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 Schadenfreude  |
This is the New York Times Schadenfreude Ping List. Freepmail me to be added or dropped.
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Posted on 05/27/2003 9:11:29 PM PDT by Pokey78
By rolling over Iraq, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld hoped to deep-six the sixties.
The president was down with that. He never grooved on the vibe of the Age of Aquarius anyway.
Conservatives were eager to purge the decades' demons, from tie-dye to moral relativism, from Hanoi Jane to wilting patriotism, from McGovern to blaming America first, from Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds to the Clintonesque whatever-gets-you-through-the-night ethos.
In their preferred calendar, more Gingrichian than Gregorian, American culture fast-forwards from Elvis's blue suede shoes to John Travolta's white polyester suit.
Whatever else has gone awry in the Mideast so far, the administration may have succeeded in exorcising American queasiness about using force, and any vestigial image of the military as "baby killers."
As Robin Toner wrote in The Times yesterday, trust in the military is brimming, up to 79 percent from 58 percent in 1975, according to Gallup.
The tactical efficacy and moral delicacy of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq solidified a trend: the children of Vietnam-scarred boomers trust the government, and especially the military, far more than did their parents, whose generational mantra was "Don't trust anyone over 30."
As Ms. Toner noted, a Harvard poll found that 75 percent of college kids trusted the military "to do the right thing" either "all of the time" or "most of the time." Two-thirds of the students supported the Iraqi war, with hawks beating doves 2 to 1.
Mr. Bush runs a "trust us, we're 100 percent right" regime. So we've got a young generation that wants to take it on faith. And an administration that wants to be taken on faith.
The beginning of a beautiful friendship? Maybe. Unless the White House politicizes 9/11 so much it squanders all that belief.
Karl Rove's re-election strategy is designed to tug 9/11 heartstrings, and his ads will be heroic images of Top Gun chasing down the bad guys.
The president and his posse diverted anger over 9/11 to Iraq, and now they are diverting it to Iran.
The Bushies are playing up Al Qaeda terrorists they say are hunkered down in Iran, even as they overlook all the Al Qaeda terrorists crouching in countries the administration doesn't want to demonize, like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. And the hawks have turned to grooming Iranian exiles, who are pumping out reports of secret nuclear labs. Sound familiar?
After the war, the triumphal administration bragged about its Iraqi, Taliban and Qaeda scalps, painting our enemies as being in retreat.
"Al Qaeda is on the run," the president said in Little Rock, Ark. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."
But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated; it was sufficiently undecimated to murder 34 people, injure 200 and scare the daylights out of Americans everywhere.
If Bush-Cheney '04's use of Sept. 11 begins to look like cynicism, then cynicism is precisely what it will produce. Officials should stop speaking about threats and triumphs until they know exactly what they are speaking about. They should lose their bewildering and unconvincing color code, because orange doesn't communicate anything to anybody any more.
They should agree, in a spirit of humility and true public service, to stop getting obnoxiously in the way of the release of the 800-page Congressional report that will provide what every American has a right to know about 9/11.
As Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek, the Bush team does not want the public to pore over the president's daily intelligence briefings, like the one given on Aug. 6, 2001, at the Crawford ranch that dealt with the possibility that Al Qaeda might hijack airplanes. Or the parts of the 9/11 report that deal with our petroleum pals, the Saudis, and their recalcitrance in cooperating in the war on terror. The report, he says, "discusses evidence that individuals with Saudi government connections may have provided the hijackers aid."
The public should take its cue from Mr. Bush's beau ideal, Ronald Reagan. As the Gipper advised, "Trust, but verify."
Crazy!
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Schadenfreude |
An obvious, and pathetic, ploy.
Ahh, I see you have picked up on the subtle "nuances" that Ms. Dowd and her ilk are so proud of. Or maybe, Dowd et al simply do not know how to write.
Maureen Dowd could make bacon taste like tuna. I consider that a sufficiently nuanced statement as well. And I can't write worth a darn.
Just a short note thanking the inventors of the internet for not including smell.
I was doing Dowd a favor. I followed the posting guidelines, so kindly go be a posting Nazi somewhere else. And take your soap with you.
One of the problems with conservatives is that they think they can be polite with liberals. Liberals are not interested in being polite, they are not even interested in policy differences. They will lie, they will steal, they will dissemble, and they will not stop unless they are resolutely routed: both intellectually and at the ballot box.
