Monday, November 06, 2006

"A shabby piece of work"...

That's how the White House referred to our military.

Okay - not exactly - I was just trying out an experiment in Republican-style rhetoric.

But, that actually is a quote from the White House - "a shabby piece of work" - in referring to an editorial in the Military Times publications (the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times, and Marine Corps Times) urging President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The editorial cited a loss of support from military leaders over the Iraq war.

Of course, coming from the an organization providing news to the military, the Bush Administration took this legitimate criticism to heart and decided to review it's current leadership, and attempt to forge a coherent Iraq policy going foward.

HA!!! Just kidding. This is the Bush Administration after all. They just ignore it - the White House press secretary Tony Snow dismissed the editorial as a "shabby piece of work."

I think the American people are realizing what is indeed a shabby piece of work:
George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team’s real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry’s mangled gibe at the president.

...

Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century — to bring out the best in us. His “genius” is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.

And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our country’s health, prove him wrong this time.

...

Go read the rest of that great editorial by Thomas Friedman.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm curious -- is criticizing USA Today the same as criticizing the USA? After all, that is the analogy you make here regarding these four papers which are owned by the same company as that notorious birdcage liner.

Blake said...

I tried to make it clear that the first line was a joke...that's why I included the next sentence, "an experiment in Republican-style rhetoric."

It seems to me that if the "shabby" comment had come from Howard Dean, or John Kerry, or Hillary Clinton (etc.), Tony Snow would have been making just such an over-the-top mischaracterization.

I thought it was pretty funny satire...maybe not so much?