Posted on 12/13/2002 1:36:28 PM PST by Apolitical
Ah, good old CNN. Just when even us die-hard conservative/libertarian types thought the whole vast "liberal media conspiracy" might be on its way out (what with the New York Times now praising Clarence Thomas and Phil Donahue's show tanking faster than even a Seinfeld alumnus's sitcom), Ted Turner's network has quickly reminded us that the liberals are still at the media reins.
No, I'm not talking merely about Paul Begala's nauseating ode to Jimmy Carter on Crossfire the other night. (Though, I suppose that was bad enough.) Nor am I talking about my favorite conspiracy theory: that CNN purposely keeps the sputtering, past-his-prime Bob Novak and the overly nice and polite Tucker Carlson on Crossfire because both, while intelligent, are completely ineffective against bullying spin-masters Begala and Carville, and the network would never want to see real debate. What I'm talking about is a CNN interview with Jimmy Carter that I didn't even catch, given that it aired at four in the morning this past Wednesday, but whose disturbing contents, as reported by the Media Research Center, are worth commenting on.
The interview with the former President took place shortly after the humble peanut farmer "who asks nothing more from life than good health, peace, and the world?s fawning attention" accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. In it, CNN's Jonathan Mann told Carter: "Mr. President, you are arguably the most respected American on the planet today."
I?ll let that just sink in for a moment before going on, but let's just say that arguably has got to be the operative word in that sentence.
O.K., have you thought about it? Played around with the idea a little? James Earl Carter the most respected American on the planet? Surely Mr. Mann must have made some kind of mistake. Perhaps he was thinking of James Earl Jones, whose voice is indeed the stuff of power and can elicit reverence and veneration even when it's only advertising a phone book. Or perhaps Mann was confusing the former President with basketball great Vince Carter whose performance in the NBA All Star Game slam dunk competition did inspire awe all across North America, if not the planet.
But he couldn't possibly have been serious in suggesting that Jimmy Carter is the most respected American on the planet. The same Jimmy Carter whose most aggressive move as President came in 1979 when he was attacked by a killer rabbit and raised a paddle in self-defense? The same Jimmy Carter who failed to show similar protective mettle (or any action at all) when it came to the Iranian hostage crisis that saw 52 Americans detained inside the embassy in Tehran for 444 days (ending only after Carter left and Reagan entered office)? The same Carter so many Americans still associate with inflation and immeasurably long lines at the gas pumps during the oil shortages of the late 1970s? The same Carter whom Fidel Castro conned into embracing thousands of Cuban crooks and welcoming them into the U.S. as refugees?
Apparently, yes. Astonishingly enough, Jonathan Mann must have known whom he was talking about because a) Jimmy Carter, a freckly white old guy, was sitting right in front of him during the interview, bearing no resemblance to either Vince Carter or James Earl Jones, and b) all the Carter "successes" Mann mentioned were indeed issues with which Carter concerned himself.
Yes, that's right, there were many successes for which Mann congratulated the former President, including Carter's achievements in North Korea. "The people who know the subject and know the region say that if you hadn't succeeded in North Korea, there would have been a war," Mann told Carter triumphantly. Thank goodness for Jimmy Carter's victory! But, hang on, a sec. Is Mann talking about the same North Korea to whose totalitarian government Carter showed no resistance as President? The same North Korea that has been enriching uranium for use in nuclear weapons despite the framework they signed with the United States under Jimmy Carter's guidance? The same North Korea that, in fact, continued working on a nuclear bomb while chitchatting with amiable peacemaker Carter? I don't know, but one has to wonder how many North Koreas there could possibly be.......................
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanenterprise.org ...
Well, not really. Think back to before he got this award. He is like my next-door-neighbor who is involved in a few charities and genuinely likes helping people out, and is an all around swell guy. But that alone doesn't make him qualified to have a louder voice in the national dialog about what the country's policies should be.
When he had powerful say-so, Carter led the nation to the edge of economic ruin and he got soldiers killed with his "feel-good" ideas and lack of proper use of the military.
Just because he is a do-gooder and means well, and the type of guy you'd invite over for tea doesn't mean he should continue to have a say in what the direction of the nation should be, any more than my nice neighbor.
I would feel very proud if he was English.
Well, I can see how that is possible. You guys need more positive leaders. Please do some research on your own greatness; I feel as fond of Thatcher and am eternally grateful to her contributions to my American safety and prosperity as you feel about our Jimmy. Just because some committee gave him a ribbon doesn't change the past.
The ONLY reason that carter wasn't just as much a degenerate as clinton proved to be is that he simply lacked to guts to do it.
'Ole jimmah' is a member of good standing in that dark, puritanical tradition which requires its member to close their eyes tightly and hurry it up when they indulge their carnal natures.
Billy Bob enjoys every second of it, laughing, smoking a cigar and chugging booze while he hits the sink with a three-pointer over Monica's shoulder.
jimmy carter?
There's nothing to respect here.
Jimmy Carter embodies both of these negative values.
- Motorists pushing their cars to long gasoline lines
- Appeasing ruthless dictators
- "Stagflation"
- High unemployment
- Non-existent foreign policy
- Rampant crime, deteriorating cities
Sigh.....
