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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
rondolce
Published Letters: 64 Editor's Choice: 1
The sorry part of this is that anybody takes Robertson seriously. The fact is that a lot of people do.
Why, you ask? Because setting up straw men/women is an essential tactic of the far right. Depicting feminists as unsmiling schoolmarm types who find "politically incorrect" slights in any sort of light discourse, environmenatlists as naive oafs for whom the livelihoods of a few thousand loggers count as nothing compared with saving some rare fish's habitat, and anti-war protesters as anti-American surrender monkeys who'd hand the South Atlantic Coast over to Osama rather than risk fighting. It's been going on since Buchanan was Nixon's speechwriter (Safire, too) and will continue as long as they realize that they'd come up way short in any fair battle of ideas. I've gotten used to it and I think the editors of "Broadstreet" should, too.
I find it interesting that American Enterprise Institute fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote that Iraq's Sunni population was being sufficiently intimidated by Shiite paramilitary forces on the same day (April 3) that a truck bomb struck the al-Shroofi mosque, killing at least ten Shiites inside. All the indications that Sunni resistance to Shiite death squad activity has been steadily ramping up since February 22 seems to have been missed by Gerecht and it's a sad irony that the Sunni resistance has (literally) exploded since he wrote his essay. If Gerecht actually believes that a final display of "shock and awe" would put an end to the Iraqi resistance then he clearly lives in a neocon dream world, in which facts that don't support the home ideology have no place.
Although I do agree that we need to build an opposition consensus to the war I also fear that many in the conservative movement will use opposition to the war as a means of distancing their movement from the utter flop of an administration that George Bush leads. People who change their position on the war ought to demonstrate how they came to make that change. Therefore, since the intellectual underpinning of the war were basic neoconservative (see the Project For The New American Century), repudiation of the war ought to involve repudiation of the neoconservative movement as well as the tactics that got Bush elected.
How Caitlin Flanagan could have been so utterly clueless that she was being set up for such scathing satire is amazing. Might that be a result of excessive exposure to the ham-handed attempts at humor by the shopkeepers of right-wing talk radio?
It's an unfortunate fact of life that every television series has a life cycle; a birth, youth, middle age, senescence and passing. The sescence is probably the biggest problem for quality sitcoms which require that writers create stories that are fresh, interesting, intelligent, topical, occasionally thoughtful,irreverent, hip and above all, funny, over many years. Nice to see that "Will And Grace" passed on such a nice note.
I somehow am a lot less disturbed by Bush's gaffe about Syria than I am about the comment that he seemed "dismissive of...Kofi Annan", although it shouldn't surprise me that he did.
Heather, you'll be fine. Lesser women than you have done it so just go with it. When people give you advice just smile, nod and ignore them, develop a wierd appreciation for Barney, Teletubbies etc. (God, some of the stuff you watch isn't any better), realize that nature has programmed our genetic makeup to actually enjoy this (so we don't kill them) and get in touch with that. Good luck.
P.S. I may be a gut but I'm the one with the maternal instinct in my family and I raised my two. If that doesn't give you hope nothing will.
Really, what's the difference. One's as good as the other.
A couple of quick points about a Democratic electoral strategy for the South. First, as Lee Atwater said about Mike Dukakis' campaign for California, "He needs it so I want it." Some strength south of the Mason-Dixon Line would force the Republicans to fight for it, absorbing funds and effort that would otherwise be used to create the more moderate image needed to reach outside the Republican base. More importantly though, is the need to actually reach out to more populist areas of the South and try to establish a beachhead of our own.
After reading Blumenthal's perceptive essay about Bush's colossal flop as president I'd have to respond that it's time we stopped pounding on the guy. Not that I feel any sympathy for him, it's just that the real enemy in this country is the far right wing of the Republican Party; the alliance of international capital, fundamentalist religious zealots and neoconservative intellectuals who will exist long after Cowboy George retires to his ranch. They are highly organized, extremely well funded, disciplined and motivated and they exert a lot of control over the news most Americans get. Recall their immediate counterattack against the Clinton healthcare reform attempt. Recall also their incessant filibustering in the Senate between 1993 and 1994 . Blumenthal's own books "The Clinton Wars" and "The Rise Of The Counterestablishment" document the depth of this movement, (though not as well as Conason's "Hunting Of The President"). If Bush and the Republican Congress accomplished one thing for America during their tenure they demonstrated, through an amazing mixture of artlessness, hubris and incompetence, to demonstrate the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of their movement. Now it's time to deal with the real problem in this country.
The fact that neoconserative thinkers tailor their facts to fit their vision of reality is apparent whenever they come out to debate those who live in the reality based world. Reading Odom's debate with Hewitt and listening to Greenwald's debate with Gaffney has convinced me of this even more. Let's try to keep from scaring them back into the ivory towers of the Heritage Foundation. This level of debate can only help us.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
