Krugman's New Year's Resolutions for Journalists

Paul sez: Maintain your objectivity. Be absolutely fair and unbiased in the way that you do everything in your power to kick that usurper Bush out of the White House in 2004.

Kwanzaa -- Marxism Kamoflagued in Kinte Kloth

Ron Borsellino has the annual obligatory liberal piece on the "African" alternative to the brash "ice people" commercialism of Christmas. Oh, those "sun people"... they're so united, communal and loving.

This year's context: JoAnn Huges, the mother of the late Charles Lovelady (who was killed in a legitimate homicide by bouncers outside of a Des Moines' club). Kwanzaa gives Ms. Huges' life "positive" meaning. Hey... whatever gets you through... Not surprisingly, Ron thinks that we have a lot to learn from African culture and that Kwanzaa is a good place to start.

A few problems... first and foremost... there is no African Culture. Africa is a crazy quit of tribalism. Don't think so...? Ask a Hutu what she thinks about the Tutsis. Or venture south and inquire of a Zulu what he thinks about the Swazi people. I know... I know. 400 years of European Colonialism exacerbated the problem. However, it did not create it out of whole cloth. And, denying African tribalism, as is done by African leaders and the "world community" does not address, let alone put forth solutions. No... Sub-Saharan Africa is a continental scale example of the politics of victimization.

What does this have to do with Kwanzaa...? Everything.

Kwanzaa - Swahili for "first" - was started in the mid-"60s by Maulana Karenga, a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach. It's based on the African celebration of "first fruits harvest," a year-end holiday. It's a time when Africans gather and celebrate the harvest and the collective effort it takes to make that happen.

Ron leaves out some interesting tidbits about Kwanzaa's creator. Maulana Karenga, aka Ron Everett, was a petty criminal who helped form a black separatist organization called US ("United Slaves"). A purer alternative to the Uncle Tomism of the Black Panthers, United Slaves members walked around the UCLA campus in the late 60's packing heat and picking fights with other African American groups vying for control of the newly created "Black Studies" department.

Karenga invented Kwanzaa at the height of the black liberation movement as part of (his words) a "re-Africanization" process a part of "going back to black." Interestingly, for all his love of fellow blacks, Karenga was convicted in 1970 of torturing two female United Slave members. One of his more loving acts of cultural unity was to burn the inside of one of his victim’s mouth with a soldering iron.

After serving time, Karenga moderated and became... a Marxist. This, along with jail time apparently made him a shoe in for Chair of the "Black Studies" department at CSLB.

As for the "roots" of the holiday itself... pure bunk.

There is no African Year End Harvest festival. Not surprisingly really, because there is no year end harvest. You see, most of Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere. The New Year falls at the height of Summer there. That makes a year-end harvest festival a bit difficult to pull off.

The name itself is a fraud. The word Kwanzaa itself has no relation to the most of the people who were ripped from their homes and brought to the New World as slaves. Most slaves came from East Africa, over a thousand miles and many cultures removed from the people that spoke Swahili. It's like claiming that a Ukranian holiday is French.

The cooperative/collectivist angle... that's easy to trace. It comes part and parcel from Karenga's avowed Marxism. Collective farming... yeah, that's a great idea. Speaking of Ukrainians, there are several million dead ones that would offer another opinion.

Hey, I have no problem with what holidays people choose to celebrate. If Kwanzaa helps Ms. Hughes find true meaning and peace, that's wonderful. I wish her well. However, you don't pull yourself up by creating a self-deceiving and comforting pseudo-history that validates and rationalizes your "victimhood". "Euro-centric" history has been ruthlessly taken to task for this for minor embellishments. Kwanzaa, created out of thin air is given a pass.

Ask an African how they celebrate Kwanzaa and they will probably say "What the hell is Kwanzaa?". But Kwanzaa will probably gain in popularity there... as an American commercial import. And then, ladies and gentlemen, the circle of falsehood and irony will be complete.

Merry Christmas!

