Hitchens on Bush's first year.

Post #26,845 by Another Scott 2/1/02 10:43:10 AM Reply	Hitchens on Bush's first year. It's a good read - an example of a thoughtful and thought-provoking rant from Christopher. From The Observer in the UK (via Drudge). [link\|http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,636241,00.html\|Here]. [...] Last week, I was addressing a reasonably large audience in northern California. The region itself is a fairly 'liberal' one and the neighbourhood where I was speaking was actually the home county of John Walker, the sad but famous mujahideen of Marin. None the less, I found that I had a fair degree of support for my pro-war opinions. And then someone got up and read me all the words I had used to describe President Bush only about 12 months ago: 'Uncultured... uneducated... incurious... a glove puppet and proud of it... etc.' Did I, the questioner wanted to know, still believe any of that? My answer, which was a bit improvised, was this: Mr Bush is still one of the most unqualified people ever to have run for the highest office, let alone to have attained it. There will never come a time when he reads for pleasure or takes a serious interest in another country. But the oldest political joke in America has a double-edged point to it. In this society, anybody can be President. And this particular anybody has happened to match an hour in which it is precisely the ordinary people of the country who have behaved with distinction. There was, I concluded, some reason for ironic pride in this rather mediocre revelation. There are times when it reassuring to be uninspired. [...] Cheers, Scott.
Post #26,866 by marlowe 2/1/02 11:59:42 AM Reply	The great thing about a person of average intelligence... is that he's smarter than half the people out there. Yes, I know that's a mean thing to say. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
Post #26,876 by mmoffitt 2/1/02 1:14:38 PM Reply	I wonder what happened to Hitchens. He really went off the deep end with Clinton. I used to like what he wrote. Now, its drivel. "But the oldest political joke in America has a double-edged point to it. In this society, anybody can be President." My ass. Even the most underdeveloped of minds will immediately see this as complete and utter polly-annish nonsense. If he had written instead, "In this society, anybody lucky enough to be born into the ruling elite will have the luxury of being coated in teflon when it comes to unethical, perhaps criminal backgrounds and will have access to a virtually endless supply of money. Such beneficiaries of the right-class birth, can use daddy and mummy's influence to: (among other things) (i) get appointed to a states side branch of the military during wartime (ii) Skip out early on the cozy, non-combat tour of duty without consequence (iii) get into the nation's finest schools despite lack-luster academic skills or even a rudamentary command of one's Mother Tongue (iv) have billionaires place them executive offices because daddy wants them to, etc. These annointed ones may also, if they want to be President, need not worry with winning elections for they can still count on their well connected high placed neo-facist buddies to appoint them to the office." That would have had a ring of truth about it.
Post #26,953 by Ashton 2/2/02 3:43:11 AM Reply	Sorry - can't compete with a guy who can toss off - Overseas, he has tried to have it both ways: finally paying his country's UN dues while scuttling the ABM Treaty. His vices are, in other words, what they would have been anyway - the vices of a provincial American conservative who preferred oilmen as friends, or even oilmen to friends. His place in the annals will depend on the way in which he can continue to exceed what were, a year ago, the lowest possible expectations. .. as casually as a lesser breed might say, Fuck You, asshole.. He needn't exaggerate here at all.. in order to show us the starkness of 'our delicate condition'. (never mind.. circumsized your Herbert..) :-\ufffd Now get him and Gore Vidal in same room - A.

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