Civility Shrugged: Bush Team Depicted as Beheader of Innocent Americans
by Gary Larson | View comments |
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The Minneapolis Star Tribune gives even rabid partisanship a bad name.
Sheer, ironic hypocrisy is standard fare in Minneapolis (MN) Star Tribune editorials. Never more ironic than in claims of “incivility” in the State GOP’s criticism of Senator Mark Dayton (“A mean shot at a lame duck,” June 14).
Senator Dayton, the undistinguished U.S. Senator now retiring, is treated in a Republican video in an “unmannerly” way, says the editorial, asserting a lofty moral tone. It’s so very uncouth, “unMinnesotan,” to criticize a “selfless” outgoing office-holder.
Dayton is a liberal Democrat. So it figures; he’s the “victim,” you see, of the GOP’s dastardly act of criticism, thus to be protected to the very end of his term, if necessary, by this newspaper’s 100% liberal-to-the-core editorial board. No surprises here. Protection is the name of the game.
What's ironic is the editorial’s plea for something the paper’s editorials routinely do NOT practice — “civility in public discourse.” Obvious to any fair-minded reader, the editorial ethos is uncivil, at times hatefully partisan.
(Item: The Deputy Editorial Page Editor in a column once tagged President George W. Bush’s go-to-war policies as Hitlerian.)
Blaming Bush for all wrongs is de rigueur. The President is the paper’s daily whipping boy, its straw man, a proxy for the editorial writers’ antipathy for a political party they sometimes view, frankly, as criminal.
(Item: Skinflint GOPers are said to “shortchange kids and rob the elderly.” As in petty misdemeanor and felony theft, respectively?)
Stop the presses! Bush is exonerated, at least in African relief efforts, in the editorial, “A pledge to Africa already faltering” (June 13). Get a load of this laugh line from it: “This time [sic], however [sic], President Bush doesn’t seem [sic!] to be to blame.” How cow! Can this be? Hell, frozen over?
Don’t hold your breath, though, thinking fair commentary catches Star Tribune’s sails. Nope. Four days later the paper revisits its cheap-shot incivility in “King George, the Eavesdropper” (June 17).
Mistaken to the point of being reckless with facts, breathtakingly misleading, likely with malice aforethought (ingredients of libel, in another context), the unsigned editorial reeks of crude, nasty incivility.
Check out its wacky text here, with my [sics] added:
What will King George think of next? Today he is invoking [sic] the theory [sic] — and the endless [sic], ubiquitous [sic] “war on terrorism” [sic, including the tell-tale quotation marks] — to justify [sic] warrantless spying [sic] on innocent [sic] Americans.
And tomorrow? Why not an executive edict for house-to-house searches, or a suspension of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, or the tidy establishment of a virtuous and upright state religion…
Jonathan Swift these editors are not. Satirical? Try juvenile, snooty and smug, besides inaccurate. “War on terrorism?” Gosh, what war?
Catch the mean-spirited conjectures? Marked by my “[sic]” as in “thus as written,” they suggest no need for textual analysis of some wacky-tacky stuff. It’s all upfront, easy to see: Forget facts, ignore truth, make up stuff, all to malign “King George.” It has all the earmarks of high school journalism. Would the editors please, just Grow Up?
(Item: Once they ripped President Bush’s too-rapid speed-up golf game. Not enough time, perhaps, for reflecting on his manifold sins?)
Think you’ve heard it all? There’s more from the same editors who called for “civility in public discourse.” I swear, I am NOT making this up:
Welcome to the world beyond the looking glass, where the president is king, a war prevails eternally and the rule of law applies only to some. How long until the beheadings [sic] start?
Yes, “beheadings.” No need to blink, that’s what you just read, from the wrong-headed, madcap editorial, “King George, the Eavesdropper.”
(Item: After Al-Zarqawi was killed, the op-ed page ran with CNN’s interview of the father of beheaded Nick Berg. He calls President Bush “the real terrorist,” echoing liberal media darling Cindy Sheehan.)
For argument’s sake (arquendo, say the lawyers), who will wield the beheaders’ knife? Jihadist Bush? Despised Rove? Dumped-on Rumsfeld? Any way you slice it, vulgar is the word for even an allegorical hint of the Bush team decapitating “innocent Americans.” Ugly, yes, but standard fare at McClatchy Co.-owned Minneapolis Star Tribune. Shame on somebody.
