There's another thing I'm sick of: pretending that a legislative vote against an omnibus bill constitutes a vote against every single item in that bill.
In reading the reactions to Zell Miller's address, I noted this bit of perfectly calm, understated rhetoric:
Today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of a Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.
Wow. And here's me, sitting at home watching episodes of Jeopardy! and listening to Rachmaninov and re-reading The Lord of the Rings and going to work and, oh yeah, keeping tabs on my newborn son and all the while I'm apparently blissfully unaware that the nation is being "torn apart". Who'da thunk it, I guess. I always figured that I'd know what it looked like when the nation was torn apart; my assumption from my reading of history is that the ripping-asunder-of-a-nation would look something like this wee event.
And besides, as Fred Kaplan notes in the article I link above, in the United States we are treated to a quadrennial attempt to "bring down our commander in chief". You know, those pesky elections and stuff. But "manic"? Really? I dunno…it seems to me that this attempt to bring down a commander in chief was pretty "manic". I have a hard time thinking that the Kerry campaign quite rises to that level.
(Oh, and here's a pretty funny bit of graphic commentary, courtesy Atrios. Interesting that the analogy I'm seeing the most about Zell Miller today on the rounds of Blogistan involves the name "Palpatine".)
(And no, I'm not morphing into a political blog. Worry not, readers of a more rightward lean! I'll knock this stuff off pretty soon. Really.)
No comments:
Post a Comment