Michael D Higgins, President of Ireland, was called by Michael Graham (who is apparently a Tea Party radio host), and lets loose on everything from healthcare to Israel.
Generally safe for work although the President signs off with a naughty word :eek:
I concur; that was awesome.
Graham is a regular contributor to an Irish radio station to provide a “contrarian” point of view, and is usually challenged fairly robustly on his views.
I remember this broadcast well: it was from 2010, and wasn’t a phone-in, it was a face-to-face debate in one of my local pubs, the King’s Head in Galway. Higgins wasn’t even a candidate for President at that time, and was considered a well-respected if eccentric senior member of the Labour Party.
Still, it was a great broadcast.
Yeah, it’s weird to see it doing the rounds now. Higgins has a great way with words when he lets rip.
That was rather awesome. 
I guess it takes an outsider to tell it like it is.
wonderful! 
Wait, why does this belong in Elections? That is, how does a foreign politician’s 2010 rant against the Tea Party have any effect on its prospects in U.S. elections this year?
Because this is the forum for politics. There’s no rule specifying it can only apply to 2012 elections. There’s no real debate here but the only other real option for this is MPSIMS, I think.
Michael Ian Black tweeted this this morning and I listed to it on Youtube on the way in to work.
The thing that’s lacking is any context. The Irish President is slamming Michael Graham on everything under the sun. Was this deserved? For instance, does Graham think anyone who disagrees with him on Israel is an anti-semite?
I listen to Graham’s talk show on Boston talk radio often and I’ve never heard him do that.
Unless there is some context added, it sounds like Higgins was just venting his frustrations about everything he dislikes without having any justification.
I give Graham credit for letting him go without sinking to his level and having a shouting match. All he manages to do is say that he’s incorrect in many of his perceptions of tea party Americans.
What’s particularly jarring is the confusion Higgins has around tea party and foreign policy. The tea party is about spending, not wanting to bomb Arabs.
He tried, just couldn’t get a word in edgewise. 
Full interview is here for context. When Graham mentions anti-Semitic interests behind the rockets falling on Israel, Higgins objects to the characterization of anyone who defends the Palestinian side as being anti-Semitic.
He also says, “The contribution of the fundamentalist madness from the United States into Israel is probably one of the greatest obstacles to peace in the region.”
I don’t know, I liked Bill Clinton’s smackdown of Amy Goodman and Democracy Now a lot better. And anyone who doesn’t think most of these Palestinian groups are anti-semitic is just a fool. If they just wanted independence from Israel, that would be one thing. They could have that tomorrow. But they want a lot more than that. And their sponsors who give them the weapons won’t let them settle for less than the destruction of Israel.
What did Stalin call people like him? Useful idiots, yes, that was it.
Believing that the state of Israel is illegitimate is logically independent of racism against the Jewish people.
In other news, anti-semitism is racism against the Jewish people.
Believing that the state of Israel is illegitimate is not only anti-semitic, it’s also a repudiation of the United Nations.
On which borders?
Actually it encompasses both sides of the Republican party.
I’m afraid your memory has probably embellished that considerably in the twelve years since it happened, otherwise you probably wouldn’t have mentioned it, or characterized it as a smackdown.
I vaguely remembered that interview, but I had to go listen to it in its entirety to refresh my own memory. It’s nothing but Goodman asking Clinton a series of tough questions during a phone interview, and when she interrupts his long recitation of his administration’s achievements at one point, he gets a little snippy and characterizes her tough questions as “hostile and combative” and mischaracterizes her as “disrespectful.” That’s it, and he still continued the interview cordially after that, even though he only intended a very brief election-day “Get out the vote” call in support of the Gore campaign.
I assure you that when the President spontaneously calls in to a journalist’s radio show and does a relatively long interview while answering tough questions, the kind of comments Clinton made are a badge of honor that any journalist would be proud to wear, and NOT in any way, shape or form, a “smackdown.”
The burden is on you to make the necessary connection between believing the state of Israel to be illegitimate, on the one hand, and racism against jewish people on the other hand. If you’re just going to assert it without argument, no one has any reason to believe you. (Unless by “anti-semetic” you don’t mean “racist against jewish people,” but in that case you’d be using the term very non-standardly.
-KR
That’s easy. Name another state that you believe to be illegitimate.
I think they’re all illegitimate.
Well, I was curious what the reply to this would be…