"... that a perception that [Brittney] Griner might receive insufficient attention could be used to his advantage. The activism that resulted from that perception no doubt helped push the Biden Administration to make a deal rather than to risk repeating the miscalculations of the Reagan Administration. Still, the Griner affair may yet reiterate a crucial lesson of December, 1983—that inequality, or even the appearance of inequality, is not only a liability at home but an impediment in foreign affairs. The irony is that Putin, in the most cynical way possible, has demonstrated that Black lives really do matter, by highlighting just how much you can achieve by placing one in jeopardy."
Writes Jelani Cobb in "Brittney Griner and the Role of Race in Diplomacy/Griner’s release recalls the lessons of the effort to free Robert Goodman, an African American Navy navigator, from Syria" (The New Yorker).
The "miscalculations of the Reagan Administration" involved "an African American Navy bombardier-navigator named Robert Goodman was taking part in a mission to destroy Syrian munitions in Lebanon when his plane was shot down.... The Syrian government viewed him as a prisoner of war and said that he would not be released until the United States withdrew its forces from Lebanon.... The White House’s inability to negotiate Goodman’s release also fostered an impression that Ronald Reagan... was unconcerned about a Black P.O.W." Jesse Jackson went to Syria and, after 3 days of negotiation, Syrian President, Hafez al-Assad, agreed to release Goodman — probably "mostly to embarrass Reagan."
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My recollection is that most Americans, having lived through the 444 days of the Iran-hostage crisis, agreed that it was right not to negotiate with terrorists.
My observation is that most Americans, whether they feel safe to say so aloud, believe that if you are going to negotiate with a terrorist like Putin, at least bring home the Marine in exchange for a gun-running terror supporter, not the basketball player who thought America was an oppressive country undeserving of her patriotism.
Is it part of the job description of The New Yorker writers to draw all the wrong conclusions?
Making a dangerously bad deal for the release of a black athlete is evidence that bias against blacks is bad? That's idiotic.
At some point, acknowledging the blessings of being born an American should overrule the racial politics, no?
I don't ever want to hear leftists and democrats talk about gun control ever again. They're finished with that subject. They just traded one of the largest illegal arms dealers in the world for a basketball player. A guy quite literally with DEA, FBI, and ATF proved blood on his weapons and his hands. Worse yet a guy with African blood on those weapons and hands.
I hear one more word about gun control from these people, this will be thrown in their face before I smack the taste out of their mouth.
The Black tail wagging the White dog in America. What's new?
The Goodman story is mostly forgotten. Reagan's story still burns bright.
RACISTS everywhere. I guess Obama was never elected. And Hillary would have won if she was Kenyan ancestry too.
Time for Media hacks to find new angle. Wiping out the enemy of Americans with Northern Europe ancestry is getting boring. The country still needs us to run things.
Putin knows that what "fostered an impression that Ronald Reagan... was unconcerned about a Black P.O.W." was the media in the US and he knows they won't do that to a Democrat President.
If Putin thought a failure to get Griner out would hurt Biden, then why didn't he drag it out?
From the article: "As with Goodman’s case, some activists had feared that, in the midst of a foreign conflict, Griner’s identity—she is Black and queer—would make her a low priority for U.S. diplomatic efforts."
Is this a joke? Good grief the Biden administration would have added three aircraft carriers to the deal if asked.
Part of the art of negotiation is understanding what your opponent values most. Putin knew that a black female athlete mattered a helluva lot more to a race/celebrity obsessed America than it did to the Kremlin. So Vlad wanted an arms dealer in return and Biden was happy with the trade.
Now Griner will be a regular fixture on ESPN in support of the Cathedral's narrative.
Maybe the New Yorker could do a story on Putin's support of "climate change activism" in the US?
People read the New Yorker because they think it signals they are better and smarter than people who don't read the New Yorker.
There is no other value to reading it.
The people that write it are stupid.
But it helps middle aged women feel superior.
Good for Jesse Jackson for getting Goodman home. The president isn't some kind of God who can do everything. He's not going to alter foreign policy for one person. Sometimes things have to be done through other channels. Reagan did his bit by not prosecuting Jackson for violating the Logan Act.
