Politicians as Rice

I greatly miss Chappelle’s Show.  It was one of the funniest shows on television before the eponymous comedian, concerned with the direction of his program, walked off the show and took a sabbatical halfway through the 3rd season (leaving behind a multimillion dollar contract).  One of his friends, Neal Brennan, was also a writer on the show.  In looking into the demise of the show, I came across this great nugget from an interview with Brennan, himself a standup comic:

Brennan met President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011 and says he seemed like a cool, personable guy. “I just wish he was better.” Brennan’s dissatisfaction with the president is more reflective of his views of politics in general. “I thought a black president would make a difference,” Brennan says. “Maybe what I’ve come to realize is that politicians are like rice. Whether it’s brown rice or white rice, it’s empty calories either way.”

Yet another reason why Jesus is my candidate.

Egypt and Carter-bama

Some folks will hate this comparison, but I’ll go for it anyway.  Victor Davis Hanson, the classicist, military historian, and political commentator reminds me a lot of the polemical theologian Stanley Hauerwas.  They are both fairly angry, fairly old white dudes.  Both are very intelligent and wide-ranging.  And I enjoy both of them, though each occasionally veers off into ideological extremes which I don’t care to follow.

VDH (as his fans call him) has just written a very interesting new piece for National Review comparing Jimmy Carter circa 1979 to President Obama in the midst of the Egyptian crisis.  In both instances, he argues, a so-called new-era idealist liberal has been roughed up by a nasty world that does not share his pretensions.  Here’s a highlight:

Yes, our third year of Obama hope and change is beginning a lot like 1979 (I’ll skip the domestic parallels), as an unjust and imperfect world rejects the utopian visions of another liberal idealist, and sees magnanimity as weakness to be exploited rather than as kindness to be reciprocated.