Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Testing, testing … Newspaper folk sometimes say their stories are the first rough draft of history. These thoughts are less than that; they are the first rough draft of the first rough draft of history.
You’re only as good as the information you receive. Take George T_ … please! No, only kidding. Look, I’m the first to understand that people have to make a living. That’s good; that’s the American way. But really… George was the main spook. So, you’d think when you’re talking to the guy who has his finger on the red button – me -- you’d be a little more circumcised … sorry, that’s circumspect … in what you say. When you say “slam dunk” to someone like me, who is intimately familiar with sports, it means SLAM DUNK, NO PROBLEMO, DO IT!
But, ya’know, T_ did have a point when he said the president didn’t make important decisions based only on partial, emotional responses. There was at the time, as I recall, a Noah’s flood of information out there, a good deal of it, unfortunately, wrong. But that’s what I say: You are the information you have. And, I wonder, why is it no one – I mean none of the first drafters of history – has pointed a finger in the direction of Saddam H_, that blustering, blithering idiot?
It wasn’t just me he fooled, ya’know. He fooled some of the best minds of my generation: Hans Blick, for instance, and Chris Dodd, who, along with a sizable chunk of other knowledgeable brainiacks, actually supported the war on terror… And that’s another thing: Congress, not worth a plug nickel when the bullets start whizzing over the foxhole, now has repealed the expression “the war on terror.” Can you believe it?
Anyway… let’s see… Oh yeah… Even Hillary, even she, for G_’s sake! Everybody believed Saddam H_ had weapons of mass destructions – because ol’S_H wanted everybody to believe he had WMDs. Again, you’re the info you have, see?
Now why did Saddam H_ want everyone to believe that, do you think? Probably had something to do with Iran; that’s my best guess. Iran, brimming with Persians who don’t care a hoot and a holler about Islamic religious divisions, and Iraq, secularized under the late Saddam H_ , have been at each other’s throats throughout the administrations of the last two presidents, Hillary’s husband Bill and my own dear daddy. Course, they’ve been at it longer than that; everyone knows that; it doesn’t take a Karl Rove or a Maureen Dowd, who’s been known to lob a few WMD’s in my direction from her hidyhole at the New York Times, to figure that one out.
By the way, let me just say in passing that Rove’s position in this administration has been highly over-rated: I’m Rove’s brain, s’not the other way round…
Anyway, hmmm… anyway… oh yeah … Saddam H_ wanted to convince Iran, bubbling over with imams ever since Jimmy C_ blinked and the Shah went under, that he had WMD’s; that’s what I think. And he did convince them – me too, Dodd too, Hillary too, the UN, that agglomeration of banal evil, too. What the H_ does everyone think the UN and Hans were looking for in Iraq – Easter eggs? Come on! The US Congress can repeal “the war on terror” if it likes, but it can’t repeal history, of which… this is the first rough draft of the first rough draft…
Wednesday, May 02, 2007 (Later)
Hello, hello… These thoughts are the first rough draft of the first rough draft of history…
Note on the media: The media, taken in a lump, is impersonal. That’s how most Americans see it; don’t know about the Frenchies. Course, once you screw the jeweler’s loop into your eye and have a closer look at the thing, personalities emerge. Possibly, there are some folk out there in Medialand, hidden in the tall grass, who hate me; that’s just part of the job; some things presidents must do are hateful. Some of the Dems hate me for strutting on the aircraft carrier after we had cleaned Saddam H_’s clock; some paloecons hate me for yielding to the neocons. The bloggers hate me because if they stopped hating someone, they’d melt, like the Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizzard of Oz, thinking of which… Hollywood doesn’t make things like that anymore. Others in Medialand are beset with one or another "idea fixed", as the Frenchies say. Some journalists have lobby-envy; they want to be influence peddlers; they want to make their mark on the great tide of human events.
Been reading about one of these guys lately, Walter Durranty of the New York Times. Heaped on the ash bin of history, Walt D_'s pretty much forgotten now, and good riddens to bad rubbish. But, in his day, Walt D_ was the top dog at the NYT, a sort of 1930’s Maureen D_. People went about referring to him as “the great Durranty.” Other journalists wished to immolate him … sorry, emulate him. And he received the much coveted Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Joe Stalin’s 1933-34 Five Year Plan. Walt D_’s prize now hangs on the Wall of Pulitzers in the New York Times’ building. Another reporter, Malcolm Muggeridge, one of the good guys, said that in all his years of journalism -- and he packed in a few -- he had never met so accomplished a pathological liar.
Here’s the deal: Stalin wanted to bring Ukraine under his hobnail boot, and he did it in his usual dictatorshipoftheproletariat fashion – by creating an artificial famine that produced, Bobby Conquest figures, upwards of 10 million dead bodies, all of them starved to death when Joey S_ confiscated the seed grain Ukrainians used in their yearly plantings.
