Bring Back Our Daughters

National Review columnist Mark Steyn really distinguishes himself on Mother's Day with this column slagging the First Lady and the missing Nigerian girls:

It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture at right is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria. Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt getting the First Lady to pose with this week's Hashtag of Western Impotence would reflect well upon the Administration. The horrible thing is they may be right: Michelle showed she cared - on social media! - and that's all that matters, isn't it? 

Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening.

To recap, the First Lady showing that she does care, that she too is a mother and is worried, that Nigeria's government has turned down US assistance and President Goodluck Jonathan continues to shuffle his feet on the issue, all that is only worthy of "total contempt" because she is Michelle Obama.

Because she used a hashtag, hashtags are now contemptible and not only is hashtag activism now utterly worthless dirty hippie twaddle, the entirely of Twitter is dead and gone and was always useless in the first place.

It's odd then that when African girls are missing, and an African-American first lady gets involved, and a large number of black folk worldwide get involved, that suddenly, Twitter becomes useless, impotent, "wretched pleading passivity", even contemptible "moral preening".

So very, very odd.