And even there, you see the hidden hand or the back channels or strategic ambiguity. Reagan got grief for bringing up the idea that Jackson had broken the Logan Act for negotiating a prisoner release in Cuba, but Reagan's DOJ didn't prosecute in either case. So you can choose the interpretation you want, depending on how you feel about Reagan.
Sure, the New Yorker is a status icon. When I had an apartment, a car, credit cards, a museum membership and a New Yorker subscription, I thought I had finally arrived and was fully an adult. I still look at the magazine. It is different, though, from what it was when Updike was still alive and writers didn't have to put something political or LGBTQ or BiPoc into every article.
RideSpaceMountain said...
I don't ever want to hear leftists and democrats talk about gun control ever again. They're finished with that subject. They just traded one of the largest illegal arms dealers in the world for a basketball player. A guy quite literally with DEA, FBI, and ATF proved blood on his weapons and his hands. Worse yet a guy with African blood on those weapons and hands.
I hear one more word about gun control from these people, this will be thrown in their face before I smack the taste out of their mouth.
12/17/22, 9:24 AM
100% THIS^^
This is a very revealing and instructive piece.
"a perception that [Brittney] Griner might receive insufficient attention could be used to his advantage"
Even by prog standards, this is unusually unselfaware. Of course, Putin realized, as does any American, that a perception that prog, Dem, and MSM attention would focus relentlessly on Griner could be used to his advantage.
"The activism that resulted from that perception no doubt helped push the Biden Administration to make a deal rather than to risk repeating the miscalculations of the Reagan Administration."
Translation: the Dem desire to kowtow to prog activism compelled the administration to pursue a deal, any deal, hence giving Putin leverage.
"that inequality, or even the appearance of inequality, is not only a liability at home but an impediment in foreign affairs"
True, because the endless prog bitching about inequality is the key domestic weakness our adversaries can exploit.
"Black lives really do matter, by highlighting just how much you can achieve by placing one in jeopardy"
True, because in modern America "inequality" means favoring blacks, making black lives matter more.
"Jesse Jackson went to Syria and, after 3 days of negotiation, Syrian President, Hafez al-Assad, agreed to release Goodman — probably "mostly to embarrass Reagan."
Which itself showed how easily prog sentiment could be manipulated, and how eager progs were , then and now, to assist in embarrassing any non-prog administration, at the expense of a halfway realistic policy and the U.S. itself.
We traded a murderer to a foreign adversary because of the color of another person's skin.
Is it really acceptable that The New Yorker thinks that way?
Who would enter Russia with drugs? Who would agree to a trip to Russia at all? Insanity.
Putin didn’t need the arms dealer, he just wanted to weaken the US on the world stage. Anybody with two brain cells is going to appreciate that. The trade is a presentation of symbols: a little exemplum, a narrative moment, where our country is shown to be foolish, weak, and obsessed with false values. Is the country in fact like that? In fact I think not; but insofar as the country is embodied in its “leadership,” yes, it is. And the tension between what the country IS and what this cringing moron “embodies” it to be, is almost unbearably painful.
Putin is laughing all the way to the bank. I expect more such stunts, whenever he thinks they’re useful.
MikeD said...
Maybe the New Yorker could do a story on Putin's support of "climate change activism" in the US?
Russian Misinformation!
Those dastardly Russians will do anything to destabilize the benevolent US Government.
Putin recognized what fools and scoundrels run US foreign policy and everything else these days. He only had to pull the obvious string.
Bob Boyd said...
Putin knows that what "fostered an impression that Ronald Reagan... was unconcerned about a Black P.O.W." was the media in the US and he knows they won't do that to a Democrat President.
If Putin thought a failure to get Griner out would hurt Biden, then why didn't he drag it out?
That is why Putin is still holding the two white males.
He knows how divisive the obvious favoritism of the Biden administration is in the US.
I suspect the puppeteers with their hands up Biden's ass know how divisive it is too.
Blogger Owen said...
