" The only remedy is spraying them with the garden hose. "

[donsu]

http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=Editorial&storyid=111479


Baying at the moon, Washington-style

Some years ago, I owned a beagle

named Leon. A handsome,

lemon-colored dog, Leon had a terrific nose. Turn him and his brother Otis loose in a thicket, and if those boys didn’t chase a rabbit out, then no rabbits lived there. Alas, Leon also did a lot of "coldtrailing," baying down scent lines so old that the rabbits which left them probably existed only in the form of coyote scat. Other dogs knew when Leon was bluffing, but he could drive you nuts babbling about nothing. My hunting buddies nicknamed him "The Journalist." I’ve started calling my current pack "The Pundits." See, they’ve developed this habit of accompanying distant police sirens with group howl-ins. Except when they get tuned up around 5 a.m., it’s pretty funny to watch. Rather like the savants on "Meet the Press" or "Reliable Sources," they stand in a circle hooting and eyeballing each other with their noses pointed at the sky. Even my wife’s basset hound joins the chorus. The only remedy is spraying them with the garden hose.

I wish Washington hounds were so easily discouraged. Recently, the D. C. pundits started baying about George W. Bush’s brilliant success bringing "democracy" to the Middle East. "Lately even the harshest critics of President Bush have been forced to admit: Maybe he’s right about freedom’s march around the globe," anchorman Brian Williams announced on NBC Nightly News. "What if we are watching an example of presidential leadership that will be taught in America’s schools for generations to come? It’s an idea gaining more currency."

Next came Andrea (Mrs. Alan Greenspan) Mitchell, who spoke of "a historic turning point, like the fall of the Berlin Wall." The analogy first appeared in David Ignatius’ Washington Post column. It was attributed to Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese Druze leader who’d had his U.S. visa revoked in 2003 after regretting that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whom he called a "microbe," had survived a Baghdad rocket attack. Vice President Dick Cheney echoed him on right-wing radio. It’s an officially approved White House theme.

How sincere was Jumblatt? Let me put it this way: I have Lebanese-born relatives by marriage. (Christians, if it matters, which in Lebanon it sure does.) Their default mode for analyzing Middle Eastern politics is to assume that nothing is what it seems and nobody’s motives are what they say. What really matters is which tribes/clans/religious sects/families are making alliances with which others for the purpose of screwing mutual enemies. They view other ways of looking at the world as childish.
-snip-
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wish we could still them with a garden hose

[bemildred]

1. "nothing is what it seems and nobody’s motives are what they say"

That works rather well here at home too, most anywhere actually.

[struggle4progress]

2. kick

[ribrepin]

3. Thanks for posting this

It describes to "poodle press" to a "T". They are currently standing around in a circle baying about the Shiavo case.

I am slowing developing the same view as the Lebanese.