The New Yorker Should Read more Kundera (or Yaacov ben Moshe)

After eight years of “BusHitler, chimpy mcflightsuit, drinky mcdumbass, george w. bush, shrub, mission accomplished, bush moron, potus dubya, four flushing, asshole george bush, republican chimperor and so many other humorous/damning epithets that go largely ignored by President Bush, his administration and the greater conservative community (if there were really any similarity between him and Hitler, those critics would all be dead)it may strike some as ironic that the New Yorker cover has attracted such a vigorous and angry response from the left.

There has been much dreary and indignant rhetoric from both sides on this subject and, having been absorbed by the CNN/WEDEMAN analysis I have been out of the action. I would, however, point out that anyone who had read my post The Emergence of the Agélaste Left could have predicted the indignant outcry from the supporters of The Candidate of Change. The quote that I used in that post from Milan Kundera’s The Joke  will suffice:

“No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.”

The corollary, of course, is that Bush ignores the BusHitler slur because it has no tinge of reality and The Obamaites get hysterical over the New Yorker cover because there is an element of truth to it. 

It is, after all, a question of free speech- who will tolerate it and who cannot tolerate it.

UPDATE: This from a friend in Israel who has read enough Kundera:

Kundera? As in, the unbearable lightness of Obama's resume?

What Did Michelle Obama Mean?

I know that this is an unusual flurry of political response for this usually long-winded blogger- but the developments in the Democratic race are too fascinting to pass up. Judith Apter Klinghoffer has an interesting look at some of the background and history of Michelle Obama’s “jaundiced” view of America.
The trail traces back to her experience as an under-qualified, ungrateful Princeton Affirmative Action charity case. She has found a quote from Mrs. Obama’s Princeton thesis that is very revealing:

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before," she wrote in the introduction to her sociology thesis, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really didn't belong."

Judith’s analysis is, as usual, unvarnished and insightful. She writes, “Barak may be on his way to becoming our first affirmative action president. Imagine how they are going to feel in the White House?!”

Judith is right. Getting things that you don’t feel that you deserve is a kind of poison. The sad thing is that it could be very different for Michelle but she and her husband are locked into a joint career that is based on an unwholesome addiction to that poison.

The most striking lesson here is that, no matter how many times it blows up in their faces, the progressive/liberal left always seems to choose the road that is paved with the gaudiest imitation of “best intentions” and leads most directly to hell. Affirmative Action, a trademark Democratic program, managed to take a perfectly smart, very charismatic young woman whose father had apparently worked hard all his life to provide her with security and opportunity into a confused and injured woman. In this and many other cases Affirmative Action has actually interrupted the healing process of generations of hard, honest work. Unless she confronts the harm that was done her and finds a way to, accept the gift that was given her and to reverse her ingratitude, each new degree of success will further deepen her self loathing and the expression it finds in the reflected disdain that she shows for “liberal and open-minded” America.

One can only hope that having her unattractive and unpatriotic feelings exposed in this way will inspire her to open up a national discussion that will pierce the hermetic wall of politically correct silence around the Affirmative Action and race in general. She might never have a better opportunity to transcend her own pain and do something to repay this great nation for the privilege bestowed upon her.