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Gerald Plessner

Kathleen Parker shows unsurprising bias

by

Gerald Plessner

July 31, 2006 - It is always embarrassing when a reasonably bright person says or writes something stupid. But Kathleen Parker, a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, has shown a degree of innocence and bias that makes one wonder.

In a column about John Kerry's recent comments declaring that, "If I was president this (war between Hezbollah and Israel) wouldn't have happened."

Says Parker, "Kerry, who did declare that, apparently has more chutzpah than nuance, as it turns out."

Kerry's statement, given on the campaign trail for Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, strikes Parker as an offensive idea.

Parker uses as an example of Kerry's lack of qualification to discuss the subject of the Hezbollah-Israeli confrontation, his Republican-defined flip-flops in the run up to the war on Iraq.

"Whatever his motivations, the vote contributed to his most infamous "flip-flop" and one of the Bush campaign's most effective ads, which quoted Kerry saying: 'I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.'"

Additionally, her statement shows the power of Republican propaganda and how the Republican use of catch phrases (i.e. flip-flops) is used by otherwise fair commentators to slant their comments in favor of the party in power.

Parker has not yet learned the lessons of the lies, distortions and incompetence of her president and political party and how they have led this country into the miasma that it experiences today.

But Parker should get one thing straight. Even Dennis Kucinich, the ultra-liberal Democratic Congressman from Ohio, would have done a better job managing our international relations than George W. Bush!

The Congressman from Cleveland would have at least tried to restart the Israeli-Palestinian conversation, rather than avoid it like the plague as Bush did for two full years, waiting for Yasser Arafat to die.

What Parker and the neo-conservative neo-colonialists within the Republican party will never understand is that every new attack against the West by a Muslim group or state is a result of their belief in our weakness and our loss of prestige because of George W. Bush's hapless leadership. It is not a precursor of any attack but a result of the Iraq adventure.

The prime reasons for our failures in Iraq and our deteriorating relationships around the world are two-fold. The first is the administration's belief in truly malevolent ideas like a pre-emptive war on Iraq or the destruction of the United Nations.

Because of what we now know was a conspiracy to take us to war against our better instincts, it should be clear to every American that we have lost the power to be an honest broker in the Middle East and that we are relatively unable to deal with the nuclear future of Iran.

A Kerry administration certainly would not have been anywhere as arrogant, duplicitous and incompetent in meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century and it is probable that it would have done a lot better than what we have.

The truth is that, for every dingbat hanger-on in the Bush Administration, there are a dozen people in and around Washington who could do a better job in the assignment. Given the Republican neo-conservative hatred of government and their desire to destroy it, most of those competent people are probably in the Democratic party.

The good news is that a majority of voters --- both Democrat and Republican --- now understand that Republican politicians are the last people they want running anything. Except perhaps the Arabian Horse Association.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gerald Plessner is a Southern California businessman who writes regularly on issues of politics and culture. He would be pleased to hear from you and may be contacted at gerald@geraldplessner.com.