Now, it’s a little difficult, to say the least, to tuck all those bodies under the rug. But Joey S_ managed to do it, and in this he got an important assist from The Great Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize winner, who wrote in dispatch after dispatch to the Times that the famine was a local affair, the result of Joey S_’s heroic efforts to drag Russian peasants into the industrialized 20th century by their venial … oops, venerable … beards.
Ukrainians in Canada, the United States and Europe made a fuss about it a few years ago, and some of them even demanded that Walt D_’s prize should be stripped from him and be re-awarded to Gareth Jones, a Scottish reporter later killed by the Chinese Communists, who, along with Malcolm M_, was among the first uncorrupted journalists to get the story out. The Times reviewed the whole sorry mess a few years ago, around the same time they debased Jayson Blair, but finally the bigwigs at the NYT came down on the side of the pathological liar and refused to withdraw the prize.
Further note: Mention this to Maureen D_ the next time Laura invites her to tea at the White House. Maybe she’s got some pull down there. This fraud has gone on long enough.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007 (Much Later)
Hello… testing… Once again, These thoughts are the first rough draft of the first rough draft of history…
It’s the sort of thing that makes you wanna spit, which I do often enough at the ranch, but never in the White House, because presidents have to keep up appearances. Nancy Pelosi – really a very nice lady, but not a firm negotiator when palavering with snakes like that student protestor over there in Iran, Amadinawhatsisface, or Bashir Whose’its of Syria – (click) hello… hell--lo… (click)… Okay, ready to go… Okay, Nancy… right… I like the babushka. But ya’hafta wonder… Do they get it? And if they get it, what do they plan to do with it? I mean, I’m in it for the short run. When I leave here, as I’ve said many times before, I’ll go back to the ranch, clear some brush, potter about the house, shoo Cindy Sheehan away, grow old, wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled… See there, Maureen D_, I do read. And I’m content to leave my legacy, tattered as it is now, to those who write the final draft of history. But history is gonna depend on others, and the shape of the modern world – or post modern world; I’ve never really understood the distinction between modern and post-modern – will depend on what Hegel calls the Spirit of history. That Spirit is beyond our ken. Yes, I can confess it now: I’m a bit of a Teddy Rooseveltain and an Hegelian. I like Teddy – hard charger, that one -- and I like Hegel too, particularly his anonymous translation, “Vertrauliche Brief Uber das vormalige staatsrechtliche Verhaltnis des Waadtlandes (Pays de Vaud) zur Stadt Bern: Aus dem Franzosischen eines verstorbenen Schweizers” But neither Teddy, a sort of American superman, or GWFH had to put up with Nancy P_, however nice… (click) … she … (click)… hello… hello…
Testing, testing … Newspaper folk sometimes say their stories are the first rough draft of history. These thoughts are less than that; they are the first rough draft of the first rough draft of history.
You’re only as good as the information you receive. Take George T_ … please! No, only kidding. Look, I’m the first to understand that people have to make a living. That’s good; that’s the American way. But really… George was the main spook. So, you’d think when you’re talking to the guy who has his finger on the red button – me -- you’d be a little more circumcised … sorry, that’s circumspect … in what you say. When you say “slam dunk” to someone like me, who is intimately familiar with sports, it means SLAM DUNK, NO PROBLEMO, DO IT!
But, ya’know, T_ did have a point when he said the president didn’t make important decisions based only on partial, emotional responses. There was at the time, as I recall, a Noah’s flood of information out there, a good deal of it, unfortunately, wrong. But that’s what I say: You are the information you have. And, I wonder, why is it no one – I mean none of the first drafters of history – has pointed a finger in the direction of Saddam H_, that blustering, blithering idiot?
It wasn’t just me he fooled, ya’know. He fooled some of the best minds of my generation: Hans Blick, for instance, and Chris Dodd, who, along with a sizable chunk of other knowledgeable brainiacks, actually supported the war on terror… And that’s another thing: Congress, not worth a plug nickel when the bullets start whizzing over the foxhole, now has repealed the expression “the war on terror.” Can you believe it?
Anyway… let’s see… Oh yeah… Even Hillary, even she, for G_’s sake! Everybody believed Saddam H_ had weapons of mass destructions – because ol’S_H wanted everybody to believe he had WMDs. Again, you’re the info you have, see?
Now why did Saddam H_ want everyone to believe that, do you think? Probably had something to do with Iran; that’s my best guess. Iran, brimming with Persians who don’t care a hoot and a holler about Islamic religious divisions, and Iraq, secularized under the late Saddam H_ , have been at each other’s throats throughout the administrations of the last two presidents, Hillary’s husband Bill and my own dear daddy. Course, they’ve been at it longer than that; everyone knows that; it doesn’t take a Karl Rove or a Maureen Dowd, who’s been known to lob a few WMD’s in my direction from her hidyhole at the New York Times, to figure that one out.
