HunterByrd

Lileks finely fisks Andy Sullivan's tortured logic

Or: Karl Rove and Micheal Moore uniting as one?

James Lileks skewers Mr Sullivan's tortured logic behind his recent endorsement of Kerry. It had to come. As always this 'house dad' is brilliant, and a joy to read:

And let us shed a tear for those who believed it was necessary after 9/11 to knock off Saddam and establish a beachhead in the region ‘twixt Iran and Syria, but later ran away shrieking like freshly skinned rabbits because it had somehow, by some odd turn of events, turned into a partisan affair. What scared them off? Who knows? Just happened, I guess. Somewhere between the brutal Afghan winter, the interminable quagmire of the operational pause en route to Baghdad – all 72 hours of it - and the devastating supposition that the turkey Bush presented on Thanksgiving may not have been the actual fowl consumed by the troops, we realized that the war was all failure and lies and failed lies about lying failures, and we can’t do anything and the Plan was wrong and Mission Accomplished, yeah right. Oh, and We Support the Troops.

Who gets more media traction in this heated media-saturated climate? Rove-like Opportunists, or Moore-like Haters?

Beats me. More:

Oh, surely. But maybe - just maybe - many people did not want the country to be united if it meant being united behind Bush. He is a much more potent and immediate threat, after all. Who’s heard from Osama lately? Meanwhile Bush is out there every day handling snakes and speaking in tongues and supergluing parapalegics to wheelchairs, because his weird-beard God loves suffering and commands him – via text-messaging, for all we know – to kill them oily rag-heads. I mean, today I was behind a car whose bumpersticker had a picture of Bush with the slogan "American Terrorist." I know that driver was so behind Bush before he failed - in a fundamental way - to convince the driver he was not equivalent to Abu Nidal. Probably because he misprounced "Nuclear." Farking moron.

Keeping the country united? Good luck. Imagine FDR running a war with a press composed of cynical snickerers who derided the president as a rich old cripple who thought the best way to defeat Tojo was a war in North Africa and preached defeat every day through the hard slog of the Pacific theater. Imagine running a war with an entertainment industry that declined to make a single movie about the conflict - why, imagine a "Casablanca" where Rick and Sam argue about whether America started it all because they didn’t support the League of Nations. Imagine a popular radio drama running through the early 40s about a smart, charismatic, oh-so-intellectual Republican president whose bourbon baritone mocked FDR’s patrician whine, a leader who took no guff from Stalin OR Hitler! Lux Soap brings you, The West Wing of the White House! Imagine Thomas Dewey’s wife in 1944 callling the WW2 a war for oil; imagine former vice presidents insisting that FDR had played on our fears after Pearl Harbor. Imagine all that.

Read all of James Lileks rant. He isn't paid the big bucks - on the side - for nothing. Handles his pen with ease. Makes me feel better, too.