September 05, 2004
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:'The Me Maneuver'
Eddie Izzard likes to imitate Doctor Heimlich choking:
What do you think, Doctor Heimlich?" "Huh? I don't *cough* - I don't *cough* - I don't know, *cough* I have sw - swallowed a football and I can't *cough* get it - out. Can you per - grab me - perform my maneuver on me, the me maneuver."
Maureen Dowd claims Bush performed her maneuver on Anne O'Hare McCormick in his remark about NYTimes editorials:
Painting himself as the noble agent for "the transformational power of liberty" abroad, he said "there have always been doubters" when America uses its "strength" to "advance freedom": "In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to Allied forces, a journalist in The New York Times wrote this: 'Germany is a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. European capitals are frightened. In every military headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed.' End quote. Maybe that same person's still around, writing editorials."She isn't. Anne O'Hare McCormick, who died in 1954, was The Times's pioneering foreign affairs correspondent who covered the real Axis of Evil, interviewing Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Patton [sic - see comments]. She was hardly a left-wing radical or defeatist. In 1937, she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, and she was the first woman to be a member of The Times's editorial board.
The president distorted the columnist's dispatch. (download a PDF of the original column)The "moral crisis" and failure she described were in the British and French sectors. She reported that the Americans were doing better because of their policy to "encourage initiative and develop self-government." She wanted the U.S. to commit more troops and stay the course - not cut and run.
Mr. Bush Swift-boated her.
Nice try, but the verb remains "DowdifiedTM".
But he did (ohmygod, I agree!). If you read the original article, you will find Ms. McCormick hardly took a defeatist tone, except possibly in the last paragraph.
It demonstrates that post war success in rebuilding, even when the enemy is completely defeated as in WWII, is hard-won with many problems along the way. Bush should have stuck with that point (or used the Dos Passos article instead, but then he wouldn't have been able to take a swipe at the Times). Comparing Ms. McCormick to today's uniformly anti-Bush and pessimistic NYT editorialists seems unfair. As Dowd says, "She wanted the U.S. to commit more troops and stay the course - not cut and run."
This passage:
The Manichaean Candidate's convention was a brazen bizarro masterpiece. The case to sack John Kerry featured the same shady tactics used to build the case to whack Saddam - cherry-picked facts, selective claims and warped contexts.
reminds me of some brilliant satire I found the other day (courtesy of Stuart Buck):
This is why one of the first most important things to do is to seperate people into good and bad based on whether they think the Iraq war was wrong. This is the ONLY way to fight the wrong results of Bush's Manacheinism.
Maureen Dowd complaining about "cherry-picked facts, selective claims and warped contexts" is pretty rich.
"Anne O'Hare McCormick, who died in 1954, was The Times's pioneering foreign affairs correspondent who covered the real Axis of Evil, interviewing Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Patton."
WTF?
No. Really. WTF?
Posted by: lex on September 5, 2004 03:21 PMKerry seems kind of thin-skinned for a guy who wants to be president. Bush is constantly pounded in the media, and it seems to roll off him. Kerry takes a few shots from the GOP and starts whining. What's Kerry going to do if he's president and something goes sour? Will he complain about the media being unfair, and say it's unacceptable to question his actions? If Kerry actually winds up in the White House, he'll be in for a rude surprise.
Posted by: shamus on September 5, 2004 04:58 PMLex - good point. Bad proofreading to be sure, but 'WTF' indeed!
Posted by: "Mindles H. Dreck" on September 5, 2004 04:59 PMI don't think the RNC or Bush are looking at this election as a test of skills in close textual reading. The quote doesn't have to be interpreted to mean that The Times was guilty of treason post WWII. It could be interpreted to mean: "Look, journalists are always alarmists in this fashion. Take it with a grain of salt."
The real story is just how thoroughly the left is working to elect Prez Bush. Those demonstrations in NY probably produced tens of thousands of votes for Bush. I couldn't detect a real messtage from those demonstrations, except the belief that no other side than that favored by the protestors has the right to political representation. The disrespect and childish antics get hung on Kerry and the Dems, as they should be.
The doofus Dowd types are also working hard to elect Prez Bush. The hatred and the name calling ("stupid") really alienates people.
I can remember another Republican president who was similarly reviled in New York City... Abraham Lincoln. Or, Ronald Reagan. Both, like me, Illinoians.
Posted by: Stephen on September 5, 2004 05:41 PMIt has been said, "it takes one to know one". I guess Ms. Dowd proves there is more than a nugget of truth in that saying.
Posted by: vnjagvet on September 5, 2004 06:15 PMWhat's a Manichaean Candidate?
I guess you could say Kerry is something of a dualist, though not necessarily in the way Mani meant.
Posted by: Winston Smith on September 5, 2004 07:36 PMI think we should reserve Swiftboating to lying by war criminals.
http://www.bakersfield.com/columnist/local/price/story/4918722p-4975095c.html
Posted by: GT on September 5, 2004 07:51 PMSo Americans are going to find a reporters story more distasteful than the Swiftys web of self contradicted lies, and a list of accusations that continues to grow more than 6 months after they first told their story, 35 years late? Or Zells 20 minutes of enraged toy poodle barking?
Posted by: Begbee on September 6, 2004 02:36 PMBill Clinton just told Kerry to stop talking about Vietnam. That's good advice. In my mind Clinton was more of a hero for refusing to go to Vietnam than Kerry was to go there and butcher poor villagers. What business did the US have being in Vietnam in the first place?
Posted by: shamus on September 6, 2004 06:31 PMAs Dowd says, "She wanted the U.S. to commit more troops and stay the course - not cut and run."
And which candidate does that remind you of?
Hints:
"Tonight I want to speak to all of them, and to their families: You are involved in a struggle of historic proportion. Because of your service and sacrifice, we are defeating the terrorists where they live and plan, and you're making America safer. Because of you, women in Afghanistan are no longer shot in a sports stadium. Because of you, the people of Iraq no longer fear being executed and left in mass graves. Because of you, the world is more just and will be more peaceful. We owe you our thanks, and we owe you something more. We will give you all the resources, all the tools, and all the support you need for victory."
"We want those troops home, and my goal would be to try to get them home in my first term"
Posted by: Marc on September 7, 2004 10:08 AMIt's one thing for a columnist to cherry-pick information - that's pretty much their job - but another thing for a President to do the same thing. The trouble with Bush is that as soon as he said that quote you knew - you KNEW - that he was leaving out the larger context of the article, which he probably didn't read. You could easily spin the McCormick article to promote our actions in Iraq (i.e. giving the occupied people greater responsibility, greater freedom of expression in the American occupied zone than in the UK, France, and Russia zones.)
Germany's not the best example for successful nation building anyway. East Germany, Berlin Wall, any of this ring a bell?
As to the protests in New York (I attended the march that Sunday) it should be noted the vast majority of the protesters (99% I'd say, although there's always very loud exceptions) -
- were peaceful and respectful to the police
- were against the war in Iraq, but not the occupation of Afghanistan
- we're not anti-troops (no "baby killer" signs)
- and no reports of flag-burning.
Bush missed a golden opporutnity here. He should have mentioned the protests and stated that although he disagreed with them (especially the "I Hate Bush" parts of it) he respected their willingness to speak out, noting that Americans not only have the freedom to speak out on matters they consider important, but an obligation to.
Posted by: Waldo on September 7, 2004 01:39 PMComments are Closed.