Ex-President Bush bemoans incivility, dishonesty among Obama's critics
When ex-President George H.W. Bush declares, as he did recently, that President Obama "is entitled to civil treatment and intellectual honesty when it comes to critics," I appreciate the sentiment. After all, civility and intellectual honestly are virtually non-existent on the Limbaugh-Beck-Hannity-Coulter-Malkin-O'Reilly right, and, while there are a few notable exceptions, in short supply among conservatives generally. What's more, things do seem to have gotten worse since his presidency, what with the rise of 24/7 cable news and the increase of vitriol in the public sphere. (And, yes, I acknowledge that there is incivility and dishonesty across the political spectrum, not just on the right, where it seems to be most intense, and at its worst.)
But does the ex-president not remember his ugly, Lee Atwater-driven '88 campaign against "Massachusetts liberal" Michael Dukakis? (You know, Willie Horton; the superficial culture war wedge-issues (flag burning, the pledge of allegiance); the nasty (and false) rumours spread not just about Dukakis but about his wife; the hypocritical anti-Ivy League, anti-elitist comments from Bush (himself an Ivy League-educated north-eastern elitist); the various attacks on Massachusetts, on the Northeast, on liberalism, on the ACLU, and so on?) No, perhaps Bush has white-washed his own political past and willfully forgotten his own incivility and dishonesty, both of which were on grotesque display back in 1988.
So while it's a fine and perhaps even noble sentiment, not least because it comes in defence of a Democratic president from a Republican ex-president whose own presidential son did so much to make matters worse, a little historical context reveals it to be rather less admirable, if still sincere, than it might otherwise have been.
Labels: Barack Obama, conservatives, George H.W. Bush, media criticism
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
4:31 PM
1 Comments:
Ivy League universities are not good at getting students jobs, only grants to be commie nutty organizers. If you are liberal, anything you do is inherently ethical for the cause, but if you are a conservative, and believe in GOD, family or business, your very moral fiber, even down to trivial autonomic responses, is subject to persecution as either dangerously criminal or the result of clinical illness. The lowest level university bureaucrats actually suffer the worst affectations and are likey to be the most vicious persecutors of your children. No business ever trusts such left wing graduates who don't believe in capitalism and become crooks because they are taught the only way business makes money is crooked so they seek to avenge their unemployability through their own crookedness. The universities consider real jobs and competition beneath them, so they want their little sissies to live off grants, even in the hard sciences or business. How many of their engineering professors have Professional Engineering certification? Almost none! They love foreign students because they slave up and don't expect professors to actually work for the tuition, like American students do. No middle class parent should consider sending their kids there, because these schools will destroy your entire family. The only schools that understand middle-class values are for-profits. Middle class parents foolish enough to buy into the Ivy League dream die way too young.
By
Jack Reylan, at 11:39 AM
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