Caught up on the party line
This week it appears we’re liberal sycophants for the Democratic political machine, desperate as it is said to be to bite into the president’s popularity ratings.
The damning evidence this time is that we ran a Maureen Dowd column a few days ago that mocked the brains in the White House in her trademark prickly fashion, and she drew some figurative blood.
It’s the first column from her in about a month, and it was a good one to inspire such ire. Or some of the good local Republicans are feeling a mite edgy themselves. Surely fresh attacks on that always awful Gary Trudeau are sure to follow.
Meanwhile, the true-believer liberals are irritated at the likes of Kathleen Parker, William Safire and our local conservative-leaning writer Butch Mazzuca appearing on these hallowed pages on a regular basis.
Hmm, there must be an election around the corner. That’s usually when this silly blathering about columns and scorekeeping about where the Daily might stand by running these infidels becomes a blood sport.
Damn paper’s all over the board. Imagine that? Running the gamut of views for you to chew on and bitch about. Our own voice warbles along a middle road that strays a bit left and then right of what the partisans on each side can quite stomach.
Not supposed to give credit to an idea that seems to make sense. It’s who puts it forward that counts in this game. Might be that’s part of the problem.
How about we just don’t play the black-and-white, “you’re always wrong if you aren’t in the right party” gambit. Of course, then we might to use our brains a bit more often.
Too much
Another provocation for the right-thinking crowd was an editorial cartoon making a Hitlerian reference to President Bush and his campaign for a pre-emptive strike at Iraq.
Well, that “pre-emptive” part is up for argument. The United Nations laid out some clear expectations for Saddam and his weapons program in the wake of the Gulf War, which the world community and the United States have let the Iraqi strongman fritter away to the point there are no real penalties for violating every edict.
Oliphant, the Pulitzer Prize cartoonist for The Washington Post, is good at making sharp points. Perhaps too good. He certainly raised the hackles of a couple of letter writers, who make some great points in their outrage. He’s succeeded in making a few folks think. On the other hand, references to the German madman are more than a little over the top. D.R.