By the way, let me just say in passing that Rove’s position in this administration has been highly over-rated: I’m Rove’s brain, s’not the other way round…
Anyway, hmmm… anyway… oh yeah … Saddam H_ wanted to convince Iran, bubbling over with imams ever since Jimmy C_ blinked and the Shah went under, that he had WMD’s; that’s what I think. And he did convince them – me too, Dodd too, Hillary too, the UN, that agglomeration of banal evil, too. What the H_ does everyone think the UN and Hans were looking for in Iraq – Easter eggs? Come on! The US Congress can repeal “the war on terror” if it likes, but it can’t repeal history, of which… this is the first rough draft of the first rough draft…
Wednesday, May 02, 2007 (Later)
Hello, hello… These thoughts are the first rough draft of the first rough draft of history…
Note on the media: The media, taken in a lump, is impersonal. That’s how most Americans see it; don’t know about the Frenchies. Course, once you screw the jeweler’s loop into your eye and have a closer look at the thing, personalities emerge. Possibly, there are some folk out there in Medialand, hidden in the tall grass, who hate me; that’s just part of the job; some things presidents must do are hateful. Some of the Dems hate me for strutting on the aircraft carrier after we had cleaned Saddam H_’s clock; some paloecons hate me for yielding to the neocons. The bloggers hate me because if they stopped hating someone, they’d melt, like the Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizzard of Oz, thinking of which… Hollywood doesn’t make things like that anymore. Others in Medialand are beset with one or another "idea fixed", as the Frenchies say. Some journalists have lobby-envy; they want to be influence peddlers; they want to make their mark on the great tide of human events.
Been reading about one of these guys lately, Walter Durranty of the New York Times. Heaped on the ash bin of history, Walt D_'s pretty much forgotten now, and good riddens to bad rubbish. But, in his day, Walt D_ was the top dog at the NYT, a sort of 1930’s Maureen D_. People went about referring to him as “the great Durranty.” Other journalists wished to immolate him … sorry, emulate him. And he received the much coveted Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Joe Stalin’s 1933-34 Five Year Plan. Walt D_’s prize now hangs on the Wall of Pulitzers in the New York Times’ building. Another reporter, Malcolm Muggeridge, one of the good guys, said that in all his years of journalism -- and he packed in a few -- he had never met so accomplished a pathological liar.
Here’s the deal: Stalin wanted to bring Ukraine under his hobnail boot, and he did it in his usual dictatorshipoftheproletariat fashion – by creating an artificial famine that produced, Bobby Conquest figures, upwards of 10 million dead bodies, all of them starved to death when Joey S_ confiscated the seed grain Ukrainians used in their yearly plantings.
Now, it’s a little difficult, to say the least, to tuck all those bodies under the rug. But Joey S_ managed to do it, and in this he got an important assist from The Great Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize winner, who wrote in dispatch after dispatch to the Times that the famine was a local affair, the result of Joey S_’s heroic efforts to drag Russian peasants into the industrialized 20th century by their venial … oops, venerable … beards.
Ukrainians in Canada, the United States and Europe made a fuss about it a few years ago, and some of them even demanded that Walt D_’s prize should be stripped from him and be re-awarded to Gareth Jones, a Scottish reporter later killed by the Chinese Communists, who, along with Malcolm M_, was among the first uncorrupted journalists to get the story out. The Times reviewed the whole sorry mess a few years ago, around the same time they debased Jayson Blair, but finally the bigwigs at the NYT came down on the side of the pathological liar and refused to withdraw the prize.
Further note: Mention this to Maureen D_ the next time Laura invites her to tea at the White House. Maybe she’s got some pull down there. This fraud has gone on long enough.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007 (Much Later)
Hello… testing… Once again, These thoughts are the first rough draft of the first rough draft of history…
It’s the sort of thing that makes you wanna spit, which I do often enough at the ranch, but never in the White House, because presidents have to keep up appearances. Nancy Pelosi – really a very nice lady, but not a firm negotiator when palavering with snakes like that student protestor over there in Iran, Amadinawhatsisface, or Bashir Whose’its of Syria – (click) hello… hell--lo… (click)… Okay, ready to go… Okay, Nancy… right… I like the babushka. But ya’hafta wonder… Do they get it? And if they get it, what do they plan to do with it? I mean, I’m in it for the short run. When I leave here, as I’ve said many times before, I’ll go back to the ranch, clear some brush, potter about the house, shoo Cindy Sheehan away, grow old, wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled… See there, Maureen D_, I do read. And I’m content to leave my legacy, tattered as it is now, to those who write the final draft of history. But history is gonna depend on others, and the shape of the modern world – or post modern world; I’ve never really understood the distinction between modern and post-modern – will depend on what Hegel calls the Spirit of history. That Spirit is beyond our ken. Yes, I can confess it now: I’m a bit of a Teddy Rooseveltain and an Hegelian. I like Teddy – hard charger, that one -- and I like Hegel too, particularly his anonymous translation, “Vertrauliche Brief Uber das vormalige staatsrechtliche Verhaltnis des Waadtlandes (Pays de Vaud) zur Stadt Bern: Aus dem Franzosischen eines verstorbenen Schweizers” But neither Teddy, a sort of American superman, or GWFH had to put up with Nancy P_, however nice… (click) … she … (click)… hello… hello…
Comments