Thursday, August 04, 2005
Newt, Phone Home
Why did Rafael Palmeiro take steroids? The answer is obvious. It's Bill Clinton's fault. Emmett Tyrell explains that the 1990s were beset by the cultural evil known as "compartmentalization," an example of which is Bill Clinton's happy embrace of his job as president, all the while running up a record of public and private corruption that would make Caligula blush. From this assertion, he leaps to Palmeiro's steroid use as another example of one of the many things we thought were true (Clinton good president, Palmeiro good power hitter) have, in the bright light of the new conservative millennium, have in fact been revealed as untrue.
My guess is the primary reason Tyrell makes this leap is the Clintonesque tone and demeanor of Palmeiro's denial of steroid use in front of Congress last spring. It's not as if there's much else linking the two men. Palmeiro, after all, is a Republican who contributed to the 2004 Bush campaign.
(Over at Alternet, Dave Zirin reminds us that when Palmeiro and Jose Canseco joined the Texas Rangers in the early 1990s, one of the team's owners was George W. Bush. Canseco has claimed many of his Texas teammates were steroid users, and that Bush knew about it. You could call it another potential skeleton in Bush's closet, if the closet wasn't already too crowded to hold one more.)
Quotes of the Day: Kevin Drum at Political Animal: "It's hard to believe, but the leadership of the modern Republican party is now so insane that liberal Democrats can legitimately look back and say that Newt wasn't really all that bad. Yes, you heard that right. Newt. Wasn't. Really. All. That. Bad. I think I'll spend the rest of the day hiding under my bed."
Another good one, from over at AMERICABlog: "We've never known what the GOP would do if they controlled all three branches of government, and now we do: record deficits, wars without end, rampant corruption, isolation from the world community, invasion of privacy and a looming theocracy. Happy?"
Why did Rafael Palmeiro take steroids? The answer is obvious. It's Bill Clinton's fault. Emmett Tyrell explains that the 1990s were beset by the cultural evil known as "compartmentalization," an example of which is Bill Clinton's happy embrace of his job as president, all the while running up a record of public and private corruption that would make Caligula blush. From this assertion, he leaps to Palmeiro's steroid use as another example of one of the many things we thought were true (Clinton good president, Palmeiro good power hitter) have, in the bright light of the new conservative millennium, have in fact been revealed as untrue.
My guess is the primary reason Tyrell makes this leap is the Clintonesque tone and demeanor of Palmeiro's denial of steroid use in front of Congress last spring. It's not as if there's much else linking the two men. Palmeiro, after all, is a Republican who contributed to the 2004 Bush campaign.
(Over at Alternet, Dave Zirin reminds us that when Palmeiro and Jose Canseco joined the Texas Rangers in the early 1990s, one of the team's owners was George W. Bush. Canseco has claimed many of his Texas teammates were steroid users, and that Bush knew about it. You could call it another potential skeleton in Bush's closet, if the closet wasn't already too crowded to hold one more.)
Quotes of the Day: Kevin Drum at Political Animal: "It's hard to believe, but the leadership of the modern Republican party is now so insane that liberal Democrats can legitimately look back and say that Newt wasn't really all that bad. Yes, you heard that right. Newt. Wasn't. Really. All. That. Bad. I think I'll spend the rest of the day hiding under my bed."
Another good one, from over at AMERICABlog: "We've never known what the GOP would do if they controlled all three branches of government, and now we do: record deficits, wars without end, rampant corruption, isolation from the world community, invasion of privacy and a looming theocracy. Happy?"
