I love Huffpost, I rely on it and I admire what you’ve done. I admire you for being willing to listen and change over the years. I think you’re generally pretty cool and I like your accent.
But I’m starting to get a little fed up with my fellow liberals being so goddamn sensitive. On Larry King the other day, Ben Stein was making a perfectly valid point, and he was in no way casting aspersions on Obama by his comparison to George Wallace. If you would have shut the fuck up for two seconds and LISTENED To what he was saying you would have realized that. (For those quizzical looks: Stein was talking about both men being born politicians, and how Wallace, at the age of FOUR, would go right up to strangers on the street and put his hand out and introduce himself, like he was running for office, and he was making the comparison in admiration of the quality in both men. Arianna went batshit the second she heard the two names in proximity, it was really irritating.)
It is ignorant of you, of anyone, to react that way, and good on Larry for pointing out that someone had said that Hitler was the greatest orator of the 20th century.
No one is so thoroughly horrible that ANY comparison of ANY characteristic is insulting. CHILL.
She is shrill, but Stein is a self-professed genius and knew exactly what he was saying. Why not choose Clinton or Bobby Kennedy or any of a number of politicians who didn’t say: “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".
This was one of the McCain campaign arguments about why the “lipstick on a pig” line from Obama was clearly target at Pailin. Let me rephrase the argument: “They’re smarrt, good, speakers; therefore, they shouldn’t be allowed to speak effectively.”
Because he had a story about Wallace being a “born politician”. Clinton and Kennedy were great politicians, but the story about shaking hands at age 4 wasn’t about them, it was about Wallace.