Maureen Dowd's people tried to steal an election. Maureen Dowd's people would like to confiscate my firearms. Maureen Dowd's people tried to socialize 1/7th of the American economy. Maureen Dowd's people ignored Al Qaeda until it became too terrible to ignore. Maureen Dowd's people have pushed hate crime and political speech rules and laws on college campuses and in communities.
I give no quarter to people like that. They will give none to me.
Maureen Dowd deliberately, and with malice aforethought, excised a quotation by the President and decided to twist his words to suit her political ends. In so doing, she furthers the cause of liberals everywhere, and does so by subterfuge if not called to account.
Sure, I could have used a different phrase, even though I redacted the offending word. But Dowd is a disgusting individual whose record of prostitution in the cause of the Clinton White House almost rivals that of Sidney Blumenthal, another famous bootlicker. I gave her all the respect she deserved.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Who is Dowd? I'm just here for the CZJ pics!
You were calling her a cult?
Maybe you meant to say she was being curt?
Because certainly that other word just doesn't belong here!
Now, back to more of the lovely Catherine Zeta Jones!
See... I knew you could do it. You just blasted Dowd for what she is without using language that probably offends just about every female freeper and quite a few male freepers, as well. If you listen to Rush, then I'm sure you've heard that commercial for vocabulary tapes that starts out something like "people will judge you for the language you use..." I try to keep that in mind, not only in posting here, but in communicating with others in general, whether in writing or verbally. Despite your insinuations, I am not a prude and can swear like a drunken sailor or construction worker, which I do quite frequently when in the company of drunken sailors or construction workers. But when I'm not sure of my audience or think that some of them might not appreciate the use of crude language that is often used by teenagers and immature adults when refering to a certain female sex organ, then I will restrict myself to words generally found in Webster's English Dictionary. And BTW, if I was a "posting Nazi" I would have notified the moderator.
And BTW, if I was a "posting Nazi" I would have notified the moderator.
Believe me, that's been done.
Still and all, what infuriates the hell out of me is that an individual like Dowd can go out and win a Pulitzer Prize precisely because she writes for the New York Times.
Dowd is a rather unremarkable figure, sort of like one of those Second Raters who populate The Fountainhead and other Ayn Rand novels. What Truman Capote said bears repeating: "That's not writing. It's typing!" Maureen is living proof that if one is clever with words, one can make a lot of money. Dowd is a clever writer, not a great writer. There's a difference.
Dowd got as far as she had for two reasons: she has an "in" with Howell Raines and that crowd (go back a few years. You will find that Dowd's ascension to the OpEd page of the Times paralells the rise of Raines and Gerald Boyd on the editorial side of the paper.). Her friendship with Raines, et al, gives her a measure of protection within the Times in particular and Official Washington and New York in general.
Secondly, she writes for the Times. As you are aware, the Times under Howell Raines has become one of the least self-critical of newspapers. It was noted on Imus this morning by Jeff Greenfield that the NYT does not have an ombudsman-simply because it is the Times. Our complaints about Dowd will fall on deaf ears, simply because she writes what Pinch Sulzberger and Raines want to read. She writes what her friends in New York, Washington, and Hollywood want to read.
Consider: would Dowd have won a Pulitzer had she written for the Buffalo News or the Denver Post? Nope. But you can write for the Times and get away with murder. You can be rewarded for it, too.
I remember when we all thought well of Dowd in early 1998. She understood the mendacity at the heart of Clintonism, but then, as if on a dime, she turned and became a virtual lapdog. No one really knows how this happened. There are those who raise her involvement with Clinton loyalist Michael Douglas. Whatever happened, the turn came just in time for the Monica testimony to explode that August.
In 2000, she just made sh*t up. And I'm using very appropriate language, here. Her gleeful descriptions of the "Boy Governor" curling up with his security blanket after getting hammered by McCain in New Hampshire set the tone for her coverage throughout the years of Bush II. Her dislike of the Bush family is visceral, and it gets in the way what passes for rational thinking on her part.
In sum, if Doonesbury came in the form of written political commentary, it would be a Dowd column. Her writing is that clever, without really saying anything of substance.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Anyone want to tell me just when the American people have been allowed to "pour over the president's daily intelligence briefings"? Personally, I don't feel comfortable with people having access to those briefings.
She is the main reason I quit buying the Cleveland Plain Dealer.I told them that was the reason I dumped them.Too much good readable info on line than to have to pay them(the Plain Dealer)my hard earned money that helps pay her salary....no friggin way.I despise that tramp of a writer.Here's to her getting poop-canned!
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