For once, he wrote a quasi well-reasoned and sensible column, chastising Bush for the extravagant inaugural while the country is at war. Then the real John Kass showed up.
Here's how it started out:
Donald Trump's latest piece of eye candy, a brunet this time, is busy showing off her fancy wedding dress.
Meanwhile, President Bush's inauguration festivities will offer lavish entertainments, and balls, parties, fetes, suppers, mountains of beef tenderloin and so on. There were no reports of medieval egg dancers in curly-toed boots, but there will be jesters aplenty.
So what is the difference between the parties costing a record $40 million and that wedding dress Trump purchased for his new true love?
Not much. Both are overdone and self-indulgent, reported on with red-carpet celebrity breathlessness. The word I'm looking for is "vulgar," since Americans with family and friends in the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are worried.
They're worried a government sedan might pull up to their homes, an officer telling them their son or husband or daughter will be coming home sooner than planned.
Still pretty good in the middle. . .
If the Republicans want to have a party, or nine parties, they have every right to have them and enjoy them. These rituals have political importance. They cement ties and allow those who worked hard and donated campaign money to bask in victory and history. There's nothing wrong with that.
What is unsettling, though, is the public relations dedications to the U.S. armed forces as political cover for the dancing. Most Americans in uniform support the president, as do their families. Their hearts shouldn't be compromised this way.
Of course, if Republicans held parties and didn't make out like it was all for the troops, there would be a predictable chorus from Democrats and the media shrieking about Republican insensitivity.
This way, everybody's symbolism is covered as they sip the champagne.
And here's how it ended up:
The Democrats carping now partied hearty during the Clinton inaugurals, when the White House dithered dangerously for years on the subjects of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. So it has been amusing to hear them condemn the Bush extravaganzas by invoking the meager supper offered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945.
Some of these same voices seethe at the mention of the Patriot Act, and condemn the incarceration of terrorists at Guantanamo, and invoke Roosevelt as a saint. They step lightly over the thousands upon thousands of Americans of Japanese descent that he sent to prison camps during WW II.
And Republicans would be outraged if John Kerry or President Hillary Clinton spread it on thick at parties during a war. That's politics. But combat troops aren't fighting for that kind of politics.
The lunatic Alan Keyes might condemn me, again, as the evil liberal media agent of the Democratic Left, but I'm pleased Bush was elected.
He just couldn't resist getting a dig in there somewhere, even though it really had nothing to do with what he was writing about. Just couldn't bring himself to criticize the Republicans without taking a shot at the Democrats along the way. I'm so glad I cancelled my susbscription to this paper after they endorsed Bush. . . .