Heck, I Didn't Know Bush even HAD a Petard

Banality is a symptom of non-communication.
Men hide behind their clichés.

—Eugène Ionesco

There’s a reason that Right Wingers do so poorly on forums like “Real Time with Bill Maher.” It’s because they are so used to only “debating” in scream-friendly forums like Faux Nooz and Rushing (to) Limbo that their “fair debate muscles” are atrophied.

It’s less that they are lightweights than that they’ve been weightless.

They’ve been floating in the weightlessness of uncritical acceptance of their spiel for so long that a return to the “gravity” of normal American political discourse and fair debate leaves them helpless on the ground, unable to “walk” (although they still manage to run, with no seemingly-deleterious effects).

So, too, Bush is sounding increasingly like a right wing pundit caught in a fair debate. This weekend’s dustup with Jimmy Carter over his PERCEIVED comments was purest ad hominem from the “White House”—although the “White House” was speaking from Crawford, Texas’ legendary overgrown brush.

A fit stage setting perhaps. Carter was characterized as “sad” and “increasingly irrelevant” in what would seem an apt defense of, if not a failed presidency, then surely a failing one.

As Americans, we should all be ashamed that the office of the President is being dragged through the gutter, sniping all the way. And, as a critic of literature and drama, I can only look askance (and perhaps vaguely nauseous) as yet another histrionic performance was enacted today at the faux ranch without cows or horses.

Here is Bush in the brush, selling his talking point, according to Reuters. See if you can guess what today’s Pavlovian catch-phrase is:

Bush defends Gonzales, rips into critics
Mon May 21, 2007 4:19PM EDT
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday accused Democrats in Congress who are seeking no-confidence votes on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of engaging in “pure political theater.”

Brushing aside concerns from Republicans as well as Democrats about the effectiveness of the chief U.S. law enforcement officer, Bush said: “He has got my confidence. He has done nothing wrong.” … Gonzales is the target of widening congressional investigations into the firing last year of nine of the 93 U.S. attorneys.

Bush and Gonzales maintain that the ousters were justified though mishandled. Critics charge it seems as if Gonzales politicized the Justice Department and the firing of a number of federal prosecutors.

Bush rejected those charges, saying: “I frankly view what’s taking place in Washington today as pure political theater.”

“And it is the kind of political theater that has caused the American people to lose confidence in how Washington operates,” Bush said at a joint news conference at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. … “I stand by Al Gonzales,” Bush said.

Bush added that the attorney general’s critics “ought to get the job done of passing legislation as opposed to figuring how to be actors on the political theater stage.”

If the Reuters reporters (and AP’s reporters via CNN, who repeated the phrase “political theater” FIVE times to Reuters’ mere FOUR) are any indication, Bush must still believe he’s playing to a Faux-friendly audience in the media.

Certainly the MSM CONTINUES to be criminally complicit in mindlessly repeating (literally) what are, at best, tissue-thin rationalizations. Were I Reuters (or AP), I’d be embarrassed to be publishing such a lickspittle “news” piece. But then, this whole political theater of Bush has always seemed absurd. And, increasingly, ever moreso. It’s less about RINO’s and more Rhinoceros, as in the famed absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco.

There is an old saying in the law:

When the facts are on your side, pound on the facts.
When the law is on your side, pound on the law.
And when you don’t have anything on your side, pound on the table.

Increasingly it sounds like Bush is pounding on the table.

Courage.