Don't forget, as you ponder this, that these statements are being made routinely, by "the smartest woman on the planet!"
Posted on 07/13/2005 3:18:48 PM PDT by CHARLITE
HILLARY CLINTON made headlines earlier this week when she compared President George W. Bush to Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, freckle-faced mascot whose signature statement is "What, me worry?" As political put-downs go, this hardly ranks as the most egregious, even in the modern era of politics. Fellow Democratic Senator Harry Reid called Bush both a liar and a loser earlier this year, and later only grudgingly offered to retract the latter. The American left, exemplified by MoveOn.org, has compared Bush to Adolf Hitler--unfavorably. Howard Dean has spent his entire term as Democratic party chairman issuing insults to and about Republicans, explicitly declaring that they have never done an honest day's work in their lives and that the GOP is entirely comprised of unfriendly white Christians. Even as an insult to Bush's physical looks, Sen. Clinton's comparison pales to the usual references to chimpanzees that the Left has beaten to death.
Still, the Mad magazine comparison is significant and revealing. I grew up reading Mad, with its iconoclastic attitude and broad-based satirical outlook. The magazine existed in part to challenge authority and to skewer the self-righteous. Year ago, "authority" meant the establishment, mostly conservative, and the magazine's barbs were aimed more at stodgy Republicans than free-wheeling liberals and Democrats. But Mad also regularly scored points against the excesses of the counterculture, too.
In the intervening 30 years, times have changed. Today, cultural orthodoxies mostly come from the liberal establishment, coached along by
the powerful media and academic engines that drive our national culture. Any iconoclast worth his salt would take on these pillars of political correctness as well as the mind-numbing sloganeering of their stalwarts.
SENATOR CLINTON'S SPEECH provides its own Mad magazine moments. For instance, in the portion of her speech that made the Alfred E. Neuman comparison, she argued that Bush's tax cuts had damaged the economy. Checking with the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, however, you find only one quarter during Bush's presidency where the national GDP has registered a decline, and that was in the third quarter of 2001, which included 9/11. In the past two years, GDP growth has not dipped below an annualized rate of 3.3 percent in any one quarter. Five of the eight quarters had better than 4 percent growth. At the same time, prices have only increased by 3 percent in one of those quarters, meaning that real growth has taken place since Bush got his economic plan through Congress.
If that's damage, no wonder Alfred E. doesn't worry.
Hillary wasn't done giving us her mad moments in her Aspen Ideas Festival speech (and don't think Mad wouldn't have a field day with the concept of an Ideas Festival, either). Later in her remarks, she delivered this eye-popping economic analysis for the Colorado audience: "Ours will be the last generation to rely so exclusively on fossil fuels." She added that the "ups and downs of the global oil market cost the U.S. economy $7 trillion last year . . . almost enough to pay off our entire national debt."
Seven trillion dollars? That would surprise most economists, as well as Mad magazine readers who learned both to question authority and check sources, since the entire American GDP for 2004 amounted to $11.735 trillion according to the BEA; $1.5 trillion came from imports of goods. Energy goods (both domestic and imported) only accounted for $250 billion, making it extremely unlikely that price fluctuations in a single import commodity market could have generated anywhere near the kind of economic damage Senator Clinton cited.
And yet a sitting senator and presumptive candidate for the presidency makes these strange assertions without criticism from the establishment press. The only coverage her speech received resulted from her coarse and personal attack on President Bush, which the media seemed eager to pass to its readers. Obviously, our national media's editors did not read Mad magazine well enough during their formative years to recognize patent demagoguery when they report it.
Perhaps Bush bears some passing physical resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman. However, the Democrats and the American left come closest to resembling the clueless targets of Mad's satirical darts of days gone by.
Edward Morrissey is a contributing writer to The Daily Standard and a contributor to the blog Captain's Quarters.
Don't forget, as you ponder this, that these statements are being made routinely, by "the smartest woman on the planet!"
Char :)
Should be replaced with "the most dangerous woman on the planet!"
I almost wonder if the Bush Team isn't letting them run their mouths in an uncontrolled way to gather sound bytes for the next election. It's a bumper crop of idiotic statements.
And we wouldn't have had to kill... what's the DU tally today, 100,000 Iraqi civilians in our Imperialistic blood-for-war conquests??
'the smartest woman on the planet."
Way back then she had the media working for her when they quoted that statement over and over till some believed it and still do to this day. Every time I see or hear that statement I think of the media and all their distortion of the truth.
She's a con artist like the man she married.
t'nks for the ping. Good one that is getting passed on.
She is worse than him. He has owned up to being a scumbag with his book "My Life". She has never owned up to what she is, it's all smoke and mirrors with her.
Should be replaced with "the most dangerous woman on the planet!"
------
And she has proven it, in more ways than one. A hard Marxist, socialist and power-mad liberal. Comrade Hitlery should be heading up the Progressive Caucus (CPUSA wanna bes) in the Congress -- how this country tolerates these commies is beyond me.
didn't read his book but, I agree, she definitely is WORSE than him. The smoke isn't that thick since she is so transparent to us.
I didn't read his book either, I just said this because of the sound bytes on radio, "Why did you lie to me?" response "Because I could!"
And, we could build houses for that army of 3 MILLION homeless people!;)
This is one great truth that can't be stated enough! Keep on repeating it. Perhaps enough "swing voters" will hear it to sink her battleship by the Democrat primary season - enough to deny it to her. I'd feel a lot safer if this grifter never even made it into a nomination.
Thanks for such an on-the-mark comment, "presently."
Char :)
All this from the WORLDS MOST WELL KNOWN PIMP.
"Because I could"
They are so arrogant. And that's what she can't wait to say - 'because I can'. (God forbid)
never even made it into the nomination.
I'd feel safe too! We then would have to be concerned about voter fraud - that will be major!
Hillary IS an unchallanged, ignorant assinine assertion!
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