Robert Draper's long New York Times article, The Ultimate Obama Insider, on Obama's most intimate adviser, Valerie Jarrett, is a dull but revealing read. Jarrett, who hired Michelle Obama to be a fixer in Mayor Daley's Administration almost two decades ago, seems to function in the Obama Administration as the President's Big Sister, the one staffer in whom he confesses his hopes and fears. Or something. It's all very vague.
Jarrett comes across as an intellectual nullity. Draper does a good job of getting Obama's inside circle of smart political hitmen -- Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, and David Plouffe -- to rhetorically roll their eyes over Jarrett's powerful but vacuous influence over the President.
Her main concerns seem to be promoting the interests of affluent blacks such as herself and other member of the affirmative-actionocracy who make up Obama's social circle: rich Chicago blacks who have done very well out of racial preferences, such as his two best male friends, airport parking lot baron Marty Nesbitt and money manager John W. Rogers Jr. (For something more entertaining than Jarrett, here's a video of plucky little Rogers defeating Michael Jordan one-on-one at a $15,000 per head fantasy basketball camp).
The article starts with a boring but characteristic story of Jarrett talking a tired and annoyed Obama into wasting time making an appearance at the Pink Ice Ball gala hosted by the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, an African-American sorority notorious for its decades of using the brown paper bag test to decide who could pledge. (Michelle Obama wouldn't have passed; Valerie Jarrett would have with flying colors.)
Amusingly, Jarrett is considered within the White House to be an expert on business, because she is almost the only Obama advisor with business experience, having stepped directly from the Daley regime into a slot as CEO of a politically connected Chicago real estate development firm / slumlord.
Jarrett comes across as an intellectual nullity. Draper does a good job of getting Obama's inside circle of smart political hitmen -- Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, and David Plouffe -- to rhetorically roll their eyes over Jarrett's powerful but vacuous influence over the President.
Her main concerns seem to be promoting the interests of affluent blacks such as herself and other member of the affirmative-actionocracy who make up Obama's social circle: rich Chicago blacks who have done very well out of racial preferences, such as his two best male friends, airport parking lot baron Marty Nesbitt and money manager John W. Rogers Jr. (For something more entertaining than Jarrett, here's a video of plucky little Rogers defeating Michael Jordan one-on-one at a $15,000 per head fantasy basketball camp).
The article starts with a boring but characteristic story of Jarrett talking a tired and annoyed Obama into wasting time making an appearance at the Pink Ice Ball gala hosted by the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, an African-American sorority notorious for its decades of using the brown paper bag test to decide who could pledge. (Michelle Obama wouldn't have passed; Valerie Jarrett would have with flying colors.)
Amusingly, Jarrett is considered within the White House to be an expert on business, because she is almost the only Obama advisor with business experience, having stepped directly from the Daley regime into a slot as CEO of a politically connected Chicago real estate development firm / slumlord.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
41 comments:
"affirmative-actionocracy"
Yes, yes, I like what you've done here.
Speaking of empty pantsuit, you have to suck pretty badly to come out on the losing end of a PR battle with North Korea, but somehow Hillary Clinton managed to do just that. Look at what feminism has wrought:
“maybe it’s the mother in me, the experience I’ve had with small children and teen-agers and people who are demanding attention: Don’t give it to them.” and that North Korea "has no friends".
First, she has no experience with small children or teenagers, plural, as a mother: she was only inseminated by a turkey baster once. She is as un-motherly as a woman as one could find. Men are parents too, by the way, it's not like virtually every other Secretary of State in America and elsewhere hasn't had kids.
Second, is this an appropriate way for an adult representing America's government abroad to be talking about anything, let alone the volatile and nuclear North Korean situation? Of course not.
The Norks' response was hilarious and apropos:
"We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community. Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl," and that she is "by no means intelligent"
Political asylum in North Korea is looking better and better all the time. I'm only half kidding. Don't the Koreans have the highest IQ on the planet? They take no guff from pantsuit wearing feminists, defended by nukes, looks good to me.
http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200907/news23/20090723-16ee.html
the Pink Ice Ball gala hosted by the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority
Don't know much about "Pink Ice", but you can see the Obamas partying down with the Ayerses and the Klonksys [Klonskies?] at the Catalyst's 10th Anniversary Prom on Saturday, February 12, 2000.
For historically downtrodden and oppressed peoples, the Obamas and their Marxist friends sure do seem to have a lot of free time on their hands.
That woman is considered black? She is one of the palest high yellers I've ever seen. What an advantage the one drop rule gives today.
I could tell she was not classical European, but would never have guessed that she runs under African-American. Looks like the pool of whites is going to fall precipitously in the next years, as interracial marriage booms. Basically everybody with a non-white in the family automatically qualifies for AA.
