Poor Naomi Klein. Early in this decade she appeared to indicate that there was a post-mall life for the thousands of Tiffanys out there. Somewhere around the time she was forgetting her post-2004 election hectoring of the need for the peace movement not to confuse its goals with party politics by barnstorming the US to flog her now dead book (dead at the time of the softcover tour) while pimping Barack Obama at book stop after book stop, somewhere around the time she portrayed herself as a spolied rotten brat in an interview with Matthew Rothschild, somewhere around the time she refused to take accountability for her own actions, Little Nomi lost her way and it's starting to appear there's no way home for her. Nothing left except possibly a Robin Sparkles reunion tour.
That was very clear last week when she showed up with "Hopebroken and Hopesick" which, strangely, wasn't an autobiographical piece. However, she did feel the need to lecture everyone else while forgetting to join the ownership society by owning her own guilt. The piece ran at Information Clearing House which is always home to lively debates and we thought we'd share some of the comments on Little Nomi's article we found most interesting. But as you read them, grasp that Little Nomi's apparently determined to face the slow fade out insisting, "I am not afraid to be a morning glory. Why should I be afraid. I am not afraid."
Naomi Klein and the Nation magazine--yeah, keep calling yourselves "progressives" and maybe you'll fool some people into believing it's true. You're gonna wake up one day, real soon, and realize you're just a bunch of middle class scardy cats on the colaboratory side of the class war desperate to maintain the status quo. See how far your shallow political analysis gets you then.
not buying 04.17.09 - 1:31 pm #
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Peace Out
With Obama in office, liberals learn to love war
By Justin Raimondo
...The big truth is that the antiwar movement has largely collapsed in the face of Barack Obama’s victory: the massive antiwar marches that were a feature of the Bush years are a thing of the past. Those ostensibly antiwar organizations that did so much to agitate against the Iraq War have now fallen into line behind their commander in chief and are simply awaiting orders. ...
http://obamboozled.blogspot.com/.../peace- out.html
atheo Homepage 04.17.09 - 1:55 pm #
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not buying 04.17.09 - 1:31 pm
Nailed her agenda.
Anonymous 04.17.09 - 2:30 pm #
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See this:
//I was feeling really hopesick about the escalation in Afghanistan, but then I watched a YouTube video of Michelle in her organic garden and it felt like inauguration day all over again. //
All what Obama needs to do, if he wants to keep on killing people around the world, is to have the good folks watch his wife do some gardening.
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0++0 04.17.09 - 2:35 pm #
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The evidence was there before the election, but our hope-fiend friends refused to see it. The One Party system in this country is entrenched, and only a true Socialist party, candidates and program can rescue it. The money elites will fight that like crazy, and the only question then is, will America's soldiers permit the election of people committed to change, or will they fire on the civilians demanding the change? Since mercenaries now outnumber the regular army in Iraq (like Imperial Rome!) I'm "hopeful" but not optimistic.
greybeard616 04.17.09 - 5:24 pm #
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Give me a effin break. Send this Pollyanna back to The Nation. Reminds me of why I canceled getting that left gatekeeper rag.
No it is not a good thing that Obama turned out to be a house slave for the oligarchs. Organize and vent -- accomplish nothing but feel better about it. That's The Nation spirit.
Naomi Klein, you're a stupid cow.
winston 04.17.09 - 6:51 pm #
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Naomi Klein was one of the biggest pushers of Obama- along with the neo con lite Nation. Yes- The Nation that
strongly requested cindy Sheehan NOT run against that consummate traitor Nancy Pelosi.
Yes- that Naomi Klein who said (along with Howard Zinn and many other Controlled Opposition figureheads-
"It doesnt matter who was behind 911."
Kick this garbage to the curb, and shun these efforts to revive the careers and credibility of sell outs. THESE same obstructors created our present mess and are part of the old Hegelian problem-reaction-solution.
Anonymous 04.17.09 - 7:14 pm #
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klein's disillusion, along with many other liberal Obama supporters, comes from not understanding who he is to begin with--a centrist democrat, now chairman of the board of a system where the two parties are the vehicle for corporate political and economic power in the U.uS. But given the choice, it was better that Obama got elected than McCain. His election was a repudiation of Bush, and has raised expectations which historically have been a necessary condition for building grass roots movements and struggles. As someone who became politically active after LBJ's election in 1964, it was these dynamics that radicalized a generation, during the reign of the "best & the brightest", and many came to understand the role of both the Republican and the Democratic party in serving U.S. imperialism. the task remains--to organize to challenge that power and build a strong enough movement to bring about fundamental change to this rotten system. And that means clearly understanding what we're up against, and it's not the "Jews"-- it's capitalism.
kbro Homepage 04.17.09 - 8:01 pm #
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"As someone who became politically active after LBJ's election in 1964, it was these dynamics that radicalized a generation, during the reign of the "best & the brightest", and many came to understand the role of both the Republican and the Democratic party in serving U.S. imperialism. the task remains--to organize to challenge that power and build a strong enough movement to bring about fundamental change to this rotten system." What a load of nonsense. No one thought LBJ was change. The Cult of Barack will just rewrite history to continue to deny that they have blood on their hands. The brave thing to do was to vote for Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader.
