HOLD THE FRIES, LEFTIES ARE NOT ALONE

I never thought I'd be glad to hear from a Goldwater Republican, much less agree with him. But Straight Up reader M. Paulding has changed my mind. He writes in response to Battle of the Prewar Memos:

The second DSM [Downing Street Memo] is more damning than the first, despite Sanger's observation. I'm a conservative, not a neoconservative. There is a BIG difference. And as a Goldwater Republican, I DEMAND an investigation of HOW and WHY the idiots in the White House decided it was necessary to SQUANDER $208 billion of our money and the finest army on earth.

Take my word for it, there are MORE DSMs coming, and what they [will] reveal is a bunch of political whores on both sides of the Atlantic. They "packaged" this war and sold it to a trusting American public like a box of soap. Even Congressman "Freedom Fries" Jones has now got the message. Remember him? He was pissed off because the French wouldn't jump aboard Bush's juggernaut three years ago. Now, he wants a timetable to get out of Iraq.

Paulding also writes in reference to Frank, Rich, and Dandy, He Keeps on Truckin':

Matt Lauer, et al, are poodles. They engage in fluff journalism and don't even count. Frankly, I'd be surprised to learn that Matt Lauer even knows what Watergate was all about. I'm not a so-called lefty, but a conservative, and NOT a neoconservative. Colson, Liddy, that whole god-damned crowd tried to subvert the United States Constitution. They disgust me. The neoconservatives, who are really Straussians, are now attempting to do the same damned thing. There must be an investigation to get to the bottom of this, and it must be done as soon as practicable.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for either investigation (and I presume neither would Paulding). But it's grand to hear that righties are fed up, too. Some of them at least.

June 14, 2005 11:19 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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