A few Obama supporters I spoke to this morning expressed shock that Samantha Power would be forced to resign after calling Hillary Clinton a “Monster” in an interview. Were Power not Obama’s resident genocide expert (she’s best know as the author of A Problme from Heck, a 500 page book on America’s historical inaction to genocide) maybe I’d agree. But “Monster” in a political context reminds a lot of us Hebrews of some guy named Dolf Hitler. Monster=Pol Pot, not Senator Clinton.
Pot, Pol, Year Zero, Cambodia.
Qucik-y on Power/Monster Flap
Saturday, March 8, 2008 - 3:59 pm (EST)
By Ray LeMoine
2 Responses to “Qucik-y on Power/Monster Flap”
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March 8th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
I think what Obama supporters find ironic is that the same people who defended the Clinton campaigns attack strategy as “part of American politics” are now feigning outrage over the word
March 8th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
When your chief FP advisor—who sits on every genocide panel discussion held anywhere ever—calls the opponent a “Monster,” she knows its connotation, which is why she it “off the record.” For the record (pun-ny, eh?), no US journalist would print an off the record remark. But the Brits have notoriously lower standards. “Monster” is a politically loaded term for a genocide scholar to use. Think of how many times Power’s been asked about different genocidal “Monsters.” If it were a casual diss, she would’ve said it on record like Wulfson did with the Starr comment.
The outrage is over who said it, not the word itself. And the irony is that Power, of all people on the campaign, would use such a word.
Power is a prime example of a Best and Brightest-type (Yale grad, Harvard proff, Pulitzer winner) who has little Beltway/Fleet St experience. She just wasn’t ready to speak for the campaign to the UK media. And she may have been forced to resign on the BBC comments alone. Debunking your boss’s war plans is such a rookie mistake.