There is a lot of good detail about Valeria in this Vogue profile.
http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/2008_Oct_Valerie_Jarrett/
Lets not forget Rahm Emmanuel has business experience too. After Clinton's departure he was parachuted into a merchant bank, earnt several million dollars and then airlifted back out to his political career.
Its all on wikipedia.
Seconding "affirmative-actionocracy".
Steve, what would we do without you? You've perfectly summed up the motive force behind affirmative action: upper class blacks using it to loot the system and preserve their elite status (and trappings). Not so unlike the way institutions like Goldman Sachs use influence to funnel billions of dollars of taxpayer money their way--but more insideous.
I wouldn't mind racial set-asides if they were used to help worthy lower class blacks succeed (this is never the case though). But it makes me ill to see hustlers like the Obamas, Sharptons, Gates, et al profit from them.
Given how icky masculine Michelle looks, with her StairMaster thighs, long arms, strong brow ridge, and chemically straightened helmet hair, I wonder if there might be some hanky panky going on between Jarrett and the POTUS. As Bill Clinton discovered, the White house is full of little hidey holes for presidential trysts. Also, since Jarrett is fluent in Farsi and French, she probably sounds more upper caste when she speaks. And given Obama's insecurity over his rapidly declining political influence, and given Michelle's Honoria Glossup-like lack of sympathy for losers, Obama might feel himself being drawn into Jarret's motherly embrace.
It doesn't exactly take a prurient mind to wonder about this. Any guy over forty who has played the field for a decade or so has at one time or another dumped a clod for a petite.
"Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, an African-American sorority notorious for its decades of using the brown paper bag test"
A discussion of this is divisive to Obama's base. There will be less discussion of intra-ethnic black divisions during Obama's term than before. Obama's enemies could go far describing him as "half black" or "light skinned black" rather than "black" to help make the point of division.
Valerie Jarrett was the woman Obama wanted to succeed him in the Senate. I think her name came up in connection with this during the Blago investigation.
"light skinned black"
Blacks used to be more critical of colorism, the favoring of light-skinned white-looking people over darker people with African features. But if you watch hip hop videos the bulk of the dancing girls are so light they could pass for Dominicans. The increasing number of biracials and the increasing support for interracial marriages make colorism an extremely politically incorrect subject. That is, so many dark-skinned blacks wish they were light-skinned (especially the overwhelming majority of women) that trying to use skintone as a wedge issue won't work.
Besides if the career of Marion Barry is at all representative a Big Man can do absolutely anything and still retain the love of his subjects, so trying to spoil his popularity among blacks may be impossible.
"...Obama might feel himself being drawn into Jarret's motherly embrace."
If that has indeed happaned, prepare for "VJ-gate".
Seriously though, I think we should assume that something like that IS happening, though probably with someone younger than Ms. Jarrett. It's just that the media is treating Obama more like it treated JFK than like it treated Clinton. We'll find everything out in their memoires when his presidency over.
There are two possibilities, both of them devastating for him politically if anything leaks out: an affair with an idealistic white female staffer would hurt him with black women. Affairs with men would hurt him with black men.
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2009/07/24/brick_thrown_through_window_of.html
I found this at Stix's site, though I'd like to make sure this isn't an imposter trying to make blacks look bad, even if can't recall that ever happening:
In the East Austin section of Austin, Texas, someone threw a brick through the window of a four-year-old black boy’s bedroom window, with a message reading, read “Keep Eastside White. Keep Eastside Strong.”
Austin police insist, however, that the incident was not a “hate crime.” It’ll be all over the national media any minute, now.
Just kidding, folks. Actually, the victim was white, the message read, “Keep Eastside Black. Keep Eastside Strong,” and the national media could care less. But I wasn’t kidding about the cops denying that the attack was a hate crime.
Imagine you’re a parent of a four-year-old boy, whom black supremacists—with the passive collaboration of the police—are casually teaching that he is a second or third-class citizen. How do you explain that to your son? What do you do?
http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2009/07/non-hate-crime-in-texas-town.html
"For historically downtrodden and oppressed peoples, the Obamas and their Marxist friends sure do seem to have a lot of free time on their hands."
Yeah, that's a feature of the African heritage. Things like building engines, dams, roads, electrical grids and exploring space just seems like a waste of time for Africans. Sitting around the symbolic village bragging, drinking beer, watching their womenfolk do the manual labour and denouncing whitey (who pays for the beer) is what these moral crusaders like to do. Politics trumps everything else in Africa. Nkruma once said that if you deal with the political questions, everything else will follow. We see how well that worked out for Africa.
