I love Jane Smiley. I count ‘A Thousand Acres’ as one of my very favorite books.
But now comes new reason to love her with this piece at the Huffington post.
Imagine my dismay and disgust when I got back from the LA Book Festival and discovered what had happened at the Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington on Saturday. The press, such as it is, actually sat down and broke bread with George W. Bush and laughed at his jokes!
She has nothing but disgust for members of the Washington press corps and their assorted bigwig guests who kissed George W. Bush’s ass and gave Stephen Colbert the cold shoulder.
People, including something like 68% of the American people, wonder why George W. Bush continues to pursue policies that 1) damage America 2) are highly unpopular 3) are misguided and 4) are against both international and US law. How about this for a reason–no matter what he does, the journalists who are supposed to hold him to account are breaking bread with him and laughing at his jokes? What does it mean to the man if his polling numbers are in the basement and and most of the
nation looks favorably on impeachment if when he goes out of his bubble, he gets a goodly hit of sucking up? How is he supposed to actually comprehend that he is on the wrong track, that he has put the nation on the wrong track, that he needs to reform and change his ways, if no one makes sure that he feels social opprobrium for what he has done?
Smiley goes on to say that those who yuk it up with the prez are guilty of bolstering his already sky-high opinion of himself.
Make no mistake about it–George W. Bush has a thick thick skull. He finds it very difficult to learn anything. But he is thin-skinned and easily offended. It is time to offend him! He needs to be offended
every minute of every day! Stephen Colbert did a pretty good job, but then all the kids on the playground rallied around the bully and soothed his hurt feelings. No No No! Don’t these people know what a
collaborator is? A collaborator isn’t merely the guy who pulled the trigger with the perpetrator, it is also the guy (and the gal) who made him feel comfortable and happy, just one of the gang, when he was
getting ready to pull the trigger. Why show George W. Bush any mercy? He hasn’t apologized for the crimes he’s already committed and he proposes to commit more! He is preparing and intending to commit more!
She ends with an oh-so-delicious bit of dreaming…
Come to me in five years, after he’s been impeached and imprisoned and humiliated by history, and ask me if I will forgive him. Maybe I will. But right now, when he can still be encouraged to persist in his inhumane, cruel, and entirely idiotic policies, policies that, as I’ve mentioned before, have caused pointless deaths, dismemberments, blindings, woundings, orphanings, widowings, parents bereft of their children, homelessness, impoverishment, infrastructure destruction, sectarian hatred and violence, scandalous waste of money and resources, profoundly corrupt government in both Washington and Baghdad, crippling of our army? Right now? No mercy. Those who don’t try to make Bush feel shame bring shame upon themselves.
I agree wholeheartedly with this author. I get pissed when people like Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer and various other stuffed shirts who have permanently abandoned their reporter’s notebooks and now engage in fawning, schmoozing and ass-kissing of those who currently run our government say that we should respect George W. Bush and the office of the President.
I say bullshit. That guy is not the presidency. He is a force of evil hiding behind a smirking, good ole boy facade. He’s a dangerous man and the world is a far more dangerous place because of him and because those who are supposed to investigate wrongdoing instead crowd around him for just a chance to touch his robe. They have been willingly castrated.
Shame on them.
Before C-SPAN and the internet, Colbert’s performance on Saturday night would never have seen the light of day. The problem for the press corps is that the video is readily available on the internet and has been seen by millions of people despite their best attempts to bury it. And it has legs.
This is not going away.