Give me a freaking break. Carter has values similiar to a Georgia cockroach. Obviously you haven't lived under what I loosely refer to as his Presidency.
of peanut molecules coursing through his veins??
Anyone with half a brain would also see that the USA has spent over 500 billion dollars in foreign aid over the last 50 years, money given with no assumption that it will ever be paid back, and that America offers the best hope as an example of how true liberty is the way for people to prosper. Most of that money has not helped to solve the problem of dictatorial rule.
The only solution to ending the human misery caused by dictators of the past century was to use extreme force to end their rule. If you're old enough to remember your own 20th century history, then I'd advise you to review the words of Winston Churchill, a truly brilliant humanitarian.
No, Carter may think he has the right solutions to the world's problems, but he falls far short of any any idea of how to achieve his goals.
But you're right about one thing: Carter winning the Nobel Peace prize puts him right up there with other humanitarians, like Yassar Arafat, also a Nobel Laureate.
Author: By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Staff
Date: Thursday, December 8, 1994 Page: 19 Section: OP-ED PAGE
Kare Kristiansen hasn't had new business cards printed yet, so he gave me one of his old ones. "Komitemedlem," it says. "Den Norske Nobelkomite." Member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
He was, but he's not anymore. On Oct. 14, the day the committee announced that the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize would be shared by Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, Kristiansen announced his resignation. By his lights, honoring Arafat -- a 30-year terrorist, a killer of civilians -- as a Nobel peace laureate would be a reckless moral error. Norwegian law requires that decisions of the committee be unanimous, and Kristiansen could not stifle his objections.
And so, he said -- a bit wistfully -- in Boston last week, "I had to leave the most interesting and important committee I had ever been a member of."
He has been a member of many. At 74, Kristiansen is one of Norway's elder statesmen, a longtime leader of its small Christian Democratic Party. He has been a Cabinet minister and a member of Parliament; he reached the pinnacle of his legislative career in 1986, when he was chosen speaker of the Odelsting, the Norwegian House of Commons.
But history will recall Kristiansen less for the groups he joined than for the one he quit; less for the issues on which he led than for the issue on which he dissented.
In Oslo two days hence, Arafat (along with Peres and Rabin) will appear before the King of Norway to receive his prize. Kristiansen will not be present. He has been invited to speak at Hebrew University in Jerusalem on the topic: "Why I Resigned From the Nobel Committee." Before two university audiences in Boston, Kristiansen gave his speech a pre-Jerusalem tryout.
It was a foregone conclusion, he said, that the 1994 prize would be awarded for the Israel-PLO peace accord. Not because the accord made peace a reality -- it hasn't -- but because it was negotiated in Norway, via the Oslo "back channel." For Norwegians, the Rabin-Arafat handshake at the White House generated tremendous pride, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee (whose members are all Norwegian politicians) never considered bestowing this year's prize for any other achievement.
But Arafat! That posed a problem. In the past, candidates for the prize had been judged on two key criteria: (1) whether peace had been accomplished, and (2) the degree to which the candidates were champions of peace. By neither standard could Yasser Arafat be deemed a Nobel laureate. So the committee members came up with a third test:
"Could the award of the prize in a decisive way" -- this is Kristiansen's paraphrase -- "stimulate the future peace process, and make it succeed in spite of the serious obstacles that were only too obvious?" On this basis, the other judges decided they could justify an award to Arafat.
Kristiansen couldn't. Alfred Nobel's will stipulates that the peace prize be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations." How could that description cover an Arafat, a criminal whose life has been spent arranging the murders of innocent human beings?
A Nobel Committee chairman once enumerated the classes into which peace laureates could be divided: statesmen negotiating around conference tables, defenders of human rights, interpreters of international law, rebels, humanists, pragmatists and dreamers.
"Even under such a vast definition," Kristiansen commented after listing the categories, "there was no room for terrorists. Until now."
By redefining the prize from a citation for past achievement into a spur for future good behavior, the Nobel Committee may have kicked out the moral struts that gave the award its towering authority.
"What consequences will result," Kristiansen wonders, "when a terrorist with such a background is awarded the world's most prestigious prize? . . . Can there be any doubt that this award is going to downgrade the prize and weaken respect for it? . . . What signal will the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to a prominent member of 'Terrorism Ltd.' give" to other terrorist groups? "Is it not likely that such an additional stimulant will break still more barriers between good and evil, between vice and virtue, between morality and immorality?"
On Dec. 10, 1964, when Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Prize, he wrestled with the paradox of accepting a prize for peace when the US civil rights movement had obviously not yet achieved "the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize."
But upon reflection, said Dr. King, he realized that his Nobel stood for the proposition "that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time -- the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression."
This Saturday, 20 years later to the day, the same peace prize will go to one of the cruelest practitioners of violence and oppression and hatred that our generation has known. As Yasser Arafat, butcher of children, steps forward to receive his Nobel, Dr. King will turn over in his grave.
And Kare Kristiansen, whose moral strength outweighs his desire for glory, will be far from his beloved Norway, speaking to the people Arafat has so often tried to kill.
America's image abroad is irrelevant. There wouldn't be an America or an abroad if Carter prevailed in 1980.
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