Obama is just a typical African leader with an American-SWPL facade. Nothing new here. Some guy on a previous thread claimed Obama scores about 112. I'd say that's on the mark. The guy is slick and intelligent enough to fool those who want to be fooled (testy's focus groups) and most of the media, i.e. those who have low expectations for blacks and are positively suprised when a presentable version of Al Sharpton comes along. But he ain't smart enough to deal with the serious stuff like geostrategic positioning, fixing immigration, restarting NASA, getting off the Saudi tit, getting out of dept or NK. So he spends his time all over the Gates issue because that’s the intellectual level which appeals to him. The other stuff just flies straight over his head. I bet he gets the sinking feeling whenever some smartass adviser crawls into his office with another geostrategic roundup from China, Russia or NK, or Geithner has another enrich-my-GS-buddies paper to be rubber-stamped. He’d rather just deal with the Chicago-style race politics of beating down whitey and moving all his associates into positions way over their heads. That’s right down his intellectual alley. Would any of the prez's during the Cold War have bothered with crap like Gates?
Is Obama really close friends with John Rogers? Because Rogers's ex-wife (Desiree Rogers) works for Obama, as his social secretary. It seems odd that he'd be close friends with her ex-husband and be employing her.
"moving all his associates into positions way over their heads."
Yeah, former FEMA director Michael Brown was a superlative public servant.
'brown paper bag test' means, being as least as light as one (since Michelle fails it)? I'm slow, thought I'd help out other slow people.
I'm a terrible, terrible person because until I Googled it, I thought "brown paper bag test" had something to do with putting a bag over Michelle's head so we wouldn't have to look at her.
Anonymous said...
"Speaking of empty pantsuit, you have to suck pretty badly to come out on the losing end of a PR battle with North Korea, but somehow Hillary Clinton managed to do just that. Look at what feminism has wrought:"
“maybe it’s the mother in me, the experience I’ve had with small children and teen-agers and people who are demanding attention: Don’t give it to them.” and that North Korea "has no friends"."
Hahahaha
Thanks for that, it had me laughing out loud.
It made me think of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO5dD0DjW0I
Sitting around the symbolic village bragging, drinking beer, watching their womenfolk do the manual labour ...
Don't you-all think that O.'s invitation to the distinguished scholar and the evil downpresser white cop to have a beer was a bit gauche?
Not just a matter of losing the teetotaler vote.
Getting the fellas together for a beer brings up a stereotype. Let's assume the White House beer won't be served in 40 oz. cans.
Agreed with Anon upthread on Obama wasting his time with Gates because he's not very bright or interested in things beyond being the classic African Big Man.
----------------
Anecdotally, I got a sinking feeling during September 2008 when Frank Luntz ran these focus groups and woman after woman (the young Asian woman particularly came to mind) railed on about how "McCain was too old" (Mcain was bad, Obama worse) and how "dynamic and powerful" Obama was.
It took a lot for Obama to start to lose women, but don't worry, he's just the guy to do it!
Obama's mental map of the US is basically Chicago writ large, for Hillary it's being the female pol, and both fail.
The NK's don't give a damn about US gender politics and only idiot Hillary would confuse how the US media reacts to playing the gender card with a fairly brutal kleptocracy that's kept itself alive despite starvation by playing the knife's edge for fifty plus years.
Only idiot Obama would think that the Chicago model of endless AA would play well in the entire US, there being no suburbs or other states Whites can flee to outside the US. Meaning his AA patronage ambitions runs straight into a straight up spoils fight in lasting hard times.
"woman after woman (the young Asian woman particularly came to mind) railed on about how "McCain was too old" (Mcain was bad, Obama worse) and how "dynamic and powerful" Obama was."
Republicans were running on Stuff Women Like policies -- No Child Left Behind, healthcare reform, etc. If you're going to try out-nanny-stating Obama then you at least need to offer up someone charismatic enough to capture the target audience. Bringing in a geezer RINO like McCain was a doomed effort to begin with.
The blog post Steve linked to indicates that Valeri Jarrett may have donated more money than legally allowable to the Obama campaign in 2007. ~2k was donated under the name "Valeri Jannett" and another ~2k was donated under the name "Valerie Jarrett".
Huffpost's "fundrace" confirms both donations. Given Ms. Jarrett's high profile position in the Obama administration, why haven't any right-winger bloggers jumped on this?
Let's assume the White House beer won't be served in 40 oz. cans.
They sell "beer" in 40 oz. cans now? Never seen those. Which one of us just proved himself a swipple?
;)
~Svigor
"woman after woman (the young Asian woman particularly came to mind) railed on about how "McCain was too old" (Mcain was bad, Obama worse) and how "dynamic and powerful" Obama was."
A poster on another blog said that Republicans need a smooth under fifty face similar to that of David Cameron or Steve Harper to regain the white House. Is Mitt "ageing out of the part," as they say near where Steve lives?
