|
Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" -- "I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!" |
|
|
Monday, February 16, 2004I've finally figured out how to fix my broken archives, which is good, since that's been a problem with this blog for a long time. The bad news is that reading some of the stuff from my archives fills me with intense self-loathing.Going back to politics for a second, I've been reading a lot of Talking Points Memo and Calpundit lately, one result of which is that I read a Peggy Noonan column for the first time the other day. She's a former Reagan speechwriter who writes an Op-Ed column for the Washington Post, for those don't know, and the reason I've never read one of her pieces is that I've been too lazy to fill out the registration to read the Post online, so I'm unfamiliar with the Post's Op-Ed page. Peggy Noonan is a special kind of stupid. The subject of her column Sunday was how the Democrats have gotten all the positive attention recently, while the Bush White House has gotten creamed, but how, look out!, it's going to get interesting. Here are a few examples of wrong things she said. Regarding John Kerry, she referred to his opposition to the Vietnam War in '72 as his "youthful political idiocy" and his having been a "left-wing flake." Granted, with respect to the latter term, she employed it as coming from GOP critics. Nonetheless, the idea that opposition to the Vietnam War is disreputable strikes me as bizarre. Isn't it pretty much agreed upon that the Vietnam War was a huge and costly mistake, a colossal blunder that sent close to a million people to their graves? People in this country have such short memories, are so poorly educated in matters of history, that first supply-side economics has been allowed to make a comeback, and now it's possible to spin a war hero's opposition to the Vietnam campaign he served in as idiotic and flakey? On Bush, she said: "Will people buy George W. Bush as a shirker and an operator? Those who hate him will. But the rest -- that would be the majority -- have watched him for three years in dramatic circumstances, and they know who he is." Oh I know who he is. Everyone else? Recent polls have shown people in the middle are responding negatively to the recent news on WMDs and the National Guard. It's his hard-core supporters and the incurably stupid who have remained unfazed. "Everyone I've talked to," Noonan said, "including a senator who had just come from a meeting with him, says the president himself is feeling feisty and peppery, up for the battle." "Feisty and peppery"? What planet is Peggy Noonan from? Does it resemble an ultra-WASP country club from 1956? Peggy, tell me this. It's all well and good that he's feisty and peppery, but what pizzaz? Does he have any of that? What about hutzpah? Oh, no wait. That's too Jewish for your taste. Sorry. "He continues to hope," Noonan continued, regarding the president, "that the question of what happened to Saddam's WMDs, which the dictator had used before in Iran and on the Iraqi Kurds, will be fully answered in time. Were they destroyed, or sold? Are some still hidden? I was told that whenever U.S. troops find and search a new facility, Bush wonders if something will be found." Were the Johnsons out of Kibbles 'n' Bits? Or were there still some left in the cabinet next to the fridge? Every time Mrs. Johnson opened a drawer, her dog Mr. Wiggles hoped some food might be found. As for Kerry, Noonan said she talked to a strategist who claimed that, while Kerry has some good points, he's "also liberal, angry and not particularly likable." The whole problem with Kerry, for liberals like myself, is that Kerry isn't liberal enough. He rails against the war, but is that what he believes, or is that what's politically expedient? He says the lobbyists in Washington will have to take care not to let the door hit them on the way out, yet a recent Washington Post article demonstrated that he's taken more money from lobbyists than anyone else on Capitol Hill in the last 15 years. The fear for progressives is that he's just another phony Democrat who won't effect any kind of real change in office. Another thing: It's amazing that "liberal" is a dirty word, according to the Noonans in this country. Half of this country is liberal and more would be, if they a) could think straight b) were ever properly educated c) didn't literally believe that the world began 6,000 years ago when God made Adam and then made Eve out of one of his ribs and if d) liberals like me weren't such snide assholes about it. Noonan concludes by making a bold call. "Here's a prediction: This is going to be a big election with a lot of twists and turns, with drama -- it's going to decide how the war for American safety is led, or not led, or misled -- and some desperate fighting on both sides." You don't say. The election is going to be "big" and dramatic? I have to say I am looking forward to more of this kind of insightful analysis that's not insipid and fatuous now that I'm registered with the Washington Post. How can you be so reverential about George W. Bush, about an idiot? I just don't get it. Either you're lying to us or you're lying to yourself. .: posted by hornswaggler 10:01 PM| |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
| Contact |
