I have to confess. I read Powerline and have particularly enjoyed the writing of Paul Mirengoff who is a sharp intellectual usually committed to just about everything I’m not.
Powerline has just bestowed two awards on my CNN comment on Obama’s Nobel Prize. Mirengoff made it a runner’s up to the “silliest writing of 2008” which he gave my piece on suggesting that Caroline Kennedy be made US Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s or some other spot as a way out of the New York Senate seat drama. I stand by my piece then but enjoyed Paul poking at it.
I stand by my CNN piece on Obama as well. I’m a frequent critic of the Obama team’s tactics — but I still have confidence in the President’s overall foreign policy course. Obama quickly changed the optics of the global order — and for Paul and his colleagues to so quickly disparage that accomplishment — I’d only remind them of Karl Rove’s spin-meistering in the George W. Bush White House and comments like, “We make our own reality.”
But I like this sort of debate and appreciate Powerline recognizing my work with both good humor and a predictably alternative take.
And thanks to Paul Rahe for acknowledging that I provided the only conceivable rationale explaining why President Obama should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (not looking for a job with the administration though Paul — ruined that with less flattering pieces on the administration’s tactical performance).
And I had a third fun note this weekend as well from Jungle Jim of Provocateur. He wrote that I had won the Socialist Moonbat of the Week Award for my CNN piece — and was kind enough to send me a congratulatory note which I received while listening to powerful remarks from Desmond Tutu being read at opening of Equality March on Washington ceremonies.
Thanks to all of you — you handled your differences with me with class and good humor.
Now we just need some of your readers to act similarly as my email is filled with some of the most vile, degrading hate mail I have ever received.
But the delete key works well — and I appreciate the hard right taking an interest in stuff here at The Washington Note.
— Steve Clemons
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