The opinion page from hell

Yes, that's what the Palm Beach Post has offered us today. A big, heaping helping of bullshit, starring the Usual Suspects.

First, we have to deal with the incomparable Bobo. David Brooks' column today (originally published in the New York Times yesterday) is, typically, full of strawmen and tortured logic. I'd link to it here, but (1) I don't want to give him the traffic, meager though it may be, and (2) I can't find the column anywhere that doesn't require a paid registration (e.g., the Times' own "TimesSelect" feature -- if you happen to be a member and a masochist, Bobo's column is here). But let me just summarize, if I can: Republicans already are running against Hillary Clinton, John McCain is talking straight, and Mitt Romney has broad shoulders. Or something like that. Anyway, here's an excerpt:

But there are flashes. There are times when [Republican candidates] break out of the conventional trench warfare and touch the anger and longing that define this historical moment.

One occurred at a McCain event on Wednesday. In Washington, the McCain campaign is considered dead, but somebody seems to have forgotten to tell the people up here [in New Hampshire]. A man at one packed event rose to vent his outrage at Washington. He ignited something in John McCain, who started talking about what he'd learned from the failure of immigration reform. Sen. McCain worked himself up, recounting one failure and disgrace after another, culminating finally with an angry bellow: "Nobody trusts us to do what we say we're going to do!"

It wasn't a Howard Beale Network moment, but it touched something. The crowd was with him all the way.

The other flash I saw was at a Romney event at the Lincoln Financial Group in Concord. Mr. Romney had slipped away from the policy chunks of his stump speech and was talking about his success in business and in running the Olympics. He was talking about how you assemble a team of people with complementary skills. How you use data and analysis to replace opinion. How you set benchmarks and how often you should perform self-evaluation.

It wasn't impassioned or angry (he doesn't do anger). But it was Mr. Romney losing himself in something he cares about, and it opened up a vista of how government might operate.

The McCain and Romney flashes weren't about policy. They weren't part of the normal Republican vs. Democratic dynamic. They were about leadership, honor, intelligence. If Republicans are going to have a chance, it'll be because, by focusing on the state of American politics, they reshape the battleground under everyone's feet.

Jesus, Bobo, how long did you work to come up with that closing sentence? The only thing Republicans are reshaping is the level of stupidity in politics, by increasing it.

And don't you love the fawning over McCain and Romney? First, Saint John, who's tanking even in, yes, New Hampshire ("somebody seems to have forgotten to tell them," my ass), gets fired up about -- of all things -- immigration reform, a topic that even his own party can't agree on (witness the GOP criticism of Drunky McStagger's proposals). Then Mitt "[lost] himself in something he cares about," namely, himself! Bobo just finished telling us how Mitt was talking about his business success and the Olympics ...

You know, this stuff just isn't that hard to parse.

But the Post didn't stop there. No, they also gave us Kathleen Parker, who keeps descending further and further into the batshit crazy wingnut abyss. She chose to go after the "Baghdad Diarist," an American soldier who is reporting atrocities by other American soldiers in Iraq. But, even in disputing the authenticity of the reports, she minimizes the allegations to the point of absurdity:

The New Republic editors say they're investigating the reports, but refuse to reveal the author's identity. There's always a chance, of course, that these stories have some truth to them. Maybe a guy made an unkind remark about a poor woman's burned face. Maybe a dog got run over. Maybe a grave was found and a soldier capped his head with a skull part.

Stranger - and far worse - things have happened in war. But people who have served in Iraq have raised enough questions about these particular anecdotes that one is justified in questioning whether they are true.

Ah, I see. So it's okay if someone "cap[s] his head with a skull part," so long as it's not "playing with dead baby parts found in a mass grave" (her words), right? Parker's rationalization and condoning of such behavior is appalling. And her justification for her position?

Mike Nifong, the North Carolina prosecutor in the alleged Duke lacrosse team rape case, was able to convince a credulous community of residents, academics and especially journalists that the three falsely accused men had raped a black stripper despite compelling evidence to the contrary.

Why? Because the lies supported their own truths. In the case of Duke, that "truth" was that privileged white athletes are racist pigs who of course would rape a black woman given half a chance and a bottle o' beer.

In the case of Scott Thomas, the "truth" that American soldiers are woman-hating, dog-killing, grave-robbing monsters confirms what many among the anti-war left believe about the military, despite their protestations that they "support the troops."

We tend to believe what we want to believe, in other words.

I don't remember any of the "anti-war left" alleging that American soldiers are such monsters. It's just another strawman, the specialty of the warmongering press (as opposed to, you know, the "anti-war left"). Then, she calls some two-thirds of the nation, who oppose the war in Iraq, liars, since if they say they "support the troops," they really don't. Goddamn, I'm sick of the meme that opposition to the war and support of the troops are mutually exclusive. It is possible to support the troops and oppose the war, in the same way that Christians say they "love the sinner and hate the sin." It's the same thing ... go ahead, argue with me otherwise. You'll lose.

Finally, the Post offers up one of their own, Stebbins Jefferson, under the headline, "In this war, give Bush credit." Only she doesn't mean Iraq ... she means Darfur.

Before you conclude that this discussion is a partisan indictment of callous disregard on the part of the Bush administration, please note that this information from the "Save Darfur Coalition" in Washington reported earlier this year that President Bush demanded prompt action be taken by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashar to end the slaughter, admit United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur, and stop blocking humanitarian aid. Mr. Bush warned that if those steps were not taken, the United States would impose unilateral economic sanctions targeting 31 companies owned, controlled or affiliated with the government. Sudanese officials ignored these demands. On May 29, President Bush implemented the unilateral sanctions.

So far, imposition of economic sanctions by one nation has made no significant impact on stopping the genocide. Multilateral sanctions with the cooperation of Sudan's biggest economic partners, such as China, Russia and India, are needed. Nevertheless, the U.S. is doing something while the U.N. continues to juggle impressive but ineffective resolutions for an international peacekeeping force.

So, we should applaud Drunky for sticking his neck out there and imposing unilateral sanctions on Sudan, sanctions that demonstrably have had no effect and with which there has been no international cooperation. Not to minimize the genocide in Darfur, but why does Drunky seem to care about those lives and not the lives of the American soldiers he's sending to Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died for his vendetta? The answer is, clearly, that it's easy to impose sanctions and say you're doing something about Darfur, when you know that there'd be no controversy about it and you also know you're not going to have to back up your sanctions with anything stronger.

I generally appreciate the things the Post has to say in its own editorials. But the fact that they still provide a forum for people like Bobo and Parker, who have been so stunningly, historically wrong over and over and over again, definitely gives me cause to wonder about whether they deserve my subscription money.