Those crazy blogs

Blog Watch

There are several excellent weblogs which you should visit if you have the chance. One of the most well-written is by David Neiwert, called Orcinus . He is one of the most cogent voices on the web. Lately one of the themes he has been examining is that of "Bush hatred" as compared to "Clinton hatred".

You see, folks in the media are starting to realize that their boy, Bush, is not liked by the American people, mostly because of his failed domestic and foreign policy, his pandering to the rich, etc. So they have started to write about how "liberals" have "Bush hatred" which is just as bad as "Clinton hatred" by conservatives was in the 90s. Two of the more hysterical recent examples of this were written by Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg.

Neiwert picks these pieces apart here and here.

The bottom line is that while Clinton hatred centered around a bunch of false stories designed to portray Clinton as an evil person (Haircutgate, FBI filegate, trashing the White House, murdering Vince Foster, running drugs, taking gifts, making pardons - in the last two cases it was the pretense that there was anything unusual about what the Clintons did - and one story which is true, that he had an affair), Bush hatred is based on true stories about his horrible policies, and his theft of the 2000 election. So there really isn’t much of a comparison to be made. In the first of these articles, Neiwert also describes how liberal/progressive or even just neutral media voices were marginalized in the 90s in favor of those who were anti-Clinton. Fascinating stuff.

Another excellent little site is BusyBusyBusy, which features the "shorter" concept, little one-sentence summaries of (usually conservative, though they enjoy skewering Tom Friedman) ridiculous columns and editorials. They are brilliant, and read almost like haiku. Some examples:

Shorter Fred Barnes:
A 'Big Government Conservatism'
A large and intrusive federal government is a good thing, as long as its powers are used to impose conservative social mores and it runs on borrowed money.

Shorter David Ignatius:
Time to Unite
Those who counseled against the disastrous invasion of Iraq should forgo assigning blame for the debacle in favor of rallying to the support of those who caused it.

Shorter Tom Friedman:
Winning the Real War
The real problem with Bush's phony Iraq war rationale is that its exposure has distracted the administration from following my prescription for converting Iraq into a flowering democracy.

Shorter Max Boot:
Clinton Got a Pass but Bush Is Taken to Task
Republicans always gave President Clinton the benefit of the doubt, yet Democrats have launched outrageous ad hominem attacks on Mr. Bush for his tiny - and carefully hedged - State of the Union boo-boo.

Shorter Wall Street Journal Editorial:
Lack of Intelligence
The task of America's intelligence agencies is not to provide policy makers with reliable data but to fabricate evidence in support of administration policies which the public would reject if it knew the truth.

Finally, I would point out Adam Felber’s hilarious blog Fantatical Apathy. You may have heard Felber before on the NPR show:Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. Here are some excerpts:

On Fox News and Al Franken:

But what really fascinates me here is that Fox's actions and their consequences bear a striking resemblance to the travails of another book: "The Satanic Verses." Fox has essentially issued a fatwa on Franken. Or perhaps "foxwa" would be more appropriate. True believers are asked to repudiate Franken without reading his book (and if you read the complaint, that seems to be exactly what Fox itself has done).

On drilling for oil in ANWR:

ANWR is a uniquely weird case - I can only think that there must have been a particularly mean gang of caribou that used to pick on young George W. Bush regularly back at Andover, giving him wedgies and stuffing him into lockers. When Bush finally signs the bill to commence drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, long-remembered tears of helpless rage in his eyes, he will finally have his revenge on those ungulate hoodlums that made his life a living hell. [I defy anyone to come up with anything even remotely as plausible as the Bullying Caribou Theory as to why Bush would be so dead-set on drilling those tiny oil fields.]

On Gay Marriage:

But not this. Because when our gay friends start getting married, it will cheapen and destroy what we have. Not in a religious way (No. Legislating on those grounds would be illegal, for heaven's sake!). It's more of a general thing. Like, generally, gays getting married will undercut everything Jeanne and I have tried to build because... because... it will make our union less special. It will. We'll lose interest. We'll probably just start thinking, "What's so important about our vows? After all, even gay people can make them." Straight people are good with marriage, too. Jeanne and I can look around at other married couples - at least the ones that aren't currently dealing with serial infidelity, divorce, spousal abuse, or bigamy - and think to ourselves, "Yes, that's what we're striving for. That kind of sanctity." I'm not sure that gays would show the same universal respect for the institution that comes so easily to us straight people.