The Inqy Gets It Right
A year or so ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer was bought by noted right wing hack Brian Tierney, who promised that as publisher he would not let his personal opinions dictate editorial content. Since then, he’s wavered a bit on the promise, stacking the editorial page with right-wing dinglalings like nationally syndicated wingers like Jonathan Last and Jonah Goldberg, and increasing the presence of local nitwits like Kevin Ferris and the Shame of Philadelphia, Michael Smerconish, who recently observed that white kids from Doylestown die in Iraq as well and that’s really sad.
The Inquirer was in decline a long time before Mr. Tierney took over: Knight Ridder had already decimated the newsroom, shrinking local and national coverage to a fraction of the paper’s glory days. However, once in awhile the opinion page gets it right and this morning’s Memorial Day piece is very good:
Write a letter to your elected representatives, whether on Capitol Hill or in the White House.
Let them know you have not forgotten the shameful stories and images that emerged earlier this year from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Let them know that you simply will not stand for those wounded in volunteer service to their nation being made to suffer anew through shabby care or bureaucratic indifference.
Let them know that you know quite well there are many other special-interest sweet spots in the federal budget where savings can be found; tell them you refuse to see any scrimping when it comes to medical care for veterans or those on active duty.
The week leading up to this Memorial Day was full of sick-making ironies. The president and the politicians in Congress reached one exhausted resting point in their long, cynical dance about timelines, benchmarks and all the other hoo-hah they substitute for honest talk about what America’s security and its service personnel deserve from the nation’s political leaders.
The rhetoric and maneuvering on both sides is so transparently about political positioning and blame-casting, not about finding the least-awful path out of the bind that this misbegotten war has created.
It is nauseating.
It is unworthy of the men and women who have died or been wounded trying to do their duty in the midst of ugly chaos. It is unworthy of their surviving comrades, who remain committed to doing their jobs as best they can until we find a way to bring them home.
It is unworthy of a nation that chooses to observe an occasion called Memorial Day.
I’m not one of these left-wingers centrist buffoons that pretends that the Democrats didn’t have anything to do with starting this war. I’m certainly not one of those credulous tools with a bobbling head and dangling tongue, like some kind of labrador retriever groveling “Oh really boss?”, when the Democrats pretend they were “fooled” by George Bush’s transparently obvious lies about Saddam Hussein’s pretend WMD. I’m not interested in Louise Slaughter’s no-good, very bad day, or Nancy Pelosi’s ghastly joke that “the president’s policy is going to begin to unravel now”, or Harry Reid’s ridiculous and insulting efforts to pretend that caving on Iraq is some kind of win. I’m not stupid. I’m not a 28-percenter Republican.
I’m tired of the war, I’m tired of the lies, I’m tired of Americans at home getting the short end of the stick. I’m tired of record oil profits when the oil companies should be rationing. I’m tired of excuse after excuse for why the war isn’t going well, and I’m tired of keeping up with the shifting rationales for war, all of which sound like the excuses a ten-year-old boy makes after getting an F in Algebra 1. I’m tired of working like a dog to keep up with sky-high interest rates that politicians of both parties approved for the benefit of their friends and funders at Bank of America and MBNA.
You want some Memorial Day, I gotcher Memorial Day right here: Remember when Americans were loved and admired abroad? Remember when the dollar was actually worth something? Remember when the US didn’t suck?
May 30th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Remember when the stupid Miss Universe pageant would pass without any mention of the world audience Booing her off of the stage?
May 30th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Ahem, sorry about my previous incomplete post. I meant to say “booing Miss America off of the stage.” I suppose you guys aren’t mind readers.