When News Isn't News - Molly Ivans

[Mnemosyne]

http://progressive.org/?q=mag_ivins0805
When News Isn’t News
By Molly Ivins
From the August 2005 Issue

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When I read the first Downing Street Memo, my eyes bugged out and my jaw fell open. It was news to me, and as I have tried to indicate, I’m no slouch at keeping up. I had to write a column that day, and there was no way I could let that pass without at least pointing out what it said.

Here are the aggravating factors. Tom Friedman, columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote that “liberals” no longer want to talk about the war because we were against it to start with and probably hope it ends in disaster. Jesus God Almighty, who does he think we are? Does this man who has a column for The New York Times, one of the most prestigious jobs in American journalism, actually think we are out here cheering every time another American is killed? Mr. Friedman, real, actual, honest-to-God American liberals are out here in the heartland and we know the kids who are dying in Iraq. They are from our hometowns. We know their parents. That’s why we hate this war. That’s why we tried to tell everybody else it was a ghastly idea. We are not sitting here gloating because it is the horrible FUBAR we said it would be. We are in agony because it is as bad as we said it would be. Cassandra took no joy in the fall of Troy. I have said from the beginning that if this thing worked out the way Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney all said it would, I would be perfectly happy to get down on my knees and kiss George Bush’s feet. I do literally mean that.

The second aggravation is that the very prestigious papers that are now dismissing the Downing Street Memos have already themselves admitted that their pre-war coverage was—I don’t know, you pick the adjective: Slack? Inadequate? Less than rigorous? Wrong? And now they’re saying, “Oh hell, this isn’t news, we knew it all along”?

I don’t know if these memos represent an impeachable offense, but they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated. He used the government for petty political vindictiveness. Shit, I’d settle for that again over what we’re looking at now.

snip>

I adore Molly Ivans, always gets to the heart of the matter!
:evilgrin: :applause:

[Warren Stupidity]

1. me too but fubar isn't a noun

You shouldn't say "the horrible fubar". Instead you could say "the horrible cluster-f*ck" or "as totally fubar as we said it would be".

[Mnemosyne]

2. She's still a smart lady, bad usage or not! n/t

[SoCalDem]

3. and the term FUBAR was used correctly in her piece

The "F" need not end in 'ed'..add a hyphen and it works perfectly..

F-UBAR..

just pickin nits here :)