Sunday, July 08, 2007

The Flag Children

Today, Jeff Jacoby lectures the Commonwealth on our lamentable lack of flag waving and contrasts Massachusetts unfavorably with the simple catch-in-yer-throat patriotism of his boyhood home, Euclid Ohio.
Then suddenly, seized as if by some frenzy, Jacoby drags Howard Zinn out of the Sacred Groves of Academia and rhetorically assaults the BU Prof with a tire iron.
Sigh....in other words, Jeff couldn't think of anything sensible to say about Scooter Libby's sentence commutation or the impending collapse of the Iraqi Government.
I often wonder, at the end of the day, when the sun is gone red with a nameless fury and things go still and quiet, when Jeff is done carving up scarecrows and cutting down straw-men by the regiment....if the Boston Globe columnist doesn't feel faintly embarrassed with himself?
I mean, he rarely makes a fair argument with a real opponent, generally his modus operandi is to seek out the weakest thesis advanced by the sketchiest character and run them thru a rhetorical wood-chipper.
Jacoby does this week after week, and calls it, "debate", but even he has to realize what a fraud the whole thing is.
Euclid Ohio may actuyally fly more flags that the whole of Commonwealth, but I doubt it.
One wonder though, are their columnists less inclined towards mental buncombe than ours?

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