some.
P.S. Speaking of dead heart…
[video http://www.diecast-dude.com/gac/midnight_oil_dead_heart.flv nolink]
[...] Yesterday, I briefly ruminated about why the now-infamous Playboy article from earlier this week discussing assorted conservative women in decidedly less than genteel terms wasn’t that big of a deal to me. Apparently I am alone in feeling this way. [...]
[...] week I said my piece twice (here and here) about the Playboy article on conservative women. No need to reiterate all that. [...]