Thursday, August 05, 2004 :::
 
Mild musings on Stanford University and why mothers should worry about what teenage boys eat follow...


Now It Can Be Told.

He must confess. The guilt is just too much to bear.

A Mind That Suits is part of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy. Or at least he was briefly. It is now ancient history, but he feels he must get it off his chest.

You may remember a month ago, when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its report on pre-war intelligence. There was much in it to cheer supporters of George W. Bush, and even cheer those of us who have our doubts but support a war against certain terrorists (not "terrorism," against which no war can be fought.) The report came out on a Friday, and the following Monday a certain indispensable newspaper delivered itself of a juicy editorial hacking to bits the views of anyone of the 'Bush Lied" persuasion.

At the same time--and here is where the conspiracy gets really, really sinister--sitting in a trendy coffee house in the expensive Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, DC--where he can only afford to buy coffee and rotisserie chicken at the local market-- was a certain pudgy, balding English teacher, who read the editorial with healthy portions, he must confess, of schadenfreude. Even though he was doubtful about the war, and has been driven crazy by the way it was prosecuted, the opponents of the war consistently drive him crazier, particularly the "Bush Lied" crowd, and particularly one really annoying former ambassador named Joseph Wilson.

Now he had, in fact deliberately and with mallice aforethought, grabbed the pages from the SCCI report on the good Ambassador to enjoy over the weekend how they ripped him to shreds. In his usual manner, he had read the report in snatches--on the metro, drinking coffee, when other business grew monotonous. He had savored every line, and he had noticed that they went out of their way to jump all over the distinction between "sought" and "bought, a detail that had annoyed A Mind THat Suits but had otherwise drawn no commentary. And he deliberatley and with undistiguised glee finished those sections even before he opened the editorial section of a certain indispensable paper that Monday. He never reads anything else first, so that just shows you how much fun this report was.

But he found that Monday editorial somewhat like the old saw about Chines food--delicious, but ultimately unsatisfying. "This," he thought, quoting a rather silly conservative reviewer from two centuries ago, "will never do." He knew--because he comes from a newspaper family--that the report had been pulled from the internet and portions of it were hastily tossed to various writers who were expert in different aspects of the report. They all--under the gun--drafted their comments, which probably were all longer than an editorial can be, and someone, whose initials are probably "P.G.," spent a Sunday afternoon distilling all those reports into one unified trumpet blast.

It was a lot of fun to read, really. But it was not satisfying.

And so A Mind That Suits bestirred himself to write an e-mail to a certain distinguished writer on the editorial staff of a certain indispensable newspaper, who wisely ignores 90% of what A Mind That Suits feels like unloading on. 'You know," wrote A Mind That Suits," Joe Wilson deserves the whole treatment." And he drew that distinguished writer's attention to that grating problem of the distinction between "sought," which is what the President said Saddam had done, and "bought," which is what the good ambassador said he proved had not happened.

And do you know what that distinguished editorial writer had the nerve to say in response? "Agree."

WHAT OCEANS OF PERFIDY LIE IN THAT SIMPLE WORD.

After several days' delay, when said indispensable newspaper did its considerable best on other issues like, oh, you know, the economy, there appeared an even more delicious, even lengthier editorial dissecting the good ambassador with style, and even panache. IT EVEN MENTIONED "BOUGHT."

There you have it. The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

IT IS EXACTLY THE COLLUSION OF DISTINGUISHED, LITERATE, and HIGHLY EDUCATED EDITORIALISTS with PUDGY, BALDING, LATTE-SIPPING ENGLISH TEACHERS THAT IS RIPPING THIS COUNTRY APART. IT MUST BE STOPPED NOW!!!!!! YEARGGGGH!!!


At least, that is the conclusion that one would draw from reading Salon, where one of Amb. Wilson's last defenders--a writer whose name slips the mind and who, really, cares?--said that the editorials that appeared in the National Review and A Certain Indispensable Newspaper had been "coordinated."

Which is an issue to which we will return shortly--the notion that people who actually read reports are "conspirators,"but people who quote the New York Times are "independent."

For now, he will simply say that, to the extent that A Mind That Suits contributed to this Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, he is in fact quite pleased with himself.

Now, about the use of the word "kerfuffle" to describe the worst intelligence failure since--well, the last one....

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 11:40 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.