January 17, 2004 by s.z.

Your Weekend TownHall Assigned Reading As the saying goes, there's no rest for the wicked Kathleen Parker.  Oh, and what's the deal with all the guys who's first and last names both start with "B"?  Is it some kind of conservative  tradition?  ("I named my son Bob Barkley, knowing that he'd thus have a great future as a TownHall pundit.")  And didn't one of these "BB" guys die?  Can we vote for which one we want to bury? Anyway, on to today's today TownHall recap, which, while reduced in quantity, makes up for it by being goofy.  (Left unrecapped are a Neil Cavuto piece about why it's fine for Howard Dean to be angry; one by William F. Buckley saying that since Mexico is being a big pain and not letting us execute everyone we want, we should refuse to patronize the Hauge; and one by Robert Novak, leaking the President's plan to reform Social Security again.  You can read them on your own if you feel so inclined -- I just didn't find them amusing.)      Kathleen Parker Kathleen finds Howard dean's wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg, "delightfully refreshing," but also a passive-aggressive, unfemine hippie/slob who probably hates her husband and who will infect the rest of us with her style. Beyond practicalities, Americans have a right to visit with the woman who would represent their feminine side to the rest of the world. Will she schlep around the White House in jeans and sneakers? Will the woman whose home features green shag carpet (not that there's anything wrong with that) feel compelled to dress down the White House? Will she show up for State dinners in paisley saris and Birkenstocks? I-just-gotta-be-me is fine for kids discovering who they are, but most Americans prefer that their public representatives look like grownups. Even those who didn't like Ronald Reagan's politics admired his respect for the Oval Office, where he wore a tie and rarely removed his coat      Rich Tucker It's fine for the media to make fun of Britney Spears, but everybody should leave the Bush girls alone, because that's what they want.  Well, that and to get special privileges because they're rich and their Dad's the leader of the free world.  But it's not their fault their father is President --  even though they presumably could have prevented it by paying more attention to what went on, and then making a few timely leaks.  Girls, in you don't want four more years of the spotlight, give me a call. Now, it’s certainly not good to have the presidential daughters breaking the law. However, their behavior isn’t particularly unusual. Most of us engaged in at least a little bit of underage drinking -- heck, even Chelsea Clinton did. And just last month, Albert Gore III, the 21-year-old son of the former vice president, was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana. So the Bush girls have a lot of company.  In summary: it's wrong to report on the children of political figures, since they have not asked us to pay attention to them.  Hey, look, Al Gore's son was just charged with marijuana possession!    Brent Bozell    Oddly enough, Brent didn't like Angels in America. It's amazing, if not surprising, the degree to which trashing God, trashing America, and trashing traditional values are the entertainment factory's favorite pastimes. That's why the TV networks will be offering such programs this fall as "Celebrity God Trashing," "The Stupid American Pig-Dog Life" (Two slutty French Girls live with a typical American family, have wacky adventures, and denounce everyone and everything they encounter), and "Touched by a Gay, Liberal Angel Who Hates Traditional Values."      Bruce Bartlett  Bush really IS like Hitler -- but in a good, Keynesian way. Hitler, you see, may have been a nasty warmonger, but he was also far-sighted enough to adopt progressive economic policies that greatly benefited the German people.   [snip] As Cockburn writes, "Hitler, genocidal monster that he was, was also the first practicing Keynesian leader. ... There were vast public works, such as the autobahns. He paid little attention to the deficit or to the protests of the bankers about his policies. ... And look how well that worked out for everybody! That's it for today.  But no cartoons until you finish your TownHall! 4:26:05 AM

comment [] trackback []

Goofus and Gallant Go Blogging Goofus posts stuff like this: Wes Clark's Values Propagandist Michael Moore has endorsed Wesley Clark for president, saying that he "shares our values." Here's what Moore wrote on Sept. 12, 2001, about the previous day's attack on America: Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California--these were places that voted AGAINST Bush! What outraged Moore about Sept. 11 was not the murder of innocent people or of Americans, but specifically the murder of Democrats. Are these the "values" that Wes Clark shares? That Goofus -- when will he learn some responsiblity! Gallant, on the other hand, provides the context for what he quotes.  When he uses that same Moore quote, he provides enough material to allow the reader see what Moore was really trying to say: Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes? In just eight months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again.  He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race – you name it and Baby Bush has blown it all. The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in a spontaneous version of "God Bless America."  They're not a bad group of singers! Yes, God, please do bless us.  Many families have been devastated tonight.  This just is not right.  They did not deserve to die.  If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California – these were places that voted AGAINST Bush! Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity ... Let's mourn, let's grieve and when it's appropriate let's examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in. It doesn't have to be like this Thus, Gallant lets you see that what actually outraged Moore about Sept. 11 (on September 12th, at least) WAS the murder of innocent people and Americans, but also America's indifference to the rest of the world.  (And yes, Moore was also saying that if Bush was the main target of the attack, as many at the time were saying, the terrorists didn't think this out very well.)  Gallant does not claim that Moore's column says anything about Dean's values. Gallant provides citations to Moore's piece, so the interested reader can see the entire column for himself. Goofus links only to a previous piece by himself, which contains only the same snippet of Moore's words he used this time.  If any interested reader tries to use the link in Goofus's previous piece to find the Moore column, he or she gets only a "404 error."  Goofus doesn't care -- he's just out for the cheap shot at Dean, via Moore.  That's our Goofus! That same day, Goofus posts a historical quote in an apparent attempt to chastise his antiwar opponents.  However, since the quote is about Northerners who fought against the Union during the civil war, it's seems to offer little real "food for thought" on the current situation (unless Goofus is really suggesting that we're engaged in a civil war right now): Food for Thought "Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history. Better for him, individually, to advocate "war, pestilence, and famine," than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun. The history of the defeated rebel will be honorable hereafter, compared with that of the Northern man who aided him by conspiring against his government while protected by it. The most favorable posthumous history the stay-at-home traitor can hope for is--oblivion."--from the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant Gallant, who is getting fed up with Goofus, offers his own Grant quote: There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword.  Goofus keeps repeating that John Kerry is "French-looking."  He never explains what the heck this means, or what it has to do with anything.  This is what he said today! French Flies Sen. John Kerry, Iowa's surprise putative front-runner, has been tooling around the state in a helicopter, even taking the stick and flying himself, the Boston Globe reports. Such a stunt, however, may end up playing into damaging stereotypes about the candidate. The Globe reports that the chopper flown by the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, is "a black, French-made twin-engine six-seater." Gallant provides some context from Spinsanity, quoting part of an August 2003 item about the origins of this schoolyard taunt: While the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have generally eschewed direct personal insults so far, the same can't be said for their political opponents. Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., former Vermont governor Howard Dean and Senator John Edwards, D-NC, have all been tagged with derisive nicknames and labels, ones that in Kerry's case are being repeated over and over. On April 22, an anoymous Bush adviser told the New York Times that Kerry "looks French,” a silly insult designed to capitalize on anti-French sentiment in the wake of the Iraq war. Since then, three right-wing pundits have repeated it frequently, calling Kerry "French-looking" in nonsensical terms.  Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz, lashed back in the press, prompting James Taranto, the author of the Best of the Web Today column on Opinion Journal, the website of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to first pick up on the phrase. In his April 24 column, he first discusses the controversy, then further down calls Kerry "French-looking," beginning a spree of 22 uses of the term that culminated in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday in which he repeated it. And Gallant, who is not really the goody-two-shoes you might think, invites you to think of a descriptor for one James Taranto: