GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--July 8, 2003--  New York Times columnist, Nick Kristoff, claims that President Bush has overdosed on "moral clarity."

     His column, as most in the New York Times, reflects the liberal bias of a newspaper that seeks to establish balance, but leans so far one way that its readership must hold up their shields to ward off the dung slung constantly at the Administration, especially when it comes to President Bush.
     It wasn't surprising to me that this morning's editorial slammed brass-knuckled accusations once more the viscera of Bush's moral breadbasket.
    Editorial writers are surgeons.
    They like to cut things.
    They like to make things bleed.

    When I was in journalism school, our professor reminded us to be bulldogs.   Our mission was to take one side of an issue, clutch it in our jaws, shake and rip it apart until the arms and legs of the subject flew into the wind, literally dismembered from the issue's torso. 
     "That's when you know you've written a good editorial," he proclaimed, "when the page is splattered with blood."
      Nefariously, Kristoff posited Bush against Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair.   He likened Bush to a gun slinging cowboy ideologist, and Blair as an adroit visionary.
      In his piece, Kristoff made the claim that Bush has overdosed on "moral clarity," and that his intoxication with his own ideology, especially about the Iraq war, makes him a "buffoon" in the eyes of others.  (Rather than say those words himself, he quotes another as saying them.   This is called "oblique character assassination")
      I have no quarrel with lambasting those you don't like on the editorial page.    That's what it's for.  The publisher of a paper has a right to expose his or her feelings through hit-men and hit-women editorialists who make it their daily job to assassinate the character of others while never coming under audit themselves.
      Such people kill with immunity and impunity.  And, they are rewarded handsomely with both money and fame, and, sometimes even fortune.
      I find it ironic, however, for Kristoff, or any other editorialist, to accuse another of "overdosing on moral clarity" or being a "political gunslinger," when the role of an editorial writer is to be just that which they decry.
      That's why I used his column today as toilet paper.
      He did his job.  He got to me.   His words wormed their way under my skin, and crawled through me like one of those cheap horror flicks where you can see the creatures wriggling just under the skin, heading toward your brain to bore holes and then exit out your mouth, nose, eyes and ears, etc.

      The stimulus of Kristoff's attack, not that he needs one when it comes to filleting President Bush or the Republican administration, was comparing Bush to Blair.  The title of his column, "In Blair We Trust," sums up the message.   For those not quick of the wit this early in the morning, "if we trust Blair, we don't trust Bush."
       Kristoff is a slick assassin, as most good character crunchers are.   He throws in little personal mines to blow up any image of Bush as a true moral crusader, trying to void the world of despots while the rest of the universe sits on its hands and does nothing.   Get this little time bomb slipped in to Kristoff's comments to chew at the marrow of any confidence you might have in Bush as a "moral man."
     "Mr. Bush is not the dummy his critics perceive. My take is that he's very bright in a street-smarts way: he's witty and has a great memory for faces, and his old girlfriends speak more highly of him than many women do of their husbands."
      Witty!
      Come on, Kristoff.  You sound like Jason Blair describing Private Jessica's view from the front porch.
      Witty!
      President Bush is about as far from Witty as you are from dialing up Rush Limbaugh.
      Memory for faces!
      Ouch.   What a kudos for a President.   "Yeah, he may have an overdose of moral clarity, but he's both witty and has a memory for faces."
      Gag on that.
      But the real booby trap, deftly placed to tripwire the reader's even faint thought that President Bush has a moral authority to rush outside America's borders to take the Beast of Terror on face-to-face is the scurrilous innuendo about "old girlfriends."
       "...his old girlfriends speak more highly of him than many women do of their husbands."

