As IF Times

link Cleaver: If Obama wasnt president, we would be ‘marching on the White House’ – The Hills Blog Briefing Room.

Apart from the racism that this sentiment represents, the truly astounding aspect of this announcement is the blatant stupidity and naivete.  It’s all but saying that policies coming out of the White House are horribly wrong and ineffective, especially to the Black community.  Hello! Rational people have been saying that for years and only now it’s become obvious? 

Barack Obama is the standard bearer for a number of constituencies which pushed him into the world’s highest office.  By liberals of course who were keen to demonstrate their willingness to embrace a non white candidate.   By youth because he was someone closer to their age than option B at the time.  By Latinos and other minorities because he represented a possible movement towards their sensibilities.  But especially by Blacks since he was one of their own and finally, some measures would be taken to address their issues of inequity in society.

It would be useful to look at history and note that some of the biggest human tragedies happened because of misplaced idealism granted to a member of that particular society.  By some counts the death of between 45 and 75 million Chinese by starvation during the Great Leap forward was orchestrated by…a Chinese, Mao Tse Tung, surely one of the biggest mass murderers in the history of man.   We’re not sure if those who died were pulling for the homey in Peking.  Josef Stalin didn’t care too much about the native blood since he was responsible for about 23,000,000 people’s death through starvation.  Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il haven’t exactly treated their own countrymen particularly well either, apparently disposing of  over 2 million of them over their terms in office.  During the terror reign of Idi Amin in Uganda, apart from being one of the 300,000 or so killed while he ran that country, you’d have a good chance of being eaten as well.

We could go on to list statesmen such as Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Min.   The point is, having a common racial heritage in all of these cases didn’t prevent people from being victimized in their own countries.  People who think that just because they happen to share a trait with someone in charge puts them on the insider’s list for favours are…well, they’re just dumb.  Would anyone ascribe any more trust to someone who was left handed just because they also happened to be a lefty? Or redheaded? Or bald? 

On the religious front, I’m sure lots of people happily absorbed all the earnest pleadings of James Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert before it was discovered that in fact they were the wolves among the lambs.  We know that Bernie Madoff was considered a mensch in the Jewish community until somebody asked for a cheque.  

The kind of identity politics being played out today ironically reduces the chances of anything being done which can benefit the most people.  Somebody will always feel aggrieved and the irrationality of their tribalism prevents the ability for society to move forward in a cohesive way.  It makes no sense to support someone who is unsupportable.   The bottom line is, if he’s a goof to you, he’s a goof to all.

link Scarlett Johansson Threatens to Sue Over Nude Photos – UsMagazine.com.

Of course, the FBI is all over this one.  Apparently dozens of agents have volunteered their own personal time to work on this case.  The amount of time spent poring over evidence will be astronomical.   Staff will be pulled off cases looking for terrorist bombers in order to solve this pressing case.  Removing nude pics from the Internet.  Good luck with that. 

Poor Scarlett is obviously aghast that someone would hack into her telephone and steal private photos of her.  Living as she does in fairyland, she was unaware that just recently, Congressman Anthony Weiner had also suffered the fate of having his tighty-whities displayed on the world’s biggest billboard.  Of course in Weiner’s case, he was targeting a specific audience. but unlike Scarlett, the only ones who may have been interested were probably gay men.

The philosophical issue is that pictures stolen from Scarlett’s phone are equivalent to having them stolen from a locked drawer in her house.  I suppose that makes sense in theory and we won’t argue with the principle.  But here is the essential seam which separates principled types from common sense types: theory is not reality.  I can bake a pie and place it on my window to cool, but if it’s on a busy street, certain unprincipled types are going to take my pie.  If I want to park my convertible on Chicago’s south side, it may not be a good idea to leave the Nikon in full display on the car seat.  

Celebrities who need exposure to further their careers are often the ones to bleat about privacy issues when they know that their lives are lived under a microscope.  At least Oprah and Joy Behar are smart enough not to take nude pics of themselves on their phones.  Imagine the audience for that.  Anyone who thinks cell phones are private are plain delusional.  If Wikileaks can hack into top military secrets, what makes anyone think their Verizon account is safe?   In real life, people regularly have things stolen from their cars, their homes, they may even have nude pics of themselves circulating without their consent, but those are the hazards of real life.  Years and years of indifferent applications of punishments for law breaking has resulted in expectations of a certain amount of criminal behavior in our society.  How many people these days don’t lock their car or house when they leave?  What does it say when years ago, in many cities, it was common to see “no radio” stickers on car windows?   Most petty crimes aren’t even prosecuted any more for the time and effort involved. 

Celebrities should not live under the delusion that they are immune from the vicissitudes of life that normal people deal with.  Celebrity status does not entirely insulate them from the society they choose to live in.  They only benefit is that they get to publicize their moral outrage.