Hypocrisy was never so ironic as in the upside-down views, the "institutional voice" of this Midwest paper. Its reputation as a ratty Party Organ is richly deserved, its hypocrisy on issues at center stage left. By its wretched excesses you shall know it as, well, as despicable. Egads! It gives even rabid partisanship a bad name.
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"…a proxy for the editorial writers’ antipathy for a political party they sometimes view, frankly, as criminal."
Umm, sometimes criminal? You're inferring that they don't look at Republicans as criminal. Hard to believe.
If George Bush was really a king, the Star Tribune wouldn't dare print what they do about him. Kings, historically, didn't tend to take any kind of criticism without either killing or throwing into prison the critics. Have these newspaper writers been killed or imprisoned yet?
Comment by Ron S. | June 20, 2006
Item: George Bush creates matter.
Headline: "George Bush reduces the amount of entropy in the universe!"
Comment by G of Sedona | June 20, 2006
Hooray for our side! Victory in Iraq. So genius, what does that mean? Saddam had WMDs, he hid them well, now they are somewhere in the ME (among some of our friends maybe, well hopefully, or maybe he hid them and destroyed the map?) Well now we don't seem to have too many friends over there do we? The taliban are still dying, and dying and dying. But Al Queda is for all we know still plotting and may or may not successfully pull off an attack here in the US or against one of our allies. Why? Because they have a seemingly inexaustable supply of #3 men who don't commit suicide but die from our bombs while the #4 and #5 guys do, trading 1 meat bomb for 5 or more pieces of jellyware, aka victims which we cannot seem to stop from happening. BTW, we don't know if any Al Queda are here in the US simply because our President has allowed the Southern and Northern borders to remain open gashes for all to come. But don't worry, he and our glorious and righteous Congressional leaders assure us that it’s only friendly brown skinned Mexicans wanting to rake your rocks and not blow you up. In Iraq there are as many car bombs as ever, as many deaths since Saddam, Al Zarquawi (sp?), and a hundred #3 men were killed, but its becoming realized that our ridiculously stupid attempt to spread some nebulous concept of democracy to a bunch of sewage waste of a people (yes, I have lived and worked in the middle east, so I know the people, they are not like us, believe me.) is failing. To control Iraq in any sense of the word 'control' will require…Guess what? A brutal thug dictator much like Saddam, who, I believe was on speaking terms with our Government at one or more times in the past. Democracy is kind of funny for barbaric peoples such as Muslims: they tend to elect barbarians for leaders, go figure… Hahah! As far as Afghanistan goes, somehow we keep on finding more and more taliban to have to fight and kill off as this week’s current largest operation to remove the taliban exhibits. Remarkable considering they were a bunch of Stone Age savages ousted some 3 or 4 years ago. Just like in Ramadi, Quaim, and in the so called Triangle of death, and in the Oruzgan district, the dusty town of Kandahar, and mountains around kabul which seem to repopulate themselves with our so called enemies as soon as US or coalition troops leave or go back to garrison and lo and behold we have to go back in to remove them. Maybe our methods of fighting this group of terrorists (since we are not fighting a war in the WWII sense) are not going to work long term.
At best, we are doing what would be the equivalent in WWII of going to Germany invading and taking over without bombing Dresden, ball bearing factories in Düsseldorf or Berlin, and hunting down just Hitler, Goebbels and a few top SS men or Nazis and calling the war good. Then remaining there while we left the SS soldiers and the Wermacht soldiers intact with all their equipment and beliefs and fighting them for the next 40 years. But that did not happen. Why? I don't remember our leaders (both political and military) back then; Truman, Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Nimitz calling Nazism and Shinto good things? Do you? Or have you read that they have? Because that is what our genius President and his staff and our brilliant military leaders have done with our 452 trillion, Eleventy bizzilion dollars spent on this war, excuse me, effort to capture some terrorist’s thugs and one old geezer dying from cancer and put on trial in an Armani suit. When our young troops quit dying or losing arms and legs from IEDs, VBIEDs/car bombs and suicide meat bombs, and THE WESTERN NATIONS OR OUR ALLIES have not suffered from anymore terrorist’s attacks from muslims or crazed white guys, I guess we can say we won. Are we feeling lucky?
here's an idea; I think maybe all the billionaire politicians, both Dems and Repubs, along with their lobbyists and corporate sponsors and gov. bureaucrats can put down a few BILLION of their own personal dollars and start supporting the children of not only the 2500 brave young men of our military who died in this fiasco but also those who now have to be supported because their daddy's lost arms and legs or eyes and cannot find nice high paying jobs. Hows that for supporting our troops? Maybe all the big Corps and Politicians, Kennedy, Bush, Cheney, Murtha, Reid, etc. can put up some of their personal fortunes and take care of the youngsters so that the taxpayers won't have to.
