Oh now it’s a problem, pt II
Glenn Greenwald’s another writer I’ve been liking a lot recently. He has a great illustration of how the winds of opinion have changed:
He compares the words of several pundits, what they said recently against what they said years ago when Bush’s ratings were 50% and higher. There’s no real change in how Bush has handled his office since he began, but 2003 Jonah Goldberg’s lavish comparison of Bush to Reagan is in stark contrast to 2007 Jonah Goldberg’s “so you finally caught up, stupid” admonishment of Richard Cohen for noticing what “some of us on the right have been saying for a while: if you hold your head just so and look at Bush from the right angle, he looks an awful lot like a liberal.” Presumably he didn’t think to tilt and squint four years previously, when the beautific light of His presidential Presence made such observation difficult.
I also have no idea who Jonah Goldberg is. But Greenwald also has snippets of Rush Limbaugh doing the same thing, so that’s fun.
June 4th, 2007 13:17
I don’t know who Jonah Goldberg is, either, other than a frequent target of lefty snark-blogs like Alicublog, Sadly, No! and Instaputz (all of which I highly recommend).
June 4th, 2007 13:55
That’s 3 blogs, with “Sadly, No!” in the middle. Damn commas.
June 4th, 2007 15:26
I don’t quite get how Bush looks like a liberal?
June 5th, 2007 02:11
Farm bill, steel tarrifs, expansion of government (dept of homeland security, “war czars”), supporting subsidies for production of ethanol from corn to name a few.
June 5th, 2007 03:37
Oh, you mean the semi-decent things he has actually, on rare occasion, done. Maybe not Homeland Security, but yanno. Ethanol production is at least trying (though they could just buy it from Brazil now, help develop the third world and begin the process of conversion [i]while[/i] searching for cheaper methods of corn production.
But that would be blatantly liberal.
June 5th, 2007 04:20
I don’t quite get how Bush looks like a liberal?
Even the most rabid Republican has to face the fact that Bush is an utter failure. Since Republicans are perfect, Bush cannot be a Republican; since he is inept, he must in fact be a Liberal. Finally, since Republicans cannot be wrong, about anything, ever, Bush must have lied to them and have been a Liberal all along. It makes perfect sense if you were shaken violently as an infant and dropped often.
June 5th, 2007 15:17
Man, you can totally see where this is going, too. The Republican propaganda machine convinces its followers that Bush is a liberal, classifies him for all time with Carter and Clinton, and emerges unscathed.
June 6th, 2007 11:26
Blitzkrieg, I am sorry but I do not understand your comment. What is the production of corn based ethanol attempting to do that is positive? The point of Brazilian sugar cane based ethanol is the point I was trying to make above. Why double spend money to promote a product that is more polluting and less efficient?
And I generally don’t define things as “good” or “bad” based upon “liberal” or “conservative.” Things ought to be judged as “dumb” or “slightly less dumb, but still dumb.” Corn ethanol = dumb.
June 8th, 2007 04:17
Nice find, Spinn. By the way, the article you’re referring to is at this URL now: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/04/fraud/index.html