{"id":387,"date":"2003-09-12T11:57:36","date_gmt":"2003-09-12T18:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2003\/09\/thugs_in_the_white_house\/"},"modified":"2003-09-12T11:57:36","modified_gmt":"2003-09-12T18:57:36","slug":"thugs_in_the_white_house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2003\/09\/thugs_in_the_white_house.html","title":{"rendered":"THUGS IN THE WHITE HOUSE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&nbsp;guess I don&#8217;t have to read Paul Krugman&#8217;s new book, <A\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0393058506\/qid=1063377546\/sr=2-1\/ref=sr_2\n_1\/103-3798977-4556652\"><B><EM><FONT color=#003399>&#8220;The Great<br \/>\nUnraveling,&#8221;<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> a selection of his op-ed columns, to know what he&#8217;s been<br \/>\nwriting. I&#8217;ve read him faithfully ever since his column began, and a morning doesn&#8217;t go by when I<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t wish he wrote daily instead of just twice a week.<br \/>\n<P>If his column had appeared daily I doubt that I would have anticipated him yesterday, on the<br \/>\nsecond anniversary of 9\/11, when I cited a <A\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A57456-2003Sep10.html\"><B><FONT\ncolor=#003399><EM>story in the Washington Post<\/EM><\/FONT><\/B><\/A> and wrote: <A\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/archives20030907.shtml#52002\"><EM><STRONG><\nFONT color=#003399>&#8220;The nation mourns. Gee Dubya Shrub<br \/>\nexploits.&#8221;<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/EM><\/A> Today, Krugman cites the same story for a column<br \/>\nheadlined <A\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/09\/12\/opinion\/12KRUG.html\"><B><EM><FONT\ncolor=#003399>&#8220;Exploiting The Atrocity.&#8221;<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> <EM>(Free registration<br \/>\nrequired.)<\/EM> But he goes on to say a few more things worth noting:<\/P><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI>&#8220;It&#8217;s almost certainly wrong to think that the political exploitation of 9\/11 and, more broadly,<br \/>\nthe administration&#8217;s campaign to label critics unpatriotic are past their peak.&#8221;<br \/>\n<LI>Bush &#8220;could have governed as the uniter he claimed to be &#8230; [but his] advisers were greedy&#8221;<br \/>\nand &#8220;[n]ow [that] it has all gone wrong,&#8221; the Bushies are again resorting to thuggish behavior.<br \/>\nKrugman puts it euphemistically: They can&#8217;t &#8220;simply lose like gentlemen,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;For one<br \/>\nthing, that&#8217;s not how they operate.&#8221; (Remember their style during ballot-counting&nbsp;in<br \/>\nFlorida?)<br \/>\n<LI>For another they have to save their hides. &#8220;Everything suggests that there are major scandals<br \/>\n&#8212; involving energy policy, environmental policy, Iraq contracts and cooked intelligence &#8212; that<br \/>\nwould burst into the light of day if the current management lost its grip on power. So these people<br \/>\nmust win, at any cost.&#8221;<br \/>\n<LI>Consequently, &#8220;if you thought the last two years were bad, just wait: it&#8217;s about to get worse.<br \/>\nA lot worse.&#8221;<\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\n<P>Against this, what have the Democrats got? Howard Dean? John Kerry?? Al Sharpton??? The<br \/>\nAmerican Civil Liberties Union???? And now some celebrities with (ahem) clout, who are willing<br \/>\nto criticize Bush in an <A\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/09\/12\/business\/media\/12ADCO.html\"><B><EM><FONT\ncolor=#003399>ACLU ad campaign<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>? <EM>(Free registration<br \/>\nrequired.)<\/EM> <\/P><br \/>\n<P>So it&#8217;s Richard Dreyfuss and Kristin Davis (who plays Charlotte in &#8220;Sex and the City&#8221;),<br \/>\nMartin Sheen and Kurt Vonnegut, Samuel L. Jackson and Al Pacino, and let&#8217;s not forget singer<br \/>\nMichael Stipe of R.E.M. or Sheryl Crow, vs. the thugs???? Oh, mama. As the editor of National<br \/>\nReview told The New York Times: Celebrities &#8220;obviously have a right to speak their minds and a<br \/>\nright to be morons, and they usually exercise both.&#8221; How do you defend against quips like<br \/>\nthat?<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&nbsp;guess I don&#8217;t have to read Paul Krugman&#8217;s new book, &#8220;The Great Unraveling,&#8221; a selection of his op-ed columns, to know what he&#8217;s been writing. I&#8217;ve read him faithfully ever since his column began, and a morning doesn&#8217;t go by when I don&#8217;t wish he wrote daily instead of just twice a week. If his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-6f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}