A wonderful celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some background info on the video here. A hat tip for this one to Andrew Sullivan.
Sullivan contributed the best laugh of the day, after a cheerless week, in his Sunday Times column: contrasting the temperments of Barack Obama and his opponent he wrote of McCain:
John McCain picked Sarah Palin, called Obama Britney Spears, suspended his campaign in the middle of a financial panic, unveiled a completely loopy mortgage bailout scheme on live television last week and explodes on cue like a microwaved bag of popcorn.
I would like to think that had McCain popped when the sadly misinformed elderly woman advised him that Obama was an Arab and stood up more firmly to his own supporters he might have done something what would impress the undecided. Instead he is complicit in a campaign based on fear that could yet have terrifying consequences. As Sullivan said of Palin’s future prospects
You can ride this kind of tiger only so long before it eats you as well.
A visit to Political Cortex, however, is therapeutic, instructive and reassuring.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that the British electorate is superior in any way. A black man was just shot in London for wearing an Obama t-shirt, and even a glance at the comments on political blogs in the UK shows them to be as consumed with hatred and believing the worst of the other side as any US counterpart I’ve seen (with little of the comic wit of many commenters on, say, DailyKos).
What is truly hard to understand is just how widely believed are things that simply are not true. Or, as Mark Twain put it
It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Whether they are greatly influenced or not Americans have one important resource: factcheck.org.
On a whim, thinking “There ought to be a factcheck.org.uk,” I tried that address and was happy to see an announcement of impending availability.
Of course, it will be dismissed as a conspiracy controlled by the CIA, or the shape-shifting euro-reptiles behind the curtain etc. Thankfully, those in the KNOW are not armed.
Related posts:
- November 5 Looms Surely the current US election will be one of the most memorable ever, and one of the most historic? I’ll be one of the news...
- Obama Mocked I winced a little when I read Mike Tomasky’s gushing commentary about Obama looking at, no, contemplating a Kandinsky in Paris …. because, he...
- This Just In From Our Correspondent In Australia From Australia: word is that someone called Paul O is going to cost Obama the election. I replied later with a great hat tip from...
- Lucky Friday The 13th? As I expected, it’s been an interesting week politically. First, Gordon Browne bought his government’s victory in the debate about how long people can be...
- The Throw Up Factor I spent way too much time last year following the US election on a variety of blogs, notably Andrew Sullivan’s. Once it was over with...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
That’s a fine quote from Mark Twain, there, wombats.
I liked this one, from today’s iGoogle: Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat – John Lehman.
Apparently he’s an admiral, and not a banker, either.
That would be funny but I’ve seen the clip of George Bush saying that dictatorship would be fine as long as he was the dictator–or words to that effect. Creepy.
There was some interesting stuff about Twain in Simon Schama’s programme on BBC2 last night. Slightly pettily reviewed in the press but I enjoyed it and I’d be fascinated to see a future historian’s take on the US in 2008 if I could live long enough. Little doubt I think about Obama being the first Internet era President and I think this is a triumph for democracy and a massive correction that we’ll (hopefully) look back on as being more significant than the current financial situation.