By Owen Paine on Monday January 1, 2007 11:14 PM
The late Mr. Ford's embargo'ed critique of the Iraq war -- the
non-story du jour -- gets an inevitable kick from Todd Gitlin,
who comments on absolutely everything:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/dec/31/a_time_to_cast_away_reticence
The gist: Ford's self-gag was a ghastly national betrayal. That's certainly easy enough said, coming from a sanctimonious word beaver like the Git, who couldn't gag himself for ten seconds, even if his silence might save the planet.
Ford, the last American president to have exited an abominable war, might have known something about the merits of another one....But instead of barking out like a righteous Gitlin type, Ford mummed it in public, and recollect here, folks, the future of the country and its collective inner soul was at stake.
Had Ford [back in '04] not slapped an embargo on his words and permitted independent voters to hear them then, they might well have swung the election.Yup, Ford could have elected John Kerry on the strength of his... what? Prestige? Experience? No, wrong again, Watson, what would have carried the day, according to the Git, was Ford's "conservative bona fides."
Hell, no one had less Kickapoo Joy Juice in him than the live Jerry Ford in 2004. Only death -- the distinguished thing -- could restore any dignity to that dough-faced friend of Babbits everywhere. Rove would have turned his anti-war gabble into chipmunk soup. Try to imagine this scene:
...and therefore I, Gerald Ford, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, am forced by conscience and love of country to support John Forbes Kerry to be our next peace president of America....Short of putting a .38 round into Dick Cheney from the next hole at Pebble Beach, what's that poor old stumblebum's critique worth? Less than little Ronnie on stem cells.
Comments (6)
Gitlin's a Ko$ cultist with a vocabulary. As a bona-fide member of the donkey pundit wannabe brigade he's obliged to find ways to obscure his DP master's screwups, hence the nauseatingly purile 'what if' exercise to explain way his party's '04 defeat.
Posted by AlanSmithee | January 2, 2007 6:24 AM
Posted on January 2, 2007 06:24
and to think
alan
now they plan to just foiercely fight to....
halt and reverse
"the surge"
rescue america from it
like its a natural disaster
Posted by js paine | January 2, 2007 8:29 AM
Posted on January 2, 2007 08:29
I don't get Gitlin's staying power. As the bellwether for ex-rebs born again into Clintonian banality, hasn't he worn out his welcome? On material grounds alone, where has centrism got former lefties? One stock bubble and now a housing bubble (evaporating figments of a real estate-based retirement) later, the debt-eroded American Dream has to be looking at least as dubious to them as once it did long ago. Surely if nothing else they have to be getting tired of former Jedis telling them how fucking cool Stormtrooper kit is?
Posted by Reechard | January 3, 2007 2:36 AM
Posted on January 3, 2007 02:36
The ex-rebs have to stick with the "sadder and wiser" narrative, the gloopy recounting of the events that changed them into tax collectors on the road to Damascus. It's not just the sunk costs of all that vapid cheerleading that demand it. When the market share for dimbulb centrism evaporates, they're positioned for another move to the right.
Posted by Scruggs | January 3, 2007 2:47 AM
Posted on January 3, 2007 02:47
reechard
the brain of the gitshmoe
suffers from that virtual bubble
the "my meme bubble"
the internal value amp up
of the products
of one's very own mentalese factory
so high it needs a broadcast release
my words and the earth's ears must kiss constantly
translation
my mind's asshole shits
other mens' bounty
j alva :
"the events that changed them into tax collectors on the road to Damascus "
ambition corrupts
but
peer review corrupts absolutely
"by gosh i just wanted to be loved...
by the best and brightest "
Posted by js paine | January 3, 2007 5:08 AM
Posted on January 3, 2007 05:08
Wow, xPresident Found On Road Dead said all that?
I'm surprised anybody could tell what the hell he was saying, judging from those crappy-assed audio recordings I heard on NBC Toady a day or three ago. You'd think by now that Woodward would be rich enough to afford a halfway-decent minidisc recorder.
To me at least, all xPresident Helmetless Football's hemming and hawwing re:Iraq basically boiled down to "I don't think the WMD search, spreading Democracy, or a perceived security threat were good enough excuses to invade and bomb the living piss out of a country that's broke as shit and virtually defenseless. I'd have found a better, more solid excuse -- and then invaded and bombed the living piss out of them."
And, this is a point for Our Side because...?
(Hell, I've heard President Flivver make more forceful, bold and assertive statements in his congratulatory phone call to the joint Apollo-Soyuz Mission crews.)
Posted by Mike Flugennock | January 3, 2007 9:32 AM
Posted on January 3, 2007 09:32