Russert at High Noon


Fat Tim Russert took his victory lap on the Imus in the Morning show today.
Ghod I am so sick of this bloated shyster quoting his semi-mythical father "Big Russ" whenever the Meet the Press host wants to wallow in self congratulation...it is all beginning to sound very weird and unsettling.
Nonetheless given the size and morbidity of his ego, Tim Russert is the perfect interlocutor for our vain increasingly delusional President.
Very pleased with himself Tim was...all for asking the President a bunch of questions that GWB should've answered like a man a long ago.
It was akin to a make-up class compleat with the President sitting there glassy eyed looking obviously bored with his own lies and evasions.
Bush is still shilling for an phantom Iraqi nuclear weapons program....but more and more the President's rhetoric is composed of serenely assured statements followed by timorous corrections and wholesale revisions scattered throughout the remnants of the "thinking press".
GWB even promised to release all his pay stubs and personal data to counter rumors that he was AWOL from the Air National Guard for most of 1972.
The President then added with near psychotic aplomb "that information was already released in 2000" (hint, it wasn't and still has not been).
The draft evasion issue is said to be at best window-dressing...after all Dan Quayle and Bill Clinton both evaded the draft to the best of their abilities.
That is true....we've heard this story before and since others got a pass, Bush will get one or so coos the conventional wisdom.
Then again Quayle and Clinton were not war time Presidents.
Still that argument is a fine one and apt to get overlooked come next fall.
Nevertheless, the AWOL thing goes to the heart of who Bush really is as a leader-at least that is how I see it.
It is ultimately, a question of privilege....not of pay stubs and the like.
We can't change the fact that he was honorably discharged.
Still, it is clear Bush got in on privilege, got out on privilege and never gave any of it single thought even though someone had to go to Viet Nam in his place...someone more than likely poor and ill-connected to the world of power.
Just how much privilege is George Bush entitled to anyway?
How much more does he expect?

That might've made a good question from the curiously deferential Mr. Tim Russert.

Entitlement is something John Kerry understands as well, he grew up in fairly patrician circumstances.
He also understood at a young age that unrestricted privilege is a kind of galloping medievalism in the making.
Hence Kerry volunteered for the navy and then volunteered for hazardous duty in Viet Nam....winning a chestful of medals in the process.
The Senator's view of privilege is therefore markedly different that the President...much was given John Kerry therefore much was expected of him.
It is noblesse oblige....but we've had precious little of that these last few years with all our wild talk of revolution and empire.
And frankly given a choice between empire or revolution I'll take John Kerry's concept of service every time.
It is at least something that takes circumstances and limitations into account.