From the Post's Gerson, a real knee-slapper

Michael Gerson is an impeccably fair, painfully scrupulous Republican.

This morning he takes President Obama's measure, and finds him lacking; he assesses Obama's campaign, and finds it ethically impoverished; he examines Obama's expressed desire to fix Washington's broken politics, and finds the president is but a "Chicago pol" who talks a transformative game but plays like a "grubby" hooligan.

Enter Gerson's noted impartiality.

It's true, he further observes, that Obama has coarsened our politics, that he's hastened Washington's dysfunction, that he has acted the brute--an absolute brute I tell you. But, but, according to Gerson, "This does not mean the GOP bears no responsibility." (No kidding, actual quote.)

Even if, as Gerson goes on to imply, it is mostly (read pretty much all) Obama's fault. You see, Obama "encourage[s] and empower[s]" those hyperpartisan Democrats through his rabble-rousing politics of destruction and issue-less campaigning, which action compels the reactive Republicans to "the next escalation."

Having finely threaded the primal and personal responsibility for all this unpleasantness, Gerson is then free to nobly tut-tut its rather even distribution:

Both sides feel victimized, which becomes a justification to cross past limits and boundaries. Neither side feels responsible for the problem, while both contribute to it.

Excuse me, pardon me, coming through, I have a question, Michael: For whom are you writing this cretinous blather?

If you're writing for the GOP base, the majority of whom are still marveling over W.'s expurgation of Iraq's WMD and puzzling over Barack Obama's foreign birth, then you have only achieved what's known in the highest circles of theoretical physics as an absolute fucking waste of spacetime. If, on the other hand, you're writing for humans who eat their bananas peeled, then congratulations, you've quite the sense of humor. 

Comments

[japa21]

I must say, you have been specially good with the old turn of the phrase lately. However, "If, on the other hand, you're writing for humans who eat their bananas peeled, then congratulations, you've quite the sense of humor." may well be one of the best I have read in a long time.

[japa21]

OTOH, unfortunately, even some of the more advanced primates among us do have a tendency to belive that both sides "do it" in equal proportions. I was talking with my neighbor the other day. She is an intelligent woman, with obvious liberal leanings. Howevr, when I mentioned I get tired of hearing how both sides are equally to blame, she got this look on her face that siad, "But aren't they." Ten minutes of explanation later, she did agree that there is really no comparison. But that took ten minutes with someone who philosophically already agrees with me on what needs to happen in this country.
I don't have a spare ten days to work on somebody who sees the world differently.

[Jason]

Evidence. They never provide any effing evidence for their accusations. How exactly has Obama been a "hooligan" or a "brute"? Republican ideology is nothing but a string of thesis statements.

[janicket]

Man, there's enough projection there to power ten thousand movie theaters, huh?

[AnneJ]

So he's saying it is the democrats' fault that the republicans act the way they do? Well if one is so easily drawn into brutish behavior because of what someone else does then does't that suggest a lack of maturity in being able to hold such high public office and handle all of the responsibilities that go with it? Do they also beat their wives if their wives snap at them?

[Beauzeaux]

"How exactly has Obama been a "hooligan" or a "brute"? "

He's black, isn't he?

[Peter G]

Ditto japa21. Ditto. As much as I appreciate the allusions to physics, my onetime field of study, the peeled banana phrase was priceless.

[majii]

Gerson is a RW nut. He refuses to admit that every time we turn on our TVs, there's a republican on a cable channel somewhere lying about PBO and democrats, or that the FM radio dial is full of Limbaugh-like creatures whose main job is to impose their versions of reality on their listeners. And let's not forget Fox News, the propaganda wing of the GOP whose executives have taken it upon themselves to trash everything PBO has ever said/done.