The Bend I've Gone Around

by va

 

The Washington Post editorial board is not happy with an editorial that appeared in the Washington Post, even though we're pretty sure the Washington Post and the Washington Post are in fact one and the same shitty newspaper. Some terrible writer named Barack Obama writes, terribly:

By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished.

Further on Obama anaphorically alludes to "Letter from Birmingham Jail" to clarify the stakes of the stimulus: "now is the time to protect health insurance" and "now is the time to save billions," and "now is the time to give our children every advantage." Thus MLK's dream that one day the first black President would cite him in a conservative rag in an effort to beat back treasonous Republicans has been fulfilled. This would be uplifting were it not for the difference between the rhetorical situations, i.e. King was in jail while Obama is the freaking President. If only he had quoted the immediately preceding part about "people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill" I would maybe be interested. Admit your mistake, Mr. President! You're dangling carrots while Republicans have been eating the stick instead.

Of course, of course, the author makes good points: Don't cut all the taxes everyone's pretending to pay, don't let's drive off of crumbling bridges anymore, etc. But the Washington Post editorial board is not persuaded. They have NO stylistic quibbles, and instead go straight for

this is a departure from [Obama's] previous emphasis on bipartisanship.

And it's all very sad because Barack Obama may be right--"Mr. Obama is justified," in their words--but it would be better if he could be right in a more bipartisan fashion, and, I dunno, attribute his good ideas to Republicans. But that's not the biggest problem the Washington Post editorial board has with Barack Obama's Washington Post editorial. Their problem is that

Mr. Obama praised the package yesterday as "not merely a prescription for short-term spending" but a "strategy for long-term economic growth in areas like renewable energy and health care and education." This is precisely the problem. As credible experts, including some Democrats, have pointed out, much of this "long-term" spending either won't stimulate the economy now, is of questionable merit, or both.

So now we're at the part where the WaPo e-board doesn't understand the words it prints on its own opinion page even when it's quoting them. How does "short-term spending" and "long-term economic growth" morph into "long-term spending?" I'll go out on a limb and say said morphing occurs when Barack Obama's words are magically filtered through wrong and shitty WaPo reporting on an imaginary CBO report which in someone's imagination said that stimulus money won't stimulate the economy for a long time.

So, to recap, short-term spending is long-term spending; Republicans are wrong but bipartisanship is right; spending and growth are not means and ends but "confused objectives"; and the Washington Post would never let the Washington Post get away with publishing an opinion it thinks is right without also appealing to shitty Washington Post reporting to claim it's wrong. I don't know if there's a name for the rhetorical game the Post is playing (centrism?) but it sounds like why am I hitting myself, why am I hitting myself, why am I hitting myself.

BTW, the Post tells Obama to follow a plan that maybe doesn't quite exist anymore, and which no one is really willing to take credit for. Debate FAIL, lawmaking FAIL, moderation FAIL. Fuck.

MORE. Are these the sticks we've been waiting for? Maybe! Who can say!