Episode: She gets paid anyway
Conservative Strategy Number 44: Make fun of what liberals do, even if they don't do it.
It must be a slow news week. I have the urge to pick on someone.
Ordinarily, Right Watch tries to be critical of the specific policies, misrepresentations or obfuscation's of conservative writers, but, once in a while, Right Watch gets bent out of shape over petty things. We're only human.
When most people see a nationally syndicated column in the paper, they assume that it's a well-written column with something of value to say. That's not always true, but the perception is there. That should be the reason the writer is nationally syndicated. For crying out loud, they get paid for these things. At the Journal Tribune, we get a bi-monthly motivational call from the editor which makes us feel marginally better but sorry we aren't nationally syndicated.
Kathleen Parker's column on July 19, 2006 can be read in its entirety at Orlando Sentinel. Put the word "shenanigans" in the search box and it will show up as the second hit. If your time is valuable, here's the short version.
Parker's premise - There was a lot of hypocritical and silly outrage over Bush's cuss word last week (microphone was on, Bush was clueless, the usual).
To begin with, it's a false premise. The outrage was not widespread; in fact, if you were me, you completely missed it. Right Watch can only assume that Kathleen wanted to say something about Bush's performance at the G-8 conference and this was all she could come up with. Come to think of it, the microphone slip was one of only two things Bush said or did that made any news.
Well, that was the premise. The remaining 550 odd words were an attempt to be funny by pretending Bush said "dookie" instead of s__. Then she mocked all those supposedly offended/outraged liberal commentators by imagining how various news-makers might have commented on Bush's use of the more effeminate "dookie". The point was, of course, that Bush is a "real man" and we should be glad of it. Kathleen generally supports "real man" type politics whether it be invading a troublesome country or brushing past those pesky constitutional protections. Check out her photo next to any column. There is definitely a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
In the column in question, examples of her humor were "what does one do when the president himself utters an icky-boo?" and "Ew, a bad word, we're gonna te-ell." Her literary technique was to do that over and over.
Near the end of the column, she used Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to express one of her "tough guy" solutions to foreign policy problems. "We ought to scrape Hezbollah off the face of the Earth," he said in Parker's fantasy. That wasn't the first time Parker has jokingly expressed a longing for quick, total annihilation of enemies. Once she declared she would like to scrape Fallujah off the face of the Earth with nuclear weapons. It was carefully crafted into a humorous, off-hand sort of remark, but that's what she said. And, with the administration now wanting new types of nuclear weapons with which to attack Iran, it's not so funny. Remember the old saying "If you can imagine it, you can do it"? This bunch can imagine a whole lot of things. Who would have thought, in early 2002, that they could manufacture a need for a war out of thin air?
Yes, 550 words of that, then she closed with a sophomoric joke that is so original it's even on bumper stickers (Shiite happens). Just google it and see how many other people have used this joke before Kathleen. So, Right Watch analysis of this column reveals that, in view of the lack of any substantive statements or initiatives on the part of Bush, his complete lack of understanding of Mideast complexities and his embarrassing personal presentation in the form of unwelcome grabs at nearby females (the chancellor of Germany), this lame column was all she could come up with.
So what's my problem? I want to get paid too.