Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> Expressio Unius

Law Students

: Expressio Unius

The Insistent Contrarian

On September 22, 2008, Christopher Hitchens published a column in Slate entitled: Is Obama Another Dukakis? Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant, and gutless? He wrote:

To analyze this is to be obliged to balance some of the qualities of Obama's own personality with some of the characteristics of his party. Here's a swift test. Be honest. What sentence can you quote from his convention speech in Denver? I thought so. All right, what about his big rally speech in Berlin? Just as I guessed. OK, help me out: Surely you can manage to cite a line or two from his imperishable address on race (compared by some liberal academics to Gettysburg itself) in Philadelphia? No, not the line about his white grandmother. Some other line. Oh, dear. Now do you see what I mean?

And of course from March:

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily.(Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

And May:

All right, then, how is it that the loathsome Wright married him, baptized his children, and received donations from him? Could it possibly have anything, I wonder, to do with Mrs. Obama?

April:

So amnesiac have we become, indeed, that we fall into paroxysms of adulation for a ward-heeling Chicago politician who does not complete, let alone "transcend," the work of Dr. King; who hasn't even caught up to where we were four decades ago; and who, by his chosen associations, negates and profanes the legacy that was left to all of us.

And today, Vote for Obama. McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace.:

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on October 13, 2008 (boomark / email).