Thursday, March 02, 2006
Big, Bad, and Bald
So I am sitting here this morning--as millions are, around the country, with their web browsers or their newspapers open, reading the AP story about the briefing He Who Shall Not Be Named received before Hurricane Katrina. Like our web browsers and our newspapers, our mouths are open too, in shock. For all we've seen from this president in five years, for all he's done and left undone, it's still hard to comprehend that he could blow the hurricane response so badly, and then lie so baldly about it.
Lots of bloggers are on this story this morning. AMERICABlog has plenty, the Left Coaster mentions it, as does the Rude Pundit. But there's a feeling, from reading the sites I read, that HWSNBN is going to get away with this just like he gets away with everything else. The Left Coaster's post is especially pessimistic in this regard. It's media lapdog-ism that will get him off the hook, but that's not all that will be responsible.
Lewis Lapham's cover story in the latest Harper's, called "The Case for Impeachment," is headed with a quote that seems appropriate to this, as to much else: "A country is not only what it does--it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates." (They're the words of Kurt Tucholsky, a German journalist of the 1920s and 30s, who feared the coming of fascism to his country--and who was proven right.) And so, to a certain extent, HWSNBN's failure is ours, as long as we permit him to go a'blundering on.
So I am sitting here this morning--as millions are, around the country, with their web browsers or their newspapers open, reading the AP story about the briefing He Who Shall Not Be Named received before Hurricane Katrina. Like our web browsers and our newspapers, our mouths are open too, in shock. For all we've seen from this president in five years, for all he's done and left undone, it's still hard to comprehend that he could blow the hurricane response so badly, and then lie so baldly about it.
Lots of bloggers are on this story this morning. AMERICABlog has plenty, the Left Coaster mentions it, as does the Rude Pundit. But there's a feeling, from reading the sites I read, that HWSNBN is going to get away with this just like he gets away with everything else. The Left Coaster's post is especially pessimistic in this regard. It's media lapdog-ism that will get him off the hook, but that's not all that will be responsible.
Lewis Lapham's cover story in the latest Harper's, called "The Case for Impeachment," is headed with a quote that seems appropriate to this, as to much else: "A country is not only what it does--it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates." (They're the words of Kurt Tucholsky, a German journalist of the 1920s and 30s, who feared the coming of fascism to his country--and who was proven right.) And so, to a certain extent, HWSNBN's failure is ours, as long as we permit him to go a'blundering on.
