Lies Our Teachers Tell Us

Our First Lady is all excited about promoting reading, partly because, as

Mrs. Bush told The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller, "There's nothing political about American literature."

It's good that Laura Bush isn't trying to break out of her proper place by doing anything "political"—politics are dirty and icky and should be left to men, you know.

Lies like this make me want to scream. If there's nothing political about American literature, how do you explain Uncle Tom's Cabin? Why have people tried to ban Huckleberry Finn or any of these books? Fahrenheit 451 has become something of a staple in high school literature classes—is that because there's nothing political about a book about burning books? Oh, yeah, I guess so.

UPDATE: Credit where it's due -- the link to our First Lady's bit of wisdom came via Slacktivist.

Posted 09:54 AM | Comments (1) | general politics

Answer: Apparently Not

Do the Democrats stand for anything other than the next election?

That's the excellent question Frank Rich asks in "It's the War, Stupid," in yesterday's NYT. Rich provides overwhelming evidence that the answer to this excellent question is a resounding "No!" The utter lack of vision, leadership, or principle among any of our Democratic representatives has become so appalling, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to vote for them on Nov. 5th. Judging by the Democratic rhetoric of the last year or so, it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how our situation would be improved by having even overwhelming majorities of Democrats in the House and Senate.[1]

Meanwhile, pResident Bush plans to spend a great deal of time between now and Nov. 5th on the road campaigning for Republicans. This means that you and me are going to pay big dollars to promote Republican candidates (via the tax dollars that fund the bulk of Bush's travel), whether we like it or not. Ari Fleischer says Bush and the Republicans have a right to do this—he calls it "the democratic process." (Maureen Dowd says D.C. has become a place where people say the opposite of what they mean. No kidding.) Does that sound right to you? Just because all presidents have always campaigned for their party using tax funds, and just because each president does this more than his predecessor, does that mean we should allow it to continue?

And finally, while our government follows Bush down a path to make the world more unsafe than it has been for decades [2], is the D.C. sniper somehow connected to American hubris? Could this be someone's sick way of showing that even the most powerful nation on the planet can be terrorized by a lone gunman?
Footnote:
[1] This would be what's commonly called "hyperbole." More specifically, it's a little pessimistic venting. I'm fairly confident solid Democratic majorities in Congress would lead to a less "all Republican, all the time" national agenda. I mean, I still have hope...
[2] Let's see, how could we piss off all kinds of people to the point that they would sacrifice their lives to damage the U.S., U.S citizens, or other U.S. interests? Oh gee, I don't know, why don't we invade a sovereign nation and install a military dictator of our own? Oh yeah, that sounds like a great plan!

Posted 09:35 AM | general politics