February
13,
2004
Natl. Guard Queries Fair Game for "Posturing" Bush
"Mr. Bush himself also made the issue of military service fair game by posturing as a swashbuckling pilot when welcoming a carrier home from Iraq."
- Editorial, February 11.
Otherwise Known as "Liberals"
"Senate budget writers are already bracing for a difficult fight as they try to balance the demands of conservatives who want to take the same approach as the House Republicans and others who believe that the Bush administration budget plan is too stingy."
- Carl Hulse, February 12.
Vote-Deprived D.C. "PR Embarrassment" for Bush?
"Indeed, several Congressional officials said the ruling on voting rights in Washington would most likely be ignored. But they acknowledged that it could become a public relations embarrassment for the United States, particularly at a time when critics abroad describe the nation as being inclined to ignore international agreements and act
unilaterally."
- James Dao, February 11.
No Rooting for the Home Team at the
Times
"For Mexico's beleaguered people, Tuesday's soccer match between Mexico and the United States in Guadalajara is about much more than winning a place in the Summer Olympics in Athens. It is about national honor. To many Mexicans, soccer has become a proxy for all the indignities the country has suffered at the hands of the United States in almost two centuries of independence. During the first century, the United States invaded Mexico, annexed a third of its territory and intervened in its revolution. In Mexican eyes, the United States now alternately bullies its southern neighbor or ignores it-all the while building a wall to keep out Mexicans."
- Elisabeth Malkin, February 10.
Dennis Miller, Right-Wing Zealot
"[Comedian Dennis] Miller is a famous convert to the right wing, but that political flip seems to have cost him his satiric instincts.Like so many conversions, he seems to have led to zealotry, the last thing we need more of on television.although Mr. Miller's panels rarely include comics, he lets the shrillest guests ramble on. The conservative commentator David Horowitz indulged in a tirade in which he called opposition to the Patriot Act 'an hysterical campaign conducted by the left,' and 'a kind of seditious movement.' So much for the common-sense revolution."
- Caryn James in a February 8 review of Dennis Miller's new MSNBC talk show.
What Is Wrong With You People?
"The sad truth is that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality-a group that in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy-are very reluctant to give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that they had been played for fools."
- Columnist Paul Krugman, February 13.
"Hysterical" Conservative Critics of the NEA
".it has been the right that has spawned the agency's most persistent, not to say hysterical, critics.But the endowment also had-until the violence of the right's attacks against it in Newt Gingrich's Contract With America-an honorable tradition of supporting individuals who make edgy work."
- Former arts editor turned columnist John Rockwell in a February 13 column on NEA funding.
