Just look at the A$$hole Wilson in the Kangaroo Impeachment Court hosted by the communist/America Hater Conyers.
Picture of Joseph Wilson with Cindy Sheenan at Conyer's Kanagroo Court.
Posted on 08/17/2005 8:16:59 AM PDT by Constitution Day
happy warrior
MARK STEYN
The Left’s Extras
For a myopic media, everything’s about Bush.
What would you say the most famous African country in America was right now? I’d go for Niger. Nary a day goes by without a dozen e-mails from aggrieved lefties claiming that I’ve “lied” about what Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV found on his famous mission when he flew into Niamey and spent a couple of days sipping mint tea with former big shots from the regime of retired strongman Major Wanke. (I’ve suggested “Wankegate” as a name for the “scandal” to the New York Times, but they’re oddly unenthusiastic.)
I take great umbrage at the lie that I’ve lied about Joe Wilson’s lies about what he found in Niger when he lied about the administration’s lying about what he found before he started lying about it — or I would take great umbrage, if I could keep a straight face. Unfortunately, every time I do I think of the touching dedication of Ambassador Wilson’s hilariously titled memoir The Politics of Truth: “To my wife Valerie . . . If I could give you back your anonymity I would do so in a minute.”
I think we can all agree on that. If I could give Joe and Val back their anonymity I would do so in a New York nanosecond. But if the UnableToMoveOn.org crowd want to keep Joe on the front pages, good luck to them and we’ll see how that works out in early November 2006. But you’d think, if he’s accomplished nothing else since he elbowed his way into the spotlight, he’d at least put Niger on the map. As the subject-headers in my inbox shrieked for three successive summers: “BUSH LIED ABOUT NIGER!!!” Leave aside the fact that Major Wanke’s prime minister told Wilson that, yes, the Iraqis were interested in acquiring uranium from Niger — since when did Niger get to be such a big deal? Niger, Niger, Niger. Forget the British, the Aussies, even French intelligence: Only the views of those Niamey tea-sippers should have been allowed to determine whether we went to war with Iraq. To listen to the Left, you’d think Niger was the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.
Here’s the thing: There is an actual news story in Niger right now. Not the two-year controversy over Joe Wilson’s tea expenses, but rather a massive drought followed by a plague of locusts and a third of the population on the brink of starving to death. In Vermont the other day, I bumped into a lefty acquaintance who was convinced Karl Rove was about to be brought down for his campaign against the Wilsons for “telling the truth” about Niger. “Ah, Niger,” I said. “Eight hundred thousand dying kids.”
“Really?” he said, nonplussed but only momentarily, and, barely pausing for breath, he was soon speculating wildly about whether Rove’s “lies” would also bring down Rice and Cheney. To the Left, Niger is what Alfred Hitchcock used to call “the MacGuffin”: the thing — the secret papers, the formula — that kick-starts the plot and gets Cary Grant on the run but that no one really cares about. If Niger has Karl Rove on the run, that’s all well and good, but it’s served its purpose.
I’ve remarked previously on the parochialism of the new Left, but, for all the talk of “reaching out” to America’s allies, you get the feeling the foreign pages are one big yawnsville to them. In the old days on Broadway, they used to have what they called “catalogue songs” — laundry lists of lyrical examples that all went to prove the same point, that “You’re the Top” or that “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You).” In this case, whatever happens around the world, These Geopolitical Things Remind Me of Bush. Great events are taking place around the globe, and the Left has no interest in them except as twists in a dreary soap opera of neocon Beltway bogeymen most Americans have never even heard of. The hapless citizenry of Niger — or Iraq or Afghanistan — fulfills the same function as the natives in a British Empire yarn or the Injuns in an old western: They’re mere extras filling out the background in a story about competing factions of A-list white guys.
Take, for example, this New York Times editorial, in which disparate events on three continents are assumed to be mere local franchises of the Plame wars: “As the New York Times reporter Judith Miller enters her fifth week in jail for refusing to disclose a source, the repercussions are being felt abroad . . . In Burundi, government authorities jailed the journalist Etienne Ndikuriyo — for a story questioning the health of the president . . . In Nepal, a police inspector demanded that one newspaper editor reveal his sources for a report on fighting between the government and Maoist rebels . . . And in Serbia and Montenegro, two police officers visited an independent daily newspaper demanding . . .”
Whoa, hold up a moment. This guy in Burundi, he’s a “repercussion” of the Judith Miller case? Like Burundi was a beacon of press freedom until they got the word from the Bush administration that you can toss journalists in the slammer? Tell it to — to pluck at random — the guys at In-Burundi.net who were beaten up by gendarmes in Bujumbura three years ago. I know “all politics is local,” but if you think Etienne Ndikuriyo’s arrest in Burundi is a “repercussion” of Judy Miller, man, you’re getting way too local.
bttt
You'd think the strongman would have atleast promoted himself to General. General Wanke.
Steyn ping, please?
L
LOL!
Love the tagline, BTW.
IIRC he has written on this theme before - multiculturalism as a mask for utter leftist ignorance about the world. These folks can tell you where the newest Malaysian restaurant is and what's good on the menu, but they have no idea what the country's capital is or what its primary exports are. Multiculturalism is a sort of Potemkin cosmopolitanism, a way of showing that you care without having to bother to know.
Just look at the A$$hole Wilson in the Kangaroo Impeachment Court hosted by the communist/America Hater Conyers.
Picture of Joseph Wilson with Cindy Sheenan at Conyer's Kanagroo Court.
Is he talking about Joe Wilson or Cindy Sheehan?
LOL ! If that sentence doesn't sum up the lunacy of the democrats and their comrades in the media, nothing does......
1-866-DHS-2ICE to report illegal aliens?
Is that real? ICE stopped their last project where a business could call in and have a SS# verified - they were too scared of the ACLU!
It worked so good, they had to stop it.
Use it often.
L
Gadaffi has the same problem, he runs an entire country and is only a Colonel. You'd think he'd promote himself by now
Love the tagline, BTW.
Thanks. I cracked up when I heard Lileks say it on Hugh's show.
If Steyn was a good-lookin' woman, I'd marry him.
It's a shame the MATRIX Project was scrubbed.
Absolutely spot on!
The Left, with the merest handful of exceptions, are parochial narcissists, pure and simple. Perched on their little manure piles of self-regard, they demand that all the world be props in their personal movie.
For the trenchantly witty Steyn, this shooting fish in a barrel must get a mite tedious, after a while.
Your para starting with IIRC is very, very well put.
"Multiculturalism is a sort of Potemkin cosmopolitanism, a way of showing that you care without having to bother to know."
____________________________________________________________________________________
Ament to that. I have heard this stated quite a few times recently. The PC multiculturalists are always the most shockingly ignorant about the little brown people they hold so dear. The big problem about actually learning about those charming third-world cultures is the more you learn about them, the less charming they become.
The ever-fashionable Colonel is too busy figuring out how to spell his name.
Is it:
Gadhafi?The world may never know.
Khadafi?
Qadafi?
Kaddafi?
good points that translate quite well for me in the Sheehan debacle. I notice in the photo that she covers her name (self) with her departed son, as if she has become him.
Forgive me for going off (topic : )
It's all your fault. (Just kidding!)
She does not speak for Casey.
Casey speaks for himself.
Um, is there something you need to tell us? :)
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