Okay, I have not been ‘round these parts for a while, and I know that heaping derision on George Will’s narrow shoulders is like adding both water and salt to the ocean, but after reading today’s tightly coiled and gently steaming offering from the Bow-Tied One in the Washington Post has pushed me over the edge.
I don’t know what is up with Mr. Will today but he has thrown another fifty-cent word laden air ball, this time about how the Obama Campaign has gone empty and strident in the closing days of the 2012 campaign. Me thinks that perhaps he has finally succumbed to the total epistemological closure of the modern Republican Party because the campaign he describes is not one that I have been seeing, and that is even applying the mental filter of trying to think like a Conservative (and yes, that stings all day when you do it!)
He starts out with a quote from Calvin Coolidge about humility. I am sure that this feels very smart to Mr. Will (he is clearly one of those people who has to show how smart they are at every turn), but it just sets the tone for a column that is ready to do anything it can to present a thinking-mans argument that the president is “other”. Really Mr. Will should be above this but I guess when the polling all shows that your guy is in big trouble, well anything goes.
Take a gander at the first paragraph of this crap-tasitc effort:
Energetic in body but indolent in mind, Barack Obama in his frenetic campaigning for a second term is promising to replicate his first term, although simply apologizing would be appropriate. His long campaign’s bilious tone — scurrilities about Mitt Romney as a monster of, at best, callous indifference; adolescent japes about “Romnesia” — is discordant coming from someone who has favorably compared his achievements to those of “any president” since Lincoln, with the “possible” exceptions of Lincoln, LBJ and FDR. Obama’s oceanic self-esteem — no deficit there — may explain why he seems to smolder with resentment that he must actually ask for a second term.
Beyond the fact that he has obviously been peeking in the Thesaurus it seems that the Bow-Tie has a problem with the President calling out someone who has lied, prevaricated and flip-flopped at every turn on the campaign trail in a desperate attempt to fool enough of the American public about what his presidency might be. Oh, and the fact that someone who has become president has a bit of an ego. Kel spurise!
The column then takes an odd turn, Mr. Will decides that VP Biden need a heaping helping of slander so he hammers him for something he said in his debate with Sarah Palin, just so he can use it as a segue to trying to obscure the Republicans very clear plan to make abortion and birth control if not illegal then practically impossible to have. Here is the meat of that ‘graph:
In this year’s debate, he said that overturning Roe v. Wade would “outlaw” abortion. Actually, this would just restore abortion as a subject for states to regulate as they choose. Biden, whose legal education ended well before he was full to the brim, was nominated for his current high office because Democrats believe compassion should temper the severities of meritocracy. It is, however, remarkable, and evidence of voters’ dangerous frivolity regarding the vice presidency, that Biden’s proximity to the presidency has not stirred more unease.
At this point it seems Mr. Will is losing the thread of what he wanted to say. For anyone who has written column after column is a familiar experience, but I guess when one has a permanent perch at on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and the Washington Post, then one is not required to go back and try to fix a column gone off the rails.
He meanders around implying that we should not compete with China for manufacturing low cost products like tee-shirts and toasters, takes a shot at the Auto Rescue that saved our domestic auto industry and complains vaguely about the fact that President Obama wants to invest in the United States as part of putting out people back to work and fixing our aging and ignored infrastructure.
Then he hops back the birth control and abortion issue with a piece of alternate reality that is just breath-taking in its scope and complete up-is-downism. Take a look:
Much of the Democratic Party’s vast reservoir of condescension is currently focused on women, who are urged not to trouble their pretty little heads about actual problems but instead to worry that, 52 years after birth control pills went on the market and 47 years after access to contraception became a constitutional right, reproductive freedom is at risk. This insult may explain the shift of women toward Romney.
Are you gob-smacked yet? It seems that Mr. Will really does not listen to the folks who are promientnt in his party of choice. From their VP pick of Paul Ryan, to the likes of Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin and Richard “Gods Will” Mourdock to just about any of the 100 or so Representatives that would ban abortion and birth control in a heartbeat if they could, it is the Republican Party’s bête noire.
The reality is that when Democrats are sounding the alarm for women about this issue they are probably understating how critical this election is. There are probably two and maybe as many as three Supreme Court in the next four years. That would be more than enough to overturn Roe v. Wade and anyone who thinks that the Fundigelical Base is going to accept anything less that hard-core anti-choice nominations from a Republican President is kidding themselves.
But the thing that really struck me is that this statement could only come from someone who does not have a uterus. Doesn’t Mr. Will understand that it is a huge issue for women that one party would seriously talk about restricting their rights to control their reproduction? Or worse make them bare the children of the men that raped them? The real condescension comes from the Right on this issue with the spurious notion that women can’t make up their own minds as to when or whether they should reproduce without the input of men in government.
Will then makes allegation that the President and that Republican Boogy-Woman Nancy Pelosi will attach free speech if they get a majority and the chance to do so. Sounds pretty scary, no? Do you know what it is referring to? A Constitutional Amendment or legislation to overturn the Citizens United decision. The Bow-Tie makes no mention of it directly nor provides any kind of link so a reader who is not up on such things can evaluate the correctness of that idea. Nope he just puts it out there that the Big Bad Democrats are lusting after limiting the rights of people (‘cause we all know, thanks to Mittens and the Supreme Court, that corporations are people).
As ironically comical it is for George Will to call anyone out on ego, this whole column is a distracted stream of consciousness mess from start to finish, but it does have a purpose. With its literary and historical quotes, its paragraphs full of words that will help one Ace the SAT and its spurious assertions about the President and Vice President it is designed to help those who know they should vote against the Republican candidates rationalize doing so.
In short (I know, way, way too late) this whole turd of a column does just what Rush Limbaugh does on a daily basis carry the water of the Republican Party. If I thought George Will could experience shame I would urge it on him, but that too would be adding water to ocean.
The floor is yours.