... apparently will not be green, in the literal sense anyway (and, I think, the metaphorical as well, but that's another topic):
AMMAN, Jordan—An Obama campaign ban on green clothing during the candidate’s visits to Israel and Jordan has created wide puzzlement....Sermons in stones. This latest foolish overreach on the part of the Obama cult, silly as it is, may well be pregnant with larger meaning.In a memo to reporters, described as “a few guidelines we sent staff before departure to the Middle East,” Obama advance staffer Peter Newell laid out rules on attire....
First among them: “Do not wear green.”
An Obama aide explained to reporters that green is the color associated with... Hamas. But... green is more generally seen as a symbol of Islam.
“A ban on wearing green seems bizarre,” said Richard Bulliet, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Columbia University.... “I think they’re just being overcautious to a ridiculous degree,” Bulliet said.
Mohamad Bazzi, a professor of journalism at New York University and former Middle East bureau chief for Newsday, called the instruction “very strange.”...
Though the campaign’s other sartorial instructions – directing women to dress demurely – are fairly standard, Bazzi said he’d never heard it suggested before that journalists not wear green while traveling in the Middle East, an observation echoed by other reporters.
“I’ve been to the Middle East with Secretaries of State and on my own, and I’ve never heard of anything like that,” said New York Sun national security reporter Eli Lake.
Immediately one realizes that this is Lakoffism in action: imagery isn't everything -- it's the only thing. If a reporter wears a green shirt, some frother somewhere might put together a fruitcake case that Obama is soft on Islam, to update a fine old slogan -- Red scare then, green scare now.
Which is pretty funny. This mighty movement is scared to death of a few isolated paranoid fools.
What's even more interesting, though, and creepier, is the cult's fanatical conviction that perception can be controlled out to the fifth decimal place, and its willingness to act on this conviction, to the point of telling people what colors to wear. It's like a suburban high school.
We've already seen the cult issue a ukase -- or should I say a fatwa? -- against the New Yorker, and now they've declared war on a sizable chunk of the visible spectrum.
Comments (9)
Sigh . . . it's not easy being green, Miz Piggy!
Posted by ddjango | July 22, 2008 1:08 AM
Posted on July 22, 2008 01:08
Funny you should mention this, in re: frothers; Matt Drudge, linking to a story on this incident, refers specifically to "Hamas Green"...like, maybe you can go down to the Sherwin-Williams shop and pick out a specific swatch and have them mix you up a gallon or two.
It really is funny to watch the Obombirana campaign scrambling to hold its shit together: behaving as if being called "Muslim" is a smear...asking women in headscarves to move out of a foto op shot...telling people not to wear "Hamas Green". Between all this, and Obombirana's blatant shifting to the right...uh, sorry, the center...you can almost see the wheels slowly, imperceptively, beginning to fall off the Obama Boy Band Fan Frenzy Bus – while, in the meantime, the Campaign Of He Whose Name Is The Sound Of Empire Collapsing continues steadily, solidly, stupidly, single-mindedly plodding onward.
("Cynics For McCain", anyone?)
Posted by Mike Flugennock | July 22, 2008 8:28 AM
Posted on July 22, 2008 08:28
Hamas Green?
Can I get a gallon of Democrat Yellow?
Posted by AlanSmithee | July 22, 2008 12:03 PM
Posted on July 22, 2008 12:03
Is it fear, or premeditated action? What easier, cheaper way to boost the New Gipper's racist, warmongering, won't-change-a-thing credentials?
What with the PR dude being so gung-ho, it sure smells like a way of both embracing and disproving the "Muslim" charge -- i.e., flattering the fearful, a.k.a. DP normality.
Posted by Michael Dawson | July 22, 2008 2:50 PM
Posted on July 22, 2008 14:50
"Democrat Yellow?"
The Democrats don't deserve the color yellow because it implies cowardice. They're not cowards. At least, not in the sense that most people mean. It's not that they're too cowardly to be a meaningful opposition--they actually support the same agenda as the Republicans. One might say they are too cowardly to voice their true agenda and beliefs--but again, that is part of a conscious political strategy: to dupe large sections of the public into voting for them.
I think the color they deserve is brown. Brown for the way they shit on everyone. Besides, the journalists already own yellow.
Posted by Nicholas Hart | July 22, 2008 3:21 PM
Posted on July 22, 2008 15:21
Maybe it's a Seuss thing, like 'green eggs and Hamas.'
Posted by LA Confidential Pantload | July 23, 2008 10:08 AM
Posted on July 23, 2008 10:08
Maybe it's a Seuss thing, like 'green eggs and Hamas.'
Posted by LA Confidential Pantload | July 23, 2008 10:09 AM
Posted on July 23, 2008 10:09
George Orwell once remarked, he thought "earth an asylum made use of by other planets." It seems he is vindicated.
This ban won't do any concrete harm--what I find disturbing is the level of insanity the act betrays in our ruling establishment. God help us all.
Posted by Peter Ward | July 23, 2008 10:47 PM
Posted on July 23, 2008 22:47
Great quote from Orwell. Is there a collection that appears in?
Posted by Michael Hureaux | July 25, 2008 12:29 PM
Posted on July 25, 2008 12:29