Posted on 02/05/2003 9:41:47 PM PST by JohnHuang2
I knew the media were up to something with their wall-to-wall coverage of the Columbia space shuttle explosion. The full story is: Shuttle disintegrated during re-entry; all astronauts killed, including some very remarkable people; very sad; NASA picking up the debris to figure out what happened. It was a plane crash story, only a lot more expensive. So why was the shuttle explosion being covered like the 9-11 terrorist attack?
A quick review of the Treason Times laid bare the objective. Monday's New York Times proclaimed: "As Iraq War Looms, a New Sense of Vulnerability." American hubris blunted again! The article went on to quote a series of random Americans saying things like, "Now I'm hearing a lot of people say if we go to war, we're going to endanger a lot more than seven lives." Another classic Times' Man on the Street said that it "reinforces my belief that we should find diplomatic solutions instead of threatening other countries with war."
The Times' Man on the Street always seems to be standing on a street suspiciously close to Central Park West. For one year, I don't believe the Times has managed to interview a single person who supports war with Iraq in a nation ablaze with war fever.
And now the shuttle had presented a new argument for appeasement. Warning, Great Satan: Your money and technology and little gadgets cannot insulate you from disaster! Breathless news accounts of the shuttle blast were merely a more demure version of Islamic terrorists cheering in the street in reaction to the explosion. If it didn't violate the "wall of separation," the Times likely would be exclaiming: "It was the will of Allah!"
The Gettysburg Address of liberal idiocy was a letter to the editor from a Jim Forbes of San Francisco two days after the crash. The Times titled his contribution to Liberalthink: "A Time of Mourning for Shattered Dreams: A Period of Healing." In full-dress sanctimony, Forbes wrote: "The loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven is a national tragedy. Time is needed for Americans to mourn. I hope that President Bush will do the right thing by slowing down his march to war and focusing instead on the healing that such a blow to national pride requires."
Here was the pithiest concentration of the multiple idiotic things liberals were saying about the space shuttle, the insincerity, the audacity, the smarminess – he even worked in "the healing process." How he must have polished that little gem! The idea that liberals feel the shuttle explosion was a tragedy is patent nonsense. They were jumping for joy at this new excuse to denounce the "march to war." The nation is marching to war at such breakneck speed, it will be two years from 9-11 before we attack.
Melancholy that their relentless nay-saying is having no effect on the president's plans for Iraq, New York Times columnists are now positing imaginary scenarios in which war with Iraq leads to a stock market crash and brings the nation to the brink of nuclear war. Nicholas Kristof has gone the Maureen Dowd route of using the op-ed page of the Times for a dream-sequence column. But instead of dreaming about Bush being retarded, Kristof dreams of catastrophe for America.
Kristof fantasized that, within the year, the North Koreans would be running riot through the Far East with their nukes. The column concluded with Bush apologizing to Secretary of State Colin Powell for invading Iraq. The strain of not having a Democrat in the Oval Office to create foreign policy disasters on his own is driving liberals to fevered fantasies of America's defeat someplace in the world.
In other appeasement news, former U.N. arms inspector Scott Ritter has completely vanished from the anti-war scene since news of his sex arrest broke. Three weeks ago, it was revealed that Ritter was caught soliciting sex from underage girls on the Internet in 2001. Until news of his arrest broke, the New York Times had been treating Ritter's reincarnation as a peacenik as the greatest act of patriotism since Justice Souter voted to uphold abortion on demand. It's now Day 17 and counting of the Times' refusal to mention Ritter's arrest. Though the peace movement lost Ritter, it seems to have picked up Jerry Springer. Perhaps Springer is hoping he can get Scott Ritter's wife on the show to confront Ritter and the underage girl.
But Ritter was a free-lance peacenik. At least the Times could count on stability and permanence from John Hartpence Kerry. Poor Kerry was just on the verge of figuring out whether he was for war with Iraq or against war with Iraq when he was told he hadn't figured out his own last name. Kerry was shocked to be told that, despite years of allowing himself to be passed off as an Irish Brahmin, both his paternal grandparents were Jewish and his real name is Kohn. Upon reflection, however, Kerry said there were signs he missed, such as his longtime, recently requited desire to marry a rich shiksa. And now Kerry will need time for the healing process. We must halt the march to war.
Who me? Oh, hold on a minute, got another Coulter pic to post...;^)
Lighten up out there. For one thing, Kerry is a full of himself snob who hates to go to crappy places like Iowa or S. Carolina when he could be prancing around Beacon Hill in his limo.
Oh, for goodness sake, I'll bet dollars to donuts Ann said that sarcastically, as wry 'gotcha' humor, meaning to deride the concept and criticize them for hypocrisy at the same time..... especially if she said this after Hillary won the election over the "issue" of Rick Lasio invading her personal space in their debate.
I thought it was because I was an insensitive boob too distracted by the need to earn a living and run my business so that a couple of dozen people and their families could eat.
I must confess. The older I get, the more I hate Liberals. And don't even ask me about these anti-war demonstrators here in the United States.
If it were up to me, Iraq would already be glowing in the dark.
I find her TV appearances and her book, Slander, to be funnier than her usual column. She's funniest when she speaks the truth with outrageous, take no prisioners wit; and I doubt that all of the newspaper outlets for her columns are enamoured with this, her most endearing quality for me.
I admire your scruples. Yet her punchline from that column shouldn't be forgotten by those worshipers who are touting the savage, abusive Coulter as (may the gods forgive them) the next Mencken:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."
As for the article heading this thread, I haven't read it in full, and I refuse to do so. I retched when I saw enough of the first few paragraphs to recognize the absurd destination of her viewpoint: She sees the news media as orchestrating the shuttle-disaster coverage, in its scope and emotion, to divert supposedly needed attention from the Iraq Crusade.
I am as annoyed by the excess media bathos as anyone who dislikes wallowing in cheap theatrics. Yet what terminal cynics such as Coulter are forgetting is that the chord of emotion that the space program touches is that of RESPECT FOR ACHIEVEMENT. Soldiers perform an essential task, without which we could not live, but they achieve nothing on net beyond the prevention of calamity or tyranny.
Scientists do achieve, even those who don't succeed in their original objectives ... or who die trying. They advance a cultural respect for seeking truth, if nothing else. Those on the shuttle died -- yes, ignoring their tax-funded context for a moment -- for the sake of advancement of knowledge. Just how many times has this happened since Giordano Bruno, Galileo's inspiration, was burned at the stake?
This is what Americans are responding to with, yes, the occurrence of this tragedy. Except for Coulter and her ilk, who don't care about tearing the striving toward values into shreds, if they can become rhetorical meat for her grinder.
But a previous poster pointed out that 4 servicemen died in a crash of a Black-Hawk helicopter in Afghanistan with nary a yawn by the media. They too, died doing their job. (it's a VOLUNTEER military)
The Space Program MUST go on. The "ultimate weapon" in this millenium will be one fired from orbit. I want to give us every advantage so that the insignia on the weapons platform in orbit around the earth will be "USA" instead of a Red Star.
If I have to defend that position, then the world has gone truly "NUTS". Afterall, last I heard, Libya was the head of the Human Rights Committee at the United Nations (yuk-yuk)
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