Putin didn’t need the arms dealer, he just wanted to weaken the US on the world stage. Anybody with two brain cells is going to appreciate that. The trade is a presentation of symbols: a little exemplum, a narrative moment, where our country is shown to be foolish, weak, and obsessed with false values.
Pretty much sums it up.
Just another way to say that in negotiations, Team Biden/Kerry/Blinken mostly winds up with its pants down around its ankles. And the wallet is gone as well.
The New Yorker…if you haven’t read Tom Wolfe’s blisteringly funny and epically snarky 1965 profile of William Shawn, the heir to founder and original editor of the New Yorker, Harold Ross, you’re missing something special. Among other things, Wolfe points out that the New Yorker never was particularly good, and catered to, yes, upper-middle-class women trying to impress their acquaintances - the same ones who today profess to worship, say, the hack who calls himself “Ibraim X. Kendi”.
But it often has great cartoons.
Biden capitulated here the same as he capitulated in Afghanistan. “If we wait for the Taliban to keep their end of the bargain, we will never get out.” That’s called capitulation, he did it without consulting our NATO “Allies,” much to their consternation. Trump and NATO had conditions, Biden dropped them unilaterally to look good for a speech. Zelensky take note, Putin has.
"The irony is that Putin, in the most cynical way possible, has demonstrated that Black lives really do matter, by highlighting just how much you can achieve by placing one in jeopardy."
As I read this, in my mind I see Cleavon Little.
Good Lord. The liar or idiot who wrote that is the dean of the Columbia Journalism School.
Also,"...shaped by a Cold War-era K.G.B. that specialized in manipulating U.S. racial tensions..."
Really? This is the New Yorker? That's a John Birch conspiracy theory.
So, diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) is politically congruent ("=") dogma from the Soviet era by way of Russia taught by Progressive [Liberal] sects? DIE!, really? All's fair in lust and abortion, I suppose.
yes he does, however why did prince salman intercede on colonel bout's behalf, because he has been useful to certain parties like unita, going back to the late 80s, he is identified by south african intelligence, which are mostly soviet trained ex spear of the nation guerillas, as having a ukrainian passport, now you see the big picture,
Griner put herself in jeopardy. Let's put the blame where it really belongs.
Putin just took advantage of it.
And yet for all the yucks Putin is getting the USA is still providing the weapons to Ukraine that are ripping the guts out of the Russian Army. As exchanges go I'll take that one any day.
With the exception of Native Americans, Blacks were the most oppressed minority in America, but there's oppression and there's oppression. Compare and contrast the most oppressed minorities in America with the most oppressed minorities in the Soviet Union or the previous Russian Empire....The Soviet Union didn't have any Blacks to speak of within their borders. It was in their interest to treat visiting American Blacks with every possible courtesy and so they did. A lot of left wing American Blacks fell for it hook, line, and sinker....The people who hate America do not love American Blacks, but they like to pretend they do.
This is why we can't have stable, reliable, renewable nuclear-sourced energy with reduced waste.
Vlad knows how to jerk the deplorables chain and tug the libtards heart strings. The Griner situation was a work of art.
Iread The New Yorker to get my weekly dose of Trump hatred. Every single week there is another article on why he is bad bad bad. I also read it for the short stories which are consistently good. The poetry not so much. I have read it for fifty years and it’s decline began when it became political.
I remember as a student teacher viewing a Soviet-produced film about the Babi-Yar massacre which ended with about 5 minutes of footage from American KKK rallies. I watched this in the presence of a class full of American high school students and it pissed me off at the time.
Howard asserted without equivocation: "The Griner situation was a work of art."
The left, as they fall all over themselves bidding on Hunter Biden's artwork, have a curious view of art.
Adversaries always take maximum advantage of each other weakness. Russia “manipulates US racial tensions”, while US manipulates Russian weakness vis-à-vis Ukraine. Russia may score some sort of PR victories, while US inflicts serious damage to Russia in military lives and materiel. Still, somehow the question remain, which will cause more damage, in the long run?
It's not what is true, it is what they can make people believe is true.
Shorter Jelani Cobb: Black privilege is a real thing..
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