It seems some people are quite pleased with Frank Rich's column in the New York Times today, including our own SocioSam, in a top-rec-ed post and FP-er KagroX. And I don't disagree with the main points either of them make. I think they're both right in praising Rich for the reasons they did.
I, however, come not to praise Rich, but to edit him. For, you see, he has made, and allowed into print, several severe and deeply offensive, what I'll charitably call, "typos". More after the jump...
It would seem good ol' Frank has a real problem with those pesky pronouns he uses in the column. You know the ones: "our", "we" and such. The problem isn't in their use; it's in their meaning that he purposefully employed. Let's take a look at the setup for my edits:
I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
True dat. Absolutely. The public was the least culpable and Congress and traditional media failed completely to provide any checks or balances for the American public. The failure was at the top. No doubt.
But then Frank goes off the rails with those pesky pronouns. In the very next paragraph, he proceeds to shift blame from 'the top', meaning Congress, traditional media and himself to, care to take a guess?, us, the public.
As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
Uh, hang on there a second, jack. Don't be blaming the public for something you and your traditional media ilk screwed up. It was your job to tell Americans the truth. And you failed, miserably, purposefully. You cowered, and people died because of it. And they continue to die today.
In fact, don't be blaming me, don't be blaming Kossacks, don't be blaming the netroots, don't be blaming progressives. Why? Because we are the ones, the only ones, who have been fighting this illegal and tyrannical adminstration since the beginning. And on this war, it is we who stood up and fought when you and your ilk cowered in a corner, you chickenshit bastard.
Sorry for the emotion there, but this really pissed me off. I got more pissed as I read on through the column, so I thought I'd edit a graf or two to show everyone what Rich should have said, and clearly. Let's take a look: original text, then edits follow each in parens ():
It was always the White House’s plan to coax us (Congress and the media) into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our (Congress' and the media's) passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country ('s) (establishment) that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.
Here's another:
This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us (Congress and the media) to ignore. Our (the establishment's) national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we (the establishment) supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our (Congress' and the media's) fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan.
You see the pattern: blame us, the public, including the only people fighting this from day one, so the establishment positions itself as off the hook on the biggest screw-up in American history. "Hey, we were duped, too!" Sorry, dude, that's clearly in the no-fly zone on this issue. As Bill Clinton might say: "That dog don't hunt."
Here're the edits for the final graf:
Our (Congress' and media's) humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our (the establishment's) war. The longer we (Congress and media) stand idly by while they do so, the more we (the establishment) resemble those "good Germans" who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us (all of us) to wake up our somnambulant Congress (, media and establishment) to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name (that you, Frank Rich and the establishment, have trashed, leaving us, the public, to suffer the consequences).
Don't blame us, bubba. It's about damned time you joined with us and fight, rather than blame us and then cower, while drinking martinis over at The Club.