This poem in praise of Colin Powell – he’s brilliant, such a great guy, a traditional conservative (as opposed to knuckle-dragging right-wing loonies), widely loved, adored even, a rock star abroad, a civil rights icon, and on and on and on – must surely be self-parody. There’s nothing new in it. The Times even almost gives Richard Holbrooke a joint by-line. I know it’s July, but this piece of Powell-spin truly ranks as one of the all-time greats of vapid media puffery. Every paragraph has a cliche. Count ’em. Then there is this weird locution:
As one of the world’s most admired celebrities for more than a decade, with approval ratings that rival President Bush’s, Secretary Powell has special status – and singular political value – in a Republican administration supposedly eager to demonstrate its commitment to compassionate conservatism.
So is Todd Purdum saying that the administration doesn’t even want to appear to be eager to be seen as compassionately conservative? Or is Powell part of this fraud? But how can it be fraud if the administration isn’t actually eager to perpetrate it? Dizzying. One other thing to note: there is not a single negative thing in this piece – not one. No dissenting quote; no ritual “to-be-sure” paragraph; not a single qualification to what, even for Powell, must be an embarrassingly fellatial profile. What next: formal beatification?
NOAH PILES ON: Tim Noah – no knee-jerk conservative, to say the least – chimes in on the need to subject Robert Rubin’s record at Citigroup to further scrutiny. Score one for Jake Weisberg’s editorship.
KRUGMAN VS. KAUS: The paleo-liberal boot goes in. Krugman calls Mickey a conformist. Conformist? Mickey is one of the most independent writers I know. He couldn’t conform if he tried to. Meanwhile Krugman has morphed from an independent thinker into one more hack churning out Rainesian propaganda.
KRUGMAN EXTRA!: Here’s a direct factual rebuttal of his recent column smearing the president for his role in the University of Texas Investment Management Co. (Utimco). It speaks for itself.
CENSORING RAPES: … If they’re committed by immigrants from Lebanon, and if those immigrants are Muslim, and if they regard Australian women and teenagers as “sluts.” That’s what some liberals have descended to, according to this recent editorial from the Sydney Morning-Herald.
HATING ASHCROFT? The New York Times would have you believe there’s a groundswell of conservative opposition to attorney-general John Ashcroft. I read that story too and found it unconvincing. So would anyone with a rudimentary awareness of that political constituency, like Jonathan Last. This is one aspect of liberal bias that is sometimes over-looked. It’s not a deliberate attempt to skew the news; it’s a level of such ignorance of the people who disagree with you that you make honest but fatal misjudgments. That’s what happens when nine out of ten reporters in the national press are liberal Democrats – however hard they try to stay neutral.
POSEUR ALERT: “3) Subway commercial for Dijon Horseradish Melt (Fox Sports Net, July 13)
One “Jim” (“a Dennis Miller-type of guy who tells it like it is,” says Subway publicist Les Winograd) pulls up to a burger joint in a car full of buddies. He’s about 40, tall, well-exercised: “Turkey breast, ham, bacon, melted cheese, Dijon horseradish sauce,” he says in the drive-through, exuding an aura of Supermanship all out of proportion to the situation. “That’s, like, not on our menu,” says the young, pudgy, confused person taking orders. “It’s not only not on your menu,” Jim says, “it’s not on your radar screen!” “Do we have a radar screen?” the clerk asks a supervisor as Jim peels out. “Think I made that burger kid cry?” Jim says to his pals, all of them now ensconced in a Subway with the new Select specials in front of them.
It seems plain that, finally, George W. Bush is making himself felt in culture. The commercial takes Bush’s sense of entitlement — which derives from his lifelong insulation from anything most people eat, talk about, want or fear, and which is acted out by treating whatever does not conform to his insulation as an irritant — and makes it into a story that tries to be ordinary. But the story as the commercial tells it is too cruel, its dramatization of the class divisions Bush has made into law too apparent. The man smugly laughing over embarrassing a kid is precisely Bush in Paris attempting to embarrass a French-speaking American reporter for having the temerity to demonstrate that he knew something Bush didn’t. (Real Americans don’t speak French.) Even someone responsible for putting this talisman on the air may have flinched at the thing once it was out there in the world at large, functioning as public discourse, as politics — the last time I saw the spot, the final punchline had been dropped.” – from a list of Greil Marcus’ “Real Life Rock Top Ten,” Salon.
The Dish 