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REPUBLICAN CONVENTION DAY 2, CONDOLEEZZA RICE

8/30/2012

 
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Republican Convention, Day 2, Condoleezza Rice.
    People milled around, paying little attention to a befuddled Sen. John McCain who plumped for the military, Sam Olens and Pam Bondi, a Punch and Judy show, Senator John Thune, compelled to tell us that his father’s name, Gjelsvik, had been too hard for Ellis Island clerks, Senator Ron Perlman who for some reason invoked FDR and Harry Truman, a businessman named Steven Cohen, Tim Pawlenty, vulgar enough to make Newt Gingrich seem couth, and Mike Huckabee, who belabored the recurring “You didn’t build it” calumny.
    The audience seemed numb when Condoleezza Rice came on, but she revived them with her first paragraph, about the moment she learned that airplanes had struck the World Trade Center and changed the world.  
    What followed was an academic lecture by a star professor. With mandatory nods to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, she spoke of the global economy, the Arab Spring, the endangered basis of American exceptionalism, and education, “the civil rights struggle of our day.” She closed telling about a child in “Jim Crow Birmingham,” whose mother could not take her to Woolworth’s lunch counter for a hamburger, yet told her she could be President of the United States, “...and she did become the Secretary of State.”
    The rest was anticlimax. New Mexico’s governor, Susana Martinez, brought on Paul Ryan, whose shrewdness and energy were evident as he trotted out the distortions, half truths, and outright lies that are Republican mantras in this campaign.
    One can only hope that Condoleezza Rice’s powerful speech will project her into politics, as Barack Obama’s did in Iowa, in 2004. She is the last best hope of a Tea Party-divided and morally bankrupt Republican Party, before it slides into the dust bin of history, like its ancestral Whig Party, divided by the issue of slavery. And who but professors of history remember anything at all about the Whig Party?

traCY
8/30/2012 02:54:20 am

Oh, Stuart, I could not disagree more. This horrible piece of human protoplasm is not even a woman; she is too ugly inside, to begin with.
Please study her very admirable, politically informed and much more articulate sister, a true example of womanhood-whichmakes her diametrically opposed to her cold sibling.,.
, and who despises her.
Her sister is a marvelous, thoughtful, humanistic, politically wise, notably placed person in the ranks of intellectuals and champions of the oppressed:, she stands for things worth believing in-.all the things which C. Rice hates. This sister is much smarter and a genuine human being.
Naturally, she can never be given even a mention by Republicans. Her existence is successfully oblitereted, excfepot to people like myself and those who like her work...
Think of Eleanor Roosevelt when you think of her, then think of this "thing" called C. Rice for a good comparison.
I hope you see the meaning I am getting at.
Well, everybody has a right to their own opinions. I am glad you are so welcoming and open to hear all of ours, after we have heard yours.
My Best to the marvelous Martha Graham soloist,Stuart Hodes. Hodes,
Tracy

Rick
8/30/2012 11:54:55 am

Tracy, I think you have missed the meat of Stuart Hodes piece. By inveighing so personally against Dr Rice, you are perpetuating that same misleading and nonproductive approach to persuasion exemplified by Chris Christie. Dr Rice may indeed have a marvelous sister who shares many of the characteristics you explicitly and implicitly admire. But your extremely personal attack can't help but cause the opposite reaction from what you might prefer.
I think the observation of Mr Hodes was primarily focused on contrasting clear lucidity with the chest thumping and name calling otherwise prevalent.
The goal, and I presume to say this, is to eliminate some of the dialectic and focus once again on finding optimal solutions to what are undeniably complex and multifaceted problems... Achieving that goal will take cooperation and intelligence between and from our political leaders, and an insistence on as much from us, as the electorate.

Even with complex choreography, the way through is one step at a time.

Rick Michalek


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    Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

    Being 90 years in this world,  with great kids,  great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
                                   Stuart Hodes

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           With my friend, Nero.
                   April, 2012.
        Photo by Ray Madrigal

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