Best Winter Solstice wishes to all. We're wobbling toward Sol again and the days are getting longer. 2003 is drawing to a close.

Enjoy your family and friends. Count your blessings. Take care.

Times They are a Changin' Update

Andrew Sullivan got a letter from a twenty something New Yorker that highlights the generation gap around the War on Islamofacsism. Did I say "generation gap"...? Oh, silly me... after the 60's (that golden age when all moral truth was discovered) there were not supposed to be any more "generation gaps"... sorry.

.While having a beer at a neighborhood bar/restaurant in NYC's West Village last weekend, I was party to a situation that I think you'll find directly on point.
Three mid-50's liberals were going on about the capture of Saddam; how it was a conspiracy, that the president knew where he was at all times and picked a politically opportune moment to capture him, it was all about the oil, etc.

The mid-20's girl sitting next to them broke from her conversation to chime in with the following, "I wish 60's sensibilities had stayed there. Someone points a gun in your face and you think 'My Fault', when you should be thinking 'You just picked the wrong fight'. Get your heads out of your asses".
They responded with dismissive claims about Republicans and tourists from the midwest.

She replied with, "One, I've grew up in Brooklyn. Two, I voted for Gore -- but I'll sure as hell take W. over someone who thinks the French are the height of moral authority and without ulterior motive."

I asked her out on the spot, and have a date for this Friday. Foxy, Cunning, and Fearless -- wish me luck!

Best of luck to that young man! She'd be one hell of a catch.

To the rest of us: use this brave, Anti-Idiotarian young lady as a role model. When you hear this kind of 60's, moral equivalent idiocy, speak out against it. To co-opt a Baby Boomer slogan: "Silence = Death".

In 2003 "The Roadrunner"... In 2004 "Roadkill" - Rekha goes Looney Tunes

Our wacky, zany Rekha is now comparing Howard Dean to a cartoon character and the rest of the Democratic candidates to another. First, if she could only see how on the mark she really is... whee! Second, only she of Planet Basu could spin a positive out of the panic and intra-party carnage the Democrats have been dealing each other since Saddam was taken to the hooscow.

Through it all, Dean continues to play Road Runner to the other candidates' Wiley Coyote: outrunning, outfoxing and outraising them. It's not just because he's a shrewd politician. It has to do with principles. While some waver and waffle over Bush's war policy, hitching approval or disapproval to every new poll or uptick in the war, Dean wasn't afraid to take a stand against it early on, or fickle enough to abandon it when something goes Bush's way.

What "Dean-o" (what Bush43 reportedly calls Howard) is doing right now is cementing Dean's popularity with Democratic loony tune lefties like our Rekha. This strategy may well take him to the head of the Democratic ticket. It's also going to seal his fate in the general election. His recent ravings about the Saudis warning President Bush in advance of 9/11 and his bumbling non-recovery from the gaff are but a preview of Dean being Dean.

The best thing for the well being of the United States would be for Howard Dean to win the Democratic nomination for President in 2004. On this, Rekha and I would probably agree.... for radically different reasons.

Yeah, that's it... it was Diplomacy... yeah, that's the ticket

The New York Times is still in denial on the successes of the War on Islamofacsism. Don't think so...? Read this.

Only one buried referenced mentioned that:

A State Department official said Libya felt an urgency to act because of the American stances on Iran and North Korea and the war in Iraq.

The chutzpa of the Times in their attempt to bury the obvious is mind boggling. Oh yeah, it's simply coincidence that the negotiations began in March (when the US and Great Britain were on Iraq's borders preparing to invade). And it's only chance that:

The negotiations hit high speed in the last week.

No mention that last week we just happened to find Saddam Hussein in a dirty hole in the ground. I'm sure that this development had nothing to do with Qaddafi's decision to up the pace of the negotiations.

The Left arguments are starting to look like the ones used by Christian Fundamentalists to support creation "science". One swipe with Occam's Razor and the positions tend to evaporate into thin air.