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Saturday, October 02, 2004

The Dumbest Blogger OTHER Than Instafool

2:07 PM

Seriously, folks, I know I throw hyperbole around like socks and underwear when I can't find the old baseball sweatshirt I'm looking for. But James Taranto, who somehow got hired to write a blog for OpinionJournal of the online Wallstreet Journal, is so outrageously stupid and mean don't you wonder why a civilized society allows such a mutant to roam unfettered amongst real human beings?

So, don't read him, would be a retort I deserve; however, that's a whole lot like asking me not to look at a car wreck that's within view. His Best of the Web abomination comes into my e-mail box everyday along with other WSJ features I suscribe to. I almost always hit the delete button angrily on my e-mail app after the lead graph; but sometimes I just have to have my fix of really ignorant nastiness to keep my fighting edge well honed so I suck it up and read on. Today was one of those times.

Consequently, I now have an example that clearly demonstrates not only his imbecilic pronouncements but also those of most of the far-right wing-nuts who are foaming spittle onto their ties in their apoplexy over Mr. Kerry's performance against their bubba-boy in yesterday's debate. Almost all of them are howling at the moon in the same fashion over the following exchange:

The 'Global Test'
A very bad moment for Kerry came when Lehrer asked him, "What is your position on the whole concept of pre-emptive war?":

Kerry: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for pre-emptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to pre-empt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons. . . .

Bush: Let me--I'm not exactly sure what you mean, "passes the global test," you take pre-emptive action if you pass a global test.

My attitude is you take pre-emptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure.

Not a single one of the drooling lunatics heard nor read that all-important "did it for legitimate reasons." Past tense, folks. In other words, when the pre-emptive shooting is over the nation will have no problem showing the world community why we went to shooting first and explaining later. If we had been able to do that with Iraq it would be a whole different situation today. Think about it.

2:07 PM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

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2 Comments:

James Taranto is the WSJ's Sean Hannity, with one dangerous difference: He is very smart. He makes his case well, carefully omitting the evidence that destroys his argument and craftily finding sentence fragments that appear at first glance to prove his point. His strategy is brilliant: Portray the enemy as a fool, mock him and sneer at him, and hammer away month after month with the same simple but effective charge. He started a wicked meme last summer, that Kerry is "the haughty French-looking Massachusetts senator who, by the way, served in Vietnam." I'd love to know just how many times he repeated this, finding little scraps to uderscore this point. These scraps were inevitably false and misleading and couldn't hold up to serious scrutiny, but that never stops Taranto. By repeating his meme, it moved from being a joke to something far more insidious. Kerry was "branded." This was a hatchet job, and that the Journal lets him get away with it, in their name, is beyond explanation and beyond forgiveness. I, too, read his venomous diatribe every day just to keep my finger on the pulse of the destroy-Kerry-at-any-cost movement. I read it with a mixture of rage and admiration, because Taranto is good. He writes beautifully, and he makes it seem so obvious that he's right. Which is exactly why he is such a menace.

On a side note, just a couple of days ago he flippantly compared Ted Kennedy to Susan Williams, the woman who drowned her two children in her car. That crossed a line from punditry into real badness, something Taranto does all too frequently, and apparently with zero remorse or conscience. Are there no limits? The guy is bad news.

By richard, at 12:46 AM

Richard,

Yes, I know he is effective and that he is diabolically clever which does translate into "smart" in a mechanical sense of the word. However, since what he is working for so zealously is so obviously wrongheaded for America--not to mention the world--I cannot grant him the sobriquet of "smart" in its most human connotation.

But, surely, I am in the minority. I understand all too well that his side of social justice and foreign policy issues consider me one of the most cretinous commentators to ever peck at a keyboard. And that's fair enough when critiquing my opinions. However, never in my journalistic career have I purposely misstated a fact to buttress a transparently subjective opinion.

By the way, I owe you an e-mail; I will get a round tuit sometime before this day is over. Ellen and I will be visiting with Jeremy tonight.

Thanks for stopping by and leaving your usual eloquence to grace these pages. Keep up the good work, my friend.

Joseph

By Joseph, at 11:26 AM