Steve Perry

Steve Perry

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Sunday, December 22, 2002

It's the Evil, Stupid

The war on terror has uncovered a Kabul Rose broadcasting in our midst. On Thursday Washington Senator Patty Murray told a high school honors group in Vancouver, Washington, that it is in Americans' interest to understand why Osama bin Laden is a hero to many in the Muslim world. "He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful," Murray told the impressionable egghead teens. "We haven’t done that. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?" She then passed out complimentary U.S. Senate prayer mats and led the kids in several of her favorite prayers from the Koran.

Or so you might imagine from all the fuss. Roger Ailes' internet love child, Matt Drudge, labored mightily to break the story big, trumpeting a wire account in which Washington state GOP chair Chris Vance hollered that "It is absolutely outrageous and despicable to imply that the American government should learn a lesson from the madman who murdered thousands of American citizens."

That's telling her. What's at stake, of course, is not whether Osama bin Laden is a good guy. The question is one of dramatic continuity. Murray later issued a press release that began, "Osama Bin Laden is an evil terrorist who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans." Better. The great thing about evil is that it asks for no further explanation. We all know why evil people do evil things--because they're evil! To call the terror war a Harry Potter series for grownups may be the most hackneyed of metaphors, but it's as apt as any. You've got Cheney playing Dumbledore to W's Harry, with Karl Rove as puckish sidekick Ron Weasel. Next: Saddam Hussein and the Chamber of Secrets. I wonder, does anyone anywhere believe that the contents of Iraq's weapons declaration make a bit of difference in W's plans?

9:57:41 AM

Pillar of Salt

Trent Lott finally saw Hooded Jesus coming over the hill for him on Friday, and all over the cybermall bloggers are preening. It was one of their own, Joshua GQ Marshall--check that picture!--who broke the story about Lott's remark at Strom Thurmond's Confederate centennial rally. The critical mass for Lott's ouster was conjured on the internet, or so the story goes.

So tell me, is the world a better place today? For once I had to agree with Bill Clinton. Of the Republicans' hypocrisy in bouncing Lott, he said, "They try to suppress black voting, they ran on the Confederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina, and from top to bottom the Republicans supported it." Lott erred not in being openly racist; even as Trent was dragging his cross through the Senate and on toward Calvary, the Bush administration was preparing a new year's propaganda offensive to bring street gangs composed of minority youth into the domestic terrorist fold. Lott's trouble was that he went all old-school on their asses. OGs like him are a hindrance and an embarrassment to the new breed of race-baiting pols, whose ranks include Clinton and GWB. They understand that categorical bigotry is out and class bigotry is in. Wrap one arm around the better sort of colored folk, and blast away at the rest. A certain portion of upwardly mobile blacks and Latinos will stand and cheer, the same old business will get done, and no one will be called unpleasant names.

9:52:22 AM