Criticism of The Nation is largely dead on and Naomi Klein schilled like crazy for Barack. She thought she could get away with it by doing it on her book tour (just out in softcover!) turning every event into a "Vote for Barack!" while pretending she wasn't involved. Thing is, she lives in Canada, she was born in Canada why doesn't she try fixing Canada? Where's her take down of neo con Stephen Harper?
She's nothing but a professional distraction.
Martha 04.17.09 - 8:18 pm #
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When are web sites gonna stop printing these buyer's remorse pieces?
Harvey Reading 04.17.09 - 8:45 pm #
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First, the anti-Semites who post here are scum. Down with Zionism! Long live the Palestinian people and their resistance!
Second, does Naomi Klein never tire of writing petty bourgeois drivel? For goodness sake, how do you say this, "If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding," with a straight face?
There's enough silliness in that one line to power Monty Python for a century. What is superfan culture? You say it brought Obama to power!
Sounds like you are calling for a fierce political movement to bring into being programs. Fierce political movements involve fundamental transformations of economic and political systems. If one of those should ever arise, you'll surely run and hide Ms. Klein.
And who is the "we" you keep referencing? Are you sitting on some massive underground insurgency ready to spring to life on your signal. You represent an impotent but self-important strata of cackling racist intellectuals. Please go read and give the writing a rest.
Malcolm Martin 04.17.09 - 9:35 pm #
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Ah shucks schmux but the Jolson grease paint is wearing off under the stage lights, the tux is fraying, the spats scuffed and even politically correct cheerleading Canadian Naomi is starting to grasp perhaps that Mr O Bama, the so-called African American ain't what he was cracked up to be in Variety.
Will the thinking despairing finally acknowledge that the system is rigged, that the entire 2 party same agenda shell game is an advertisng farce and like the happy meals sludge they are offered down at Burger Pig you don't decide what goes into the food trough no more than the masses could be trusted to decide who moves into the "White" house?
God forbid because pulling the plug on the Orwellian double-think chip built in at source in every ameriKan child would lead to permanet despair.
With the acceptance that Prezident Jolson is a shallow, vain, chosen- racer coached shill, a last chance for the machine to weld the Bushian iron curtain into place, comes the inevitable conclusion that ameriKans must (literally) get up off their asses and go out and take back their streets and country like the French do for example.
In this perfect patriotic punk police state, a tall order indeed after the smugness turns to real terror and fear to see that the monster is not under the bed but in the Plantation House in Washington.
Change you can't hope for and hope that you can't trade for spare change.
Onward thru the meltdown with Cap'n what's his face at the helm and the izzy albatross losing feathers by the day.
And by the way "keep whining" about the chosen racers who brought this on, both on Wall St and ameriKa's murder "think tanks" that have long besieged the death bed of USer democracy.
Ramirez 04.18.09 - 2:01 am #
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It took Constitutional Scholar 'mr. Obama' less than three months to break at least as many National and International laws as the Bush-Regime managed to do during his 8 years of crime-waving. Naomi Klein, like most of the U.S. Intellectuals who play the MSM Intellectual-Idols-PR-Game, exposes a Martha-Steward-like flowery and honeybee grift-talent with her unbe-fucking-leavable naïve 'Hopebroken and Hopesick' article. First she writes 'Dissaster Capitalism' a book so full of 'political/corporate-intrinsic' corruptions, nepotisms, crimes and betrayals, the seven circles of hel from Dante are moderate compared with it, and now her high-hopes seem to be crushed because of her childlike naïvety and illusionary proven hindsight?
YOU'VE BECOME A LEXICON OF DISAPPOINTMENT INDEED, DEAR NAOMI KLEIN!
With this article you've authored yourself straight into in the 'Ophra-Winfrey we do(did)not see, we do(did)not hear, we do(did)not speak, elite-dumbass-class'.
UNBEFUCKINGLEAVABLE!
A SHITLOAD OF HOPE. 04.18.09 - 2:52 am #
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Many of my friends, even fairly well informed people, fell for Obama's charm and vague promises and collapsed in tears on election night, believing that we would now get "change" and now had reason to "hope." It is understandable to want a Daddy figure to come swooping in out of no where to rescue us, but unfortunately there was never any good reason to believe that Obama was that person.
One can settle into a movie theatre and be swept away to a land of make-believe: ancient Japan, 19th century Wyoming, or a gritty story of inner city Baltimore. We silently exult when the hero escapes the bad guy and weep when he dies at the end in his lover's arms. But we won't be shocked when we see him alive and well at the Oscars, for we know it was just theatre. We know that if we saw him dancing with joy or sneering with contempt on the silver screen, it wasn't that he was really feeling those emotions. He was acting.
Film makers use trained actors, costume designers, set designers, makeup and hair stylists, lighting designers, music composers, cinematographers and script writers to create a world that seems real, but is 100% a fantasy.
So why is it that people who well understand the power of theatre have such a hard time believing that political campaigns use the same techniques to convey a false sense of reality? Or a false expectation of "hope" and "change?"
http://www.sheilacasey.com/2009/04/obama-shows-his-true-colors.html- colors.html
Sheila Casey Homepage 04.18.09 - 7:41 am #
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