WOLCOTT--Mischievous and useful fun in being the opposition party!

[MADem]

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/02/from_some_lemon.php

....On Meet the Press, Senator Charles Grassley was as grumpy as could be trying to defend Bush's Social Security overhaul, while Congressman Charlie Rangel batted its bogus numbers and claims around with buoyant sarcasm. I detected in Grassley the frustration of being forced to "sell" a program whose costs and contours were still completely amorphous--an expanding blob. That frustration expressed itself in a testy defensiveness that molded a frown to his face. On another program (Wolf Blitzer's?), Senator Pat Roberts, never a laughing cavalier, was a pissy sour pickle on the subject of Iran, while Jay Rockefeller sounded like a model of modulated enlightment. And on Face the Nation, Rick Santorum, an empty suit that will flaps with each movement of lips, sputtered and floundered on the SS issue, while Dick Durbin seemed to be enjoying himself a heap.

I wonder if Dems are learning the wisdom imparted by Bull Moose, that there's mischievous and useful fun to be had in being the opposition party, particularly when the party in power is as flatulent with hubris and corruption as the fiefdom of Tom DeLay. Dems should resist the temptation to be statesmenlike and bail out Bush should he stumble, the way they shamefully rescued Reagan in his second term. Bipartisanship has gotten Democrats nowhere for four years, has earned them nothing more than a fine spittle of contempt falling like a constant drizzle. They should let a smile be their umbrella as they enjoy the spectacle of House and Senate Republicans promoting Social Security privatization as if they'd been ordered by their commander in chief to suck lemons.

Gotta love this sentiment--it's a real TAKE THE GLOVES OFF and THROW DOWN kinda challenge! Get those lemon suckers!

[Cell Whitman]

1. FYI: Extended interview with James Wolcott

FYI: Quite the extended interview with James Wolcott on Ian Masters' show.

http://www.ianmasters.org/left_coast.html

January 30th, 2005

+ stream or download (dial-up)
+ stream or download (broadband)

James Wolcott on the lapdog press corp which goes through the motions of a real media, but does little to nothing to challenge the administration on matters of critical importance to the American people--things you would expect from a functional news media. Beyond their failure to challenge and investigate, many American journalists working the the corporate media act as stenographers to power and have been used as tools of the President and the GOP to deliver overt falsehoods which disinform their listeners and viewers. Judith Miller, of the New York Times, for instance, became a vehicle of the neocons to make the American people believe that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. James Wolcott is a media and culture critic with Vanity Fair magazine. His new book is Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutuants."

He had previously written for Esquire, Harper's and New York Magazine. He edits the weblog www.jameswolcott.com .

More from James Wolcott: "I left college after my sophomore year and moved from Maryland to New York City, where I pestered the Village Voice for a job and began writing short reviews for them. In time, I became their television critic, also writing about the then-emerging punk scene (I wrote some of the earliest reviews of Television, Talking Heads, the Ramones) and covering Jimmy Carter in New Hampshire. From the Voice, I branched out into reviewing for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic, and doing a monthly books column for Esquire. Upon leaving the Voice, I joined Harper's under its new editor Michael Kinsley, where I wrote a monthly column. When Kinsley left after an editorial shakeup, I eventually made my way to Vanity Fair, where I've been writing since the early Eighties, with an interlude at The New Yorker under editor Tina Brown. At Vanity Fair, I was the recipient of the National Magazine Award in the Reviews and Criticism category in 2003. I'm the author of two books, a novel called The Catsitters, and the nonfiction Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants, about the looting of news in the Bush era. I'm also a contributor to the new anthology Committed, and have done the foreword to a forthcoming book by and about fashion designer Geoffrey Beene. I live in Manhattan with my wife Laura Jacobs, a novelist, dance critic, and writer for Vanity Fair."

[Cocoa]

2. I observed the same thing

I saw all three of those programs, and he's right, the republicans were very much not happy.

Santorum especially, he got progressively more pissy, and ended up losing his cool a litte and saying something pretty foolish at the end, I forget exactly what it was.

[Donna Zen]

3. Another Sunday morning rundown: Pundit Pap

Love Wolcott; thanks for the post. Also, Pundit pap was great this week:

The fictitious Iraqi election results were announced today. The big losers were Americans -- because our hand-selected Iraqi leader, Iyad Allawi, was dis-Allawied to keep his post in the postwar conflagration that marks the current situation in this desert nation. Mr. Allawi and his party got a whopping 14% -- yes, FOURTEEN percent -- while the Shi'ites gained 48% and the Kurds 26%. Where the other 12% went we don't know -- but it was surely split up among the 2 trillion other parties that have emerged since George W. Bush launched his offensive against fellow oil man Saddam Hussein years ago.


Meet the Press "moderator" Tim Russert turned to the darling of the right, Richard Engel of NBC News, to tell us what's supposedly happening in Iraq. Engel's answer: Allawi is Outee; the Sunnis will be asked to help write the Iraqi constitution, and some of them may even become ministers to placate them for not voting. Engel also "surprised" us by telling Russert (and, more importantly, American viewers) that training of Iraqi police and national guardsmen was not going all that well.

pundit pap