The Washington Post today is a lot better than it has been, but it is still pathetic. It wastes two editorials on a non-urgent need - the need to bash leftist intellectuals.
See Extended Copy for summary of editorials.
The NY Times summary is here
The first editorial
bashes Dubya for supporint the FMA. In contrast to the NY Times empassioned denouncement, the Post coolly rebuts every point of Dubya's speech. The
second offers that the Palenstinians, instead of going to the International Court, should do something else (the Post doesn't say what) to influence the "Israeli-imposed 'long-term interim settlement'". IMHO, you can't critiicize somebody's actions if you can't think of something better for them to do. The
third gushes "For the first time time in years, the Senate is to vote on gun safety measures that lawmakers in both parties and gun owners everywhere can and should support as common-sense anti-crime measures." The measures it is talking about are proposed amendments to a gun bill the Post thinks "amounts to an excessively large and unnecessary special-interest shield." Why not bash the bill and say the amendments should be passed on their own?
Robert Samuelson argues that "On jobs, presidents are mostly prisoners of the business cycle" and Kerry and Edwards' attempts to hold Dubya accountable for 2 million lost jobs in this country are a "dishonest expediency". There are so many holes to this argument that I don't know where to begin. It was Dubya who pushed his tax cuts and regulatory changes as creator of jobs and now the Democrats are pointing out that those claims were "dishonest expediency". Samuelson ignores that Dubya's record on jobs is significantly different than every president since Hoover, so saying it is due to the vagaries of the business cycly flies in the face of logic.
Peter Edelman asks politicians to stop using the term "Judicial Activism" because (I think) there is now convervative judicial activism as well as liberal judicial activism.
George Will uses Gibson's new movie as a jumping off point to notice an "upsurge of political anti-Semitism" which "is becoming mainstream, and chic among [the liberal] political and cultural elites, mostly in Europe." He cites a string of "events", but none of them are quotes or actions by a political or cultural elite. While Will is busy looking for the speck of anti-Semitism in Europe's eyes, he overlooks the plank in the American political right. He could have at least mentioned that Gibson's dad recently denied the Holocaust.
Eric Reeves reports on the humanitarian disaster in the remote Darfur region of western Sudan caused by military attacks "by the Sudanese government and its militias." These stories are always sad, but short of invading, what can the US do?
Anne Applebaum blasts Naomi Wolf apparent overreation to "Harold Bloom, the celebrated literary scholar, of having put his hand on her thigh at Yale University 20 years ago". I don't know enough on this agree or disagree with Applebaum, but to me this belongs in the gossip or Living sections, not the opinion page.
