September 9, 2009
An odd hobby
Yesterday Mere Rhetoric - relying on some research that Elder of Ziyon had done - observed that Human Rights Watch's, Marc Garlasco, had an odd hobby: he collects Nazi medals.
Human Rights Watch has defended its employee and Elder of Ziyon responded with:
HRW's poster boy for human rights research nurses a serious obsession with, and fascination for, the worst human rights abusers in history.
This goes to Garlasco's state of mind. Mere Rhetoric tweeted:
Thought exp: if HRW Mid East investig #Garlasco was hording IDF medals from 1967 War would the left b defending him as a history buff?
Or to use a similar example: If President Bush had nominated a collector of Confederate medals to the Justice Department, would it have made a difference what the record of that nominee was? Of course not, the liberal establishment would have declared such a nominee unfit on the basis of his hobby regardless of his record. (If you don't believe me, take a look at Nat Hentoff's critique of the attacks on Judge Pickering. Pickering due to a perfectly defensible action was deemed "racially insensitive; by contrast Garlasco's trafficking in Nazi memorabilia is an ongoing hobby.) In Garlasco's case he has a long record of sloppy work - especially regarding Israel - so it's hardly unreasonable to examine his state of mind.
Posted by SoccerDad at September 9, 2009 5:31 AM
Hezbollah in passive voice
A cynical and mistrusted offer
Wapo: peace process succeeding because of the great work of the administration
Council speak 100610
Nyt: peace process failing despite the great work of the administration
Do we have enough regulations yet?
Iranian General: "US, Mossad played roles in 9/11 event"
Absolving arafat, ten years later
Rahm can't run? antisemites!
The politics of peace
See also Mark Hemingway's post (September 8) on NRO's The Corner about the same. Includes a link to your site:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzFlMDY5ZmZjMGY2NmY0OTc5MWQ1ZDk5NGU3OTU3YmE=
Posted by: Maryland Conservatarian at September 9, 2009 3:32 PMSoccer Dad, that guy certainly does have a weird hobby. Then again, so do I. Let me tell you all about it.
I like to maintain these anally-retentive spreadsheets documenting every single thing I own, and the values thereof, so that I might calculate more exactly my exact net worth.
Some people have told me that I'm a Scrooge... that I'm too in love with money. But actually, the truth is simply that I'm broke... this is the only hobby I can afford, and it offers me a glimpse of hope for the future, hoping that someday I might have some money after all to go out and have fun with, or maybe, heaven forbid, to start a different hobby.
The moral of this story is several-fold. Firstly, who can guess at the motivation for this man to be collecting what he collects? Certainly not you or I, just reading a bit about him on the internet, and not having ever talked to him or known him.
I also find it a bit shrill to be saying things, effectively, like "since one person I know was put down for some meaningless random stuff in her personal life, I should go out and put down some other person for meaningless random stuff in his." This is the essence of modern American blame-shifting and reputation-smearing via the internet just because it's easy to do, because we have a few minutes and we're bored. I hope you'll use your forum a little more productively in the future.
Posted by: John Shelton at September 9, 2009 5:50 PMThe following picture confirms my suspicions of his Nazi loving mindset. As well as his comment of "Everybody thinks it's a biker shirt"
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/
http://blog.camera.org/archives/2009/09/is_hrw_investigator_garlasco_a_1.html
Posted by: Craig at September 10, 2009 1:46 AM