NO RESPECT

This is a problem. No one escapes. The biggest names in the country come under attack without pause, especially in this year, an election year where everyone gets his licks. Maybe I’m just too much of a sensitive soul but I’m taken aback sometimes by the ferocity of the assaults made on the characters of the ‘prominenti’ who figure in the news of the day. The other day for instance I heard a commentator denounce another commentator who had talked about General Petraeus testifying before Congress in a uniform loaded with “military bling.”

The first commentator thought this was disrespectful and even unpatriotic and shouldn’t be allowed. Maybe so, but all the same it wasn’t exactly surprising. I had been expecting it for a long time. How long were the congressmen going to go on letting themselves be obscured by these military peacocks dressed up like circus ringmasters? In fact I had been wondering when someone was going to bring it up. General after general had been appearing at hearings and every one of them was the same. They all glittered like the gates of hell and it was only a matter of time until someone called them on it.

I had been thinking about it enough that I rather expected others had been doing the same and the displays might be toned down. This turned out to be an example of wishful thinking. When Petraeus appeared he was sparkling. He had four big stars on each shoulder and at least eight or nine rows of ribbons on his chest. He also had stripes on his sleeves and a number of badges and doodads on the right or unoccupied side of his chest, all of them attesting to his great military merits. The only thing lacking was the Blue Max around his neck, but altogether it was a dazzling display.

The ironic part of this is that most of the ribbons he was wearing were no more than Good Conduct badges. Since 1945 even our most experienced generals have seen relatively little combat. We’ve had Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Somalia, Kosovo, the Gulf War and Iraq, but all the medals available for these incidents wouldn’t add up to half of the billboard the general was wearing.

Things have changed quite bit since 1945. I have a book by John Eisenhower called “Allies” dealing with the WWII relations between the U.S. and its wartime friends, the British, Russian, French and Chinese. It is illustrated with pictures of practically all the leaders of all these nations, among them the author’s father Dwight D. Eisenhower. All the soldiers are pictured in uniform. Every big name is included, Patton, Marshall, Bradley, Clark, MacArthur, Montgomery, Brooke, Alexander, DeGaulle, Chiang-Kai-shek, Stalin, and on the other side Hitler, Mussolini, Rommel and King Victor Emanuel. None of them are wearing more than three thin rows of ribbons and most have only one or two, or none It’s more like military parsley than a floral blanket as seen today.

The Russians have to take responsibility for these gaudy demonstrations, although some people might suspect the inspiration came from the “pearlies” of London or the carnival dancers of Rio de Janeiro. The Russian generals surpassed both of these. People gasped when their first portraits appeared in the West. Their medals could not be counted any more than the stars in the Milky Way, which they outshone. Each one of them had at least ten Orders of Lenin plus a half dozen Orders of the Red Banner. All of them were of course Heroes of the Soviet People. They had to be heroes to bear up under the weight of so much precious metal. Presumably they were proud to bear the weight even if it did tend to make them round-shouldered. A hero has to be prepared for these things. Now Americans are finding out about them.

Who else got himself disrespected this week? In a way that trivializes the little misstep of General Petraeus? No, not Eliot Spitzer. That was last week or before. Politicians are hard to please. They’ve got to have the spotlight and the headlines or they wither away. This time it was Barack Obama who saw Spitzer suddenly become almost immortal and decided he had to get in on the action. He found his opportunity and made full use of it. He put his foot in his mouth and chewed it with all thirty-two teeth. He made a speech in Indiana in which he made it clear that he looks on the pathetic slobs whose votes he is soliciting in Pennsylvania as a set of characters right out of “Deliverance”, who worship guns, practice hillbilly religion and hold Klan meetings in the woods at night. How he omitted their addiction to moonshine and blood feuds I do not know. It couldn’t have been because he was afraid of giving offense.

Only one explanation of this outburst is possible. Obama is just too immature to be running for President. He really believes what the rest of the Ivy League believes, that the people living in the great flyover are a set of primitives living their grubby little lives in a continual sweat of hatred of their betters, the progressive, sensitive, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, refined, cultivated, liberal, exponents of true civilization which they are bringing to the world. He is unable to understand that anyone could possibly not understand this and actually reject the treasure he’s being offered, instead choosing to cling to outdated superstitions like religion and nationalism and even ethnocentrism, not caring that all this involves rejection of those outside the fold. Such people are simply unable to appreciate inclusiveness.

They could redeem themselves by voting for Obama. Maybe his condemnation will shame them into doing this. They’ll realize their abnormality and try to make amends. Maybe. More likely their reaction will be negative, to the point of derailing Obama’s whole campaign. If so, his remarks will go down in history alongside those of the famous Republican preacher who insulted Catholics in the 1884 presidential election, thereby electing the Democrat. I see it as a blunder of the same high quality, and I haven’t seen anything comparable outside of the history books. But Obama’s a young man. He will learn by his mistakes. Nest time he’ll campaign in a coonskin cap.






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