“Today’s conservative activists have become the new postmodernists. They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations — and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward.” By way of Crooked Timber, E.J. Dionne calls out the po-mo bent of today’s GOP.
Tag: E.J. Dionne
Causing Deprivation.
I was at the movies during Dubya’s State of the Union address — I tried to watch it online this evening after my Radicalism sections, but Quicktime died in mid-sentence, so I just ended up reading it. And, while I thought it was very well-written as per the norm, my thoughts on the address have been colored even more than usual by the punditocracy. So, with that in mind, I’ll avoid being derivative and just direct y’all to the following:
- Fred Kaplan: “Some of the president’s statements on national security were simply puzzling. Again on Iran, he said, ‘We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium-enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing.’ This is just false.“
- Chris Suellentrop: “You could call Bush’s idea the Screw Your Grandchildren Act…This was the Greatest Love of All speech, in which Bush asserted that The Children Are Our Future. But before you sign on to Bush’s proposal, be aware that what he’s offering is pretty tough love.“
- Will Saletan: “Tonight’s State of the Union Address demonstrated again that President Bush is a man of very clear principles. He’s just flexible about when to apply them.“
- Joe Conason: “Although George W. Bush and the White House aides who craft these public spectacles become increasingly adept at manipulating the feelings of his audience every year, their underlying method remains the same: to shade inconvenient realities with rhetorical vagueness and outright deception.“
- E.J. Dionne: “Our country could profit from an honest debate about the future of Social Security. Judging from President Bush’s State of the Union address, that is not the kind of debate we are about to have.“
Worst-Case Scenario.
In the new Washington Monthly, David Greenberg, E.J. Dionne, Paul Begala, and several others ponder the troubling question, “What if Bush wins?” The short answer? Head for the hills.