Harper? Who dat? Not many Americans any any attention to Canadian politics.
"We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community. Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl," and that she is "by no means intelligent"
You know, the media quotes I've seen until now have cut out the "unaware of elementary etiquette" part.
I saw Clinton on Meet the Press this morning. They had a google earth type globe and everything that happens anywhere is taken for granted as Madame Secretary's business. The host wanted to know if we would "allow" Iran to go nuclear and what North Korea "must" do. Clinton said that Russia having a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe is unacceptable.
No wonder everybody hates this country. American hubris is breathtaking. There's never been a people so full of themselves. Thankfully there never will be again.
Bringing in a geezer RINO like McCain was a doomed effort to begin with.
Indeed.
I cynically assume McCain was never supposed to win anyway. He was just there to fill up a roughly phone booth shaped piece of air with the words 'Republican Candidate' floating above.
Ive been looking up V-Jar, being British, I had never heard of her.
What an odd looking individual. Looks white in some pictures, black in others, quite cute sometimes, weirdly alien elsewhere. Was deceasad hubby black? The one picture of their daughter, Laura, Ive seen - she doesnt look especially black to me.
Jordan let Rodgers score because the rest of the guys were white, and he's black.
--Clinton said that Russia having a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe is unacceptable.--
The Russians must be cracking up over that. Anyone else catch the photo of Medvedev shaking Obama's hand?
"I cynically assume McCain was never supposed to win anyway. He was just there to fill up a roughly phone booth shaped piece of air with the words 'Republican Candidate' floating above."
Yes. Unfortunately the lesson learned from it was that they need to make the words say Female Minority Republican Candidate instead, not add any substance.
"American hubris is breathtaking."
Don't worry, we won't be a superpower much longer. We're going down the tubes.
"You know, the media quotes I've seen until now have cut out the "unaware of elementary etiquette" part."
Then you must do as I do, get it from the source. The NK news agency is...let's just say the truth is better than any satire writer could come up with, from today's news a fairly typical dispatch:
" War Memorial Tower Draws Endless Stream of Visitors
Pyongyang, July 26 (KCNA) -- The Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Memorial Tower is visited by an endless stream of servicepersons, people from all walks of life and school youth and children in the run-up to the 56th anniversary of the victory in the war.
It has been visited by at least 5.7 million persons of more than 40,000 organizations over the last 16 years since the memorial tower was completed.
Going round the memorial tower, visitors feel pride and honor of being members of Kim Il Sung's nation which beat back the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces, the south Korean puppet army and troops of their 15 satellite countries, honorably defending the freedom and independence of the country, national sovereignty and the gains of the revolution.
They vow to take a thousand-fold revenge upon the U.S. imperialists who have desperately persisted in the war moves against the DPRK, far from drawing a lesson from their disgraceful defeat in the last Korean War.
Overseas compatriots and foreigners who visited the memorial tower expressed admiration at the Juche-oriented military idea and outstanding commanding art of President Kim Il Sung and the heroic feats performed by the army and people of the DPRK."
I do have a different view of the Korean situation having read their perspective, and as comical as it is, can we say that it is any more of a joke than American MSM? Really?
http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200907/news26/20090726-08ee.html
"No wonder everybody hates this country. American hubris is breathtaking. There's never been a people so full of themselves. Thankfully there never will be again."
Many countries fear the US because of the ruthlessness of the Neocon crowd (nothing new btw, just different suit). But respect, no. I speak as a white guy coming from a background which has been on the losing end of Uncle Sam's stick. No, I will not be sorry if the US ceased to exist. I'd be sorry for you guys because you deserve better. But it's time the US gets its share of punishment. Not for slavery, imperialism or racism, but for letting so many of its faithful friends down.
"Bringing in a geezer RINO like McCain was a doomed effort to begin with."
Correct.
It is becoming clear to even the least curious that the Repub Party threw the fight.
Makes ya almost believe the two Parties are no more than wings of one real, central organization. Known as the government.
"Jordan let Rodgers score because the rest of the guys were white, and he's black."
It jes' be duh man keepin' da honkey down!
you guys are brutal toward Michelle Obama, it really makes you seem like rabid racists. Is it because she is over exposed in the media? Because she is not the worst looking politician's wife, google Iris Weinshall, Sen Schumer's wife.
The reaction to M. Obama is just weird....
"The reaction to M. Obama is just weird...."
I don't think you get it Bud; she's black.
"google Iris Weinshall"
Ew!
Why do these guys chase after political power if these are the rewards? For the joy of finishing off their civilization?
"Why do these guys chase after political power if these are the rewards? For the joy of finishing off their civilization?"
Maybe they are just puppets and the real power is somewhere else.
Post a Comment