Today, the website RealClearPolitics featured an editorial by radio host and author Dennis Prager attacking that amorphous thing conservatives love to call “the left.” Although nothing new, this particular article was particularly hypocritical in its list of the most recent things the left has done to “hurt America.”
And here they are:
- The first example involved the ACLU, which has threatened Southwest Airlines with a lawsuit. Southwest ordered a passenger off a flight after she refused to cover her T-shirt on which was printed an expletive -- "Fu--ers" -- referring to President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I have previously noted in this column the widespread approval of foul language on the Left… To most Americans, the huge increase in public cursing is a sign of a deteriorating civilization; to the Left it is a sign of a freer, less hypocritical one.
I personally do not support the ACLU, even if at times it adopts a position identical to my own. The contention that foul language is somehow monopolized by “the left” is almost too ridiculous to even counter. Where was Prager when Dick Cheney, the Vice-President of the United States, told a US Senator and ranking member Judiciary Committee to “fuck yourself”? "I felt better after I said it," Cheney later told Fox News Channel, with a grin.
Of course, this is nothing new. “During the 2000 campaign, Bush pointed out a New York Times reporter to Cheney and said, without knowing the microphone was picking it up, “major-league ass-hole.” Cheney's response: “Big Time.”
In a previous article, Prager forgives this since “The difference between using an expletive when you think no one can hear you and when you want the world to hear you should be obvious to everyone.”
“Then there was that famous Talk magazine interview of Bush by Tucker Carlson in 1999, in which the future president repeatedly used the F-word.”
The point? People tend to swear. It is a nasty habit, and one that I am more than guilty for doing. To make this a partisan issue by suggesting that it is a problem by “the left” however, is, frankly, pretty fucked up!
- The second example was a federal judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton ordering the Defense Department to release all remaining photos of prisoner abuse by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison. Though it is certain that the only effect of the photos will be to further endanger Americans at home and abroad and increase the danger to American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and though there is absolutely no need for the public to see these photos, the judge ordered their release.
Was Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein right to order the photos released? That is a discussion worthy of legal and political debate. However, to dismiss the decision as an example of “the left” hurting America is baseless. Hellerstein was not appointed to the position because he was buddies with Clinton, or happened to be his personal lawyer (wink, wink). He received his L.L.B. from Columbia Law School, where he was an editor of the Columbia Law Review, and served in the Judge Advocate Corps of the U.S. Army from 1959-1960. In other words, he was qualified for the position.
Furthermore, Prager pretends that there was no legal justification for the decision when in fact Hellerstein acknowledged the dilemma but said that terrorists “do not need pretexts for their barbarism” and that suppressing the pictures would amount to submitting to blackmail.
In any event, here is a radical left-wing idea: Why not express outrage at the perpetrators of the crime, and the organizational structure that seems to facilitate its continuance, rather than the messenger that brings it to light?
- A third example is the Left's libel of Bill Bennett.
I have already discussed this issue in a previous post, but suffice to say, contrary to popular conservative accusations, there was no libel. Liberals understood exactly what Bennett meant, understood the context, and still rightly exposed his statement as racist.
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