Dean
Comment by Dean | June 20, 2006
Nice rant Dean.
"its becoming realized that our ridiculously stupid attempt to spread some nebulous concept of democracy to a bunch of sewage waste of a people…"
Yeah screw them. Let them kill and be killed. Why should we care? Why should we try to spread
some "nebulous" concepts like freedom and democracy? Your thought process embodies the worst
in human nature Dean. The thought process that condemns others to death out of some belief in
their inherent inferiority. Don't go down that path sir. If human history teaches us anything it is that
mankind is able to improve its condition regardless of skin color or culture. This fight will take decades.
It will be fought on many different fronts with hard power (military might) and the soft power of ideas
which can change a people and a culture. The future can only be won if we change the conditions now
to mold the generations of the future to something better. The alternative is to surrender to
barbarism. And understand this: That barbarism will someday reach accross the oceans if we allow it
to go unchecked. Perhaps we will win. Perhaps we will lose. But if we surrender to your way of
thinking, the former will certainly prevail.
Comment by RobertUSAF | June 21, 2006
Dean;
1. Less coffee.
2. More paragraph breaks.
3. You may not realize this, but we now have many, many friends "over there." (Oh, yeah, if you just read the Strib, I can understand how you didn't know this.) We are quite popular amongst the non-Islamikazee set throughout the ME.
Comment by Bobby_b | June 21, 2006
Wow! Dean…you were nailed squarely between the eyes!
Robert's third paragraph: " The thought process that condemns others to death out of some belief in their inherent inferiority."
I've been trying to tell people for years that within the liberal mindset, there's an arrogance and feeling of superiority over others. You are a perfect example Dean.
Comment by Paul | June 21, 2006
Gary Larson's article reminded me once again why I cancelled my subscription to the Star Tribune.
Comment by Bob Dryden | June 25, 2006
Dean is your typical radical liberal. Tons of energy, zero sense.
Comment by Jim | June 27, 2006
In all honesty I have to admit, on my travels last years on different parts of the world, it scared me to see the opinions that the locals have about the US. I wouldn't like to be an American nowadays! And thinking a few years ago this used to be 'the promised land'.
Even up here, in Europe, I can't remember the last time I read someting positiv on your country in the media. Politicians up here openly admit they are looking forward to the day this administration is past time. And we have the almost daily articles on his stupidity and his ignorance for the common people.
Of course, I can already imagine some older Americans up there yelling to me that 'we owe the US for WOII' and they are completely right! I have no problem at all to admit your country has made a lot of sacrifices for our freedom. It's because of this gratitude I want to do this effort to react on your article instead of ignoring it.
Up here we also had a few decades ago a regime that was controlling the media to turn the truth and tell plenty of lies… They also won the elections thanks to the fear that was among the people. It's true, Bush isn't responsible for millions of deads, but he's at least responsibale for some thousands.
I guess many of us miss the Clinton administration! He was not perfect, nobody is, but there were al least some important differences between him and the current president. Firstly (probably the most important to be one of the most powerfull man of the world) he had a consience. He also was very intelligent..
It's true, he also would have to deal with terrorism right now, but I'm certain it would have been in a more effecient and clever way. After all, how many terrorists have been killed since september 2001 and how many innocent civilians? Is this world any safer now? I would rather think the opposite.
Believe me, the majority of Arabic people HATE Americans and have a (completely wrong) negative perception on the US. They have no idea that the majority of Americans have the same living conditions like they have and are as much victim of him like them. He's a macho who would perhaps make a good living if he would be born into a average family, but he's most surely too stupid to be one of the most powerfull people in the world! Intelligence obviously can't be bought, you have it or you don't!
Comment by Misty | July 17, 2006