       Now, if Kristoff was taking pot shots at Arnold "I'll-Be-Back" Swartzenegger, maybe that comment might have some play.  But implying that President Bush has some "sex appeal," that he might possibly be just another Bill Clinton riding an elephant rather than an ass--huh-uh, Nick old buddy.   Way out there.  Your corked your bat on that one.
       Cheap shots aside, I just don't get it.
       The world if full of ripe, bursting to be told Vigilant issues, subjects an editorial writer can paint with endless passion, but instead, like rats chewing on the dead carcasses of yesterday's news victims, the writer, such as Kristoff, likes to kick and stomp and shoot holes in dead bodies.
        In Vietnam we had those kinds.
        They would come upon a dead body someone else had shot and start firing.   These were our "crazy" people.   Up front were our brave and courageous, our points and scouts who risked their lives in the unknown, went hand-to-hand with the enemy, and then in the rear of the column, the less courageous, the less brave, would open up on the dead and then claim a "kill."
        In their twisted minds they were heroes, and probably went home telling everyone at the beer bar, "Yeah, I killed twenty Cong myself."  Little did their listeners know their bullets were buried in  corpses.
         Kristoff's attack on Bush is like shooting holes in a corpse.
         How many times can one kill the enemy?
         The attack today, comparing Bush to Blair, could be written by a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.   
          And, it's value to the world is nil, unless you're a Bush-hater, a Terrorist Against Bush, who blinds himself to all things in the world except finding some new, ugly, twisted and horrible thing to demean a President who refused to let the tyranny of Saddam Hussein run its full course.

         I would have loved to hear Kristoff write about the magic of a single  two-year-old child surviving a Sudanese airplane crash that killed 116 people but left the child alive.   What destiny awaits that child?   Why did the universe spare the child, while all others aboard were killed in the holocaust?
          An editorial writer could paint a rosy picture of the future for a child like that, saved from the jaws of the Beast of Terror by the Sentinels of Vigilance, for what purpose?
          Then there is the "gunslinger Bush" intervening in Liberia.   What is this guy doing?    Why is he trying to quash Terrorism in the Dark Continent?    Has he overdosed again on moral clarity, believing that America's might just possibly can send a signal to all the world's Terrorists that we are the Sentinels of Vigilance, that we are willing to throw all our power and might at those who would rape, murder and violate the freedom of the innocent?
          Moral clarity?
          What is it--some poison of the human spirit?
          And can one truly overdose on it?

         Kristoff would like us to think that Tony Blair is a much better leader than President Bush, and that we should give no credit to our Chief Executive Officer as we might have FDR or John Kennedy, symbols to guys like Kristoff of the "better half" of political leadership.
          Nations chose between two objectives--selfishness and selflessness.
          Recently, France and Germany, among others, chose to be selfish.   They ignored all the evidence in Iraq that would justify a toppling of a regime that everyone knew was not just a manufacturer of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), but also willing to use them on their own people as well as others.   This same nation paid $25,000 to every suicide bomber, fomenting Terrorism outside its borders.

           America stepped up to the plate and took a hammer and smashed the free rule of Terrorism worldwide.
           Up-and-coming Terrorists looking to Saddam Hussein as a role model, now see the rubble not the palaces.
           How many Terrorist cells in America and around the globe lost members when they realized at least one guy "who had overdosed on moral clarity" would hunt them down and destroy their hopes of a world that stuck its head in the sand?
           It's too bad that Kristoff is so blinded by his prejudice and bigotry that he can't see that moral clarity, in small or large or even excessive doses, is the fuel of Vigilance.
          Terrorism is about creating Fear, Intimidation and Complacency in the minds of the innocent.  Vigilance is about replacing Fear with Courage, Intimidation with Conviction, and Complacency with Right Actions for the Children's Children's Children.

          Can it be wrong for the children of the world to see that America will fight against tyrants?  Can it be wrong for the children of the world to see a nation being more selfless than selfish, and rather than sit back and wait for a global consensus to human abuse, step in and risk its reputation as a "good-old-boy" to stand virtually alone in the battle against the Beast of Terror?
            These issues are toilet paper to Kristoff.
             He can only see the waste because he must live in a sewer of discontent.  
            Moral clarity might be something he should examine as a tool to express what Americans think of our actions in Iraq and the world.
           Despite the attacks of dung-slingers like Kristoff against alleged gunslingers like President Bush, Americans support our role as "the nation of moral clarity."
           Perhaps, when it all said and done, Kristoff has overdosed on dung clarity.
           However, there's hope.  He can sign the Pledge of Vigilance and climb out of the sewer.
           I just won't hold my breath for that event to happen.
        
      

     

July 7--Striking Out The Beast Of Terror In Central Park

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