The Politics of Personal Destruction
Empire Burlesque would be remiss if we failed to denounce, in the strongest terms, the widespread dissemination around the Internet of a scurrilous National Enquirer story to the effect that President George W. Bush has "fallen off the wagon" and started drinking again. My god, how low can the "progressive" blogosphere go? To peddle such tabloid tripe, spreading it around the world like a malignant virus, traducing the President's good name with "anonymous sources" -- it's a moral outrage. We at Empire Burlesque would never take part in such an odious campaign of personal defamation. We pledge never to link to stories like this one:
BUSH'S BOOZE CRISIS!
Nor we will we try to score cheap laughs and shallow satirical points by employing unflattering photos, like the one on the right, to imply that Mr. Bush is some sort of sniveling little sauce-head who can't take the heat and has to look for his dwindling manhood inside a bottle of hootch. That's just plain wrong. We won't play that petty game. We say that unless and until our President is found by Cokie Roberts lying face down in a pool of his own urine at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, we will not spread malicious rumors about his sobriety. And we strongly urge other bloggers to do the same. After all, how can we ever expect to be taken seriously by the Democratic Leadership Council or the Washington Post editorial board if we engage in such unprofessional behavior?
http://www.chris-floyd.com