He Said It, Not Me
David Brooks in today's NYT, criticizing Harriet Miers's "essays" in the state law journal as president of the Texas Bar Association:
I don't know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers's prose. Nearly every idea is vague and depersonalized. Nearly every debatable point is elided. It's not that Miers didn't . . . tackle interesting subjects. . . . But she presents no arguments or ideas, except the repetition of the bromide that bad things can be eliminated if people of goodwill will come together to eliminate bad things.
Scary moment of realization. I know why Miers got the nomination. Isn't the highlighted section of that quotation . . . Bush's entire public philosophy? No need for government, except to rid the world of evildoers. Because if government just got out of the way of people of goodwill, then . . . ah, happy days.
Stop this ride, I want to get off.
posted by Number Three @ 8:42 PM
4 Comments:
Wasn't the press conference at which Bush played the religion card outrageous? What ever happened to Article 6 of the Constitution?
"no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust."
-Ivy
for me the horror is encapsulated in the previous phrase: "But she presents no arguments or ideas."
this means she is no better than my first-year undergraduates who think turning a good sentence (usually in passive voice, but they think it's good) is equivalent to writing well. writing well involves saying things, things that are arguments or ideas. and until you can communicate such things one cannot be called intelligent or smart or, well, qualified to be on the supreme court!
lovely. I'm not even in the country and I want to get off.
Edited CL comment: ". . . . GWB is a boob . . . ." He said it, not me.
I'm not sure what CL is reacting so strongly to. Maybe he can write an angry email to David Brooks. He said it, not me.
I'm not so sure about this "people of goodwill" idea. Rove? DeLay? Blunt? Frist? Cheney? Feith? Bolton? Ashcroft? Santorum? Hatch? Thomas? Limbaugh? Liddy? Hannity? O'Reilly? Savage? Coulter!!?
How about this: we can eradicate evil from the world if only the most sanctimonious prigs, embodying the purest malice, unite to brand people of good will as traitorous scum in order to deflect attention from the pillaging of the public treasury. Now that's a governing philosophy that we as patriotic Americans can get behind.
Post a Comment
<< Home