12 years ago
Saturday, January 05, 2008
A Question
Ok, so I'm watching the New Hampshire Debate amongst the Democratic candidates and I've got to know: Is it PACKistan (rhymes with can) (ala Midwestern-accented Clinton and southern-accented Edwards) or is it POCKistAHn (ala Obama and Richardson)? This is a serious question, and because of my own Midwesternness, I do not know the answer. (I grew up saying Iran and Iraq like "I ran" and "I rack" so I'm at a loss here.)
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7 comments:
people I know who study the place say it like Obama.
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/Pakistan
Merriam Webster has both as correct.
yeah, it's definitely POCKistAHn. And it's eeraaan and eeraaq. at least in urdu and arabic!
so you're really pro-clinton, huh? i want, i realllly want to love her, but it's so hard. she gets more money from the military/industrial assholes than any other candidate, including the republicans. i feel like she never just says it, never just says her position. i want a woman president, oh yes i do, and if she's the nominee, i'll vote for her. i just think i'll be holding my nose at the same time :(
You know, I don't really know yet whether I'm for Clinton or not. There's a long campaign ahead. But I don't buy that she's somehow more of a politician than the other candidates, that she's somehow an evil emblem of the status quo when Obama or Edwards are not. Perhaps I'm too cynical, but I think that anybody who's a politician is ultimately going to end up working within the system in which they are elected, and the system in which these candidates are elected is one that is corrupt. So, do we want somebody who knows how to work that system and gets some good things done in the meantime, or do we want somebody who plays one game during the campaign and plays another once elected, because ultimately they will *have* to?
Honestly, I need to hear more before I decide who I vote for in my primary that won't even matter.
I know people don't like Clinton, that she's seen as abrasive and unlikeable or whatever, but you know, she's smart and articulate and I felt like there was a lot of substance in her responses tonight. So, I'm waiting and seeing.
(And yeah, I've finally got the whole Iran and Iraq pronunciation down, though I do slip up sometimes because in my current location people continue to mispronounce it. I just was clueless about the Pakistan thing.)
Oh shit. Man, I didn't mean to come off as an asshole. i am such a longtime lurker; I love Dr. Crazy! I think I just misread, and I was trying to type fast plus a bottle of wine :)
My thing with Clinton is partly the dynastic thing. I still remember an old Dowd column, about "Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton, it has a nice ring". But this is AMERICA. I am still naive enough to believe that we don't do dynasties.
Clinton is smart, and she is articulate. And she was good tonight. But so were the others. I mean, what was so awesome tonight was watching a debate where Edwards was the only white dude!
My issues with Clinton are pretty personal, ultimately. As a scholar of the Middle East, I am deeply troubled by her one-sided approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. True, the rest of them are almost as guilty. But this issue is at the center of our problems in the Middle East. And I have not yet seen a candidate (other than Ron Paul, unfortunately!) call a spade a spade. Israel killed 12 Palestinians this week. All we see is Britney Spears in the hospital. But when I watch Al-Jazeera, there's no Britney to be found.
Sigh. The whole thing hurts :(
Oh, Pennythrower! You didn't come off as an asshole AT ALL! I hope that I didn't seem as if I thought you were! I see what you mean about the dynasty thing... which is troubling... and it was GREAT to see a debate with only one white dude (though it did come off throughout a lot of the debate to me like it was all the dudes ganging up on the lady, and I found Obama's comment about flipping between football and the previous debate annoying, as I felt like it was a weird appeal to middle America like, "look, I'm black, but at least I'm a dude! You could have a beer with me and you wouldn't even notice I'm black!" but again, I'm cynical, and probably (most likely) being totally unfair. It's not his fault he cared about the football, after all.
I actually agree with you about the general approach to Israel-Palestine in this country (my stepdad, who's Lebanese though Christian, thinks our policies in the Middle East are ridiculous, and after many conversations with him, I have to agree).
The one definitive thing that I can say after this debate is I haven't been as excited about politics since the 1992 election, the first one in which I voted. I'd pretty much given up on watching the news after the last one, so the fact that I was riveted to tonight's debate among the democrats (I couldn't stomach the republican debate, and watched America's Next Top Model instead) tells me that I actually haven't lost all hope in the possibility for political change.
(I'm actually really interested to see how much of a role the youth vote plays in Obama's candidacy. My students - a VERY conservative student population, generally - are really into him. I wonder whether that will translate into the nomination? But oh God - how depressing that I'm no longer in the "youth vote" category. I suppose that's what happens when one starts caring about things like the economy and taxes and such.)
I would add, Pennythrower, because it's good to see another ME scholar weighing in on this issue, that I dislike Edwards deep down in my gut in part because of some of the very one-sided comments he made about the Palestine conflict when he was in the VP debates. I think that more than anything turned me off to him.
Overall, I think Hillary is very much a realist-- she strikes me as pragmatic in nature and I think she has seen first hand what being in the white house can do to idealists (Bill had to modify and moderate his positions in a big way by the end of his first term because he couldn't get anything through otherwise). But I think that she's not so much of a pragmatist that she gives up her own beliefs-- just recognizes that she can't get to her goals in one giant leap. So I guess going back to my comments about Edwards, and Pennythrower's comments, and tying this all together: I don't think Clinton has a one sided view of the Palestine conflict at all-- though she may have to temper her rhetoric. But no politician will openly say any of the things I want them to say openly, anyway.
Sorry for hijacking your comments, Crazy!
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