Wolcott: A-Roving We Will Go (Rove is Desparate as * Ratings Fall)

[RamboLiberal]

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/06/aroving_we_will.php

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Rove will no problem rounding up a posse. They're already galloping ahead of him. Bill O'Reilly wants the hosts of Air America rounded up. Ann Coulter routinely conflates liberals and traitors. Etc.

And today Victor Davis In Excelsis Deo Hanson contributes his own more tasteful flavor of McCarthyism. Ignoring the snickers of the peanut gallery, he argues that conservatives have a harder time waging war than do liberals, which will come as news to the moaning ghost of LBJ. Here is his reasoning: "In a leisured and liberal society, it is very difficult in general for a conservative to wage war, because the natural suspicion arises — as a result of the conservative's tragic view of human nature and his belief in the occasional utility of force — that he enjoys the enterprise far more than a lip-biting progressive, who may in fact order more destruction."

It's certainly news to me that the conservative George Dubya nurses a "tragic view of human nature," or even a mildly saturnine one. He is forever thumping on in public about how optimistic he is and in private giving the rhetorical buzzoff to what he calls "handwringers." Helen Thomas has hinted loudly that Bush is the one president in her long memory who wanted to go to war. Kicking off a war with a "Shock and Awe" extravanganza certainly does not suggest the sobriety and gravity Bush idolators such as Peggy Noonan attribute to him.

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What amazes me is that more Americans now blame Bush for provoking the war with Iraq than blame Saddam Hussein. That's not an argument I've heard anyone make on cable talk or on the op-ed pages. Somehow Americans drew that conclusion all on their own! The tide of popular opinion turning against the war is washing away walls we didn't even know were there.

[PurityOfEssence]

1. As a confessed overly-dicted snot, I have to say that this is unreadable

No, this isn't Sartrire, it's important: the writer is so in love with regaling others with his vocabulary and inciteful oblique references that one is turned-off enough to not stay and divine the meaning of the prose.

This will be the death of us: the reactionaries know how to push universal buttons; we parse and fritter our way to oblivion. No wonder we're tarred as elitists.

[Doctor Panacea]

3. Yes

Yes, Wolcott is definitely in love with himself.

[scottxyz]

4. Wolcott's a good writer

Maybe not everyone's cup of tea - but there is definitely a place for this sort of literary, satirical writing in the US media, and Vanity Fair's Wolcott does an excellent job of it.

There's room for more folksy, gut-punching commentators like Molly Ivins and Randi Rhodes in the Dem tent - as well as room for more rarefied, genteel types like Wolcott.

The whole dichotomy of Dems-as-latte-drinkers and Repubs-as-cornfed-cowboys is a bunch of baloney - because there's also plenty of spoiled, upper-crust, Ivy League conservative snobs who think that liberals are a bunch of unwashed hippies and bloggers who can't spell.

These crumpets-and-tea conservatives probably swoon to the pretentious style of grammatically correct but intellectually vacuous types like William Safire or George F. Will or David Brooks - and the healthy combination of Olympian diction and plebeian ideals Wolcott provides might be just what it takes to wake a few of those types out of their Victorian slumber and bring them over to our side - where the grammar is fine, and the party's more fun!

But then, maybe I'm unqualified to judge - I admit I also like the rhythmic cadences of Lewis Lapham at Harper's, or the telegraphic style of the early Joan Didion - for example, the older essays where she used to rip apart Ron and Nancy.

To each his own!

[Jade Fox]

2. I love Wolcott.... n/t