The Billiken's Bluff

Last week I typed up a firey response to the Got's post about the speeches at the Republican convention, focusing largely on his (ludicrous) suggestion that the housing boom does not signal social and economic progress under Bush's term. I later deleted the post because I felt I had been too insulting to the Got, as I in no uncertain terms layed out what I think of people who would use the Village Voice as if it were some sort of authority on macroeconomic analysis. The day before 9-11, my diatribe on the depressing direction of Anti-Bushocrat ideology (I no longer call them "Democrats" out of respect to Democrats like FDR and Truman who actually had ideas) was tainted with no small degree of bitterness. So in the end I scrapped the post as a whole with the intention of posting some elements of it later. I ain't trying to hate on the Got here.

Anyways, one argument I refrained from making was any in defense of Zell’s speech. Though I certainly agreed with where he was coming from, I thought when I read it that he worded his arguments in a way that left him open to too many criticisms. Sure enough, smarmy John Stewart apparently took a break long enough from sucking up to John Kerry to use a Michael Moorishly edited video clip juxtaposing Zell’s criticism of the use of “occupier” with Bush using the same word. How damning! The Got, it seems, thinks this proves something. The larger point, of course – the one that resonated so strongly with the American people at this convention and began Bush’s march to a second electoral victory – is that soldiers in Iraq are both occupiers and liberators, though Anti-Bushocrats can employ only the former while Republicans openly use the second. Is it not true that to most liberals the soldiers were not liberators, only occupiers? The Got certainly sees it that way. And yet, people like the Got are naturally upset that Zell would make this point known. Of course they are - the America that is poised to re-elect Bush certainly understands that the U.S. forces in Iraq have constituted both occupiers and liberators, and it only hurts liberals to reveal their cycnical pessimistic worldview that amounts to a depressing nostalgia for the days when Saddam was in power. It's revolting.

But, since I didn't try to help out Zell myself, here's him defending himself from the Jon Stewarts and Gots of the world in his own words in the Wall Street Journal. Hear the man out!