Recent Comments

1. over 13 years ago on Doonesbury

   The term “christlibs” (meaning Christian liberals) is obviously pejorative, as distinguished from “Christlib” (with a capital “C”) standing for “Christian libertarians.”

   For a Christlib, the emphasis is on Christ. To quote their website, “At Christlib.net we value a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

   By contrast, “christlibs” are liberals who, while professing agnosticism or atheism, wholeheartedly approve Jesus’s command to “love your enemies.” Most christlibs also reject the notion of a just war.

   Ps. @ palin drome

   Not all liberals (and despite my polemic logo, I consider myself one) are “christlibs.” I believe war is as necessary to civilization as commerce is, and that it too should be conducted with skill and efficiency—as it has not often been in Iraq and Afghanistan until this month..

2. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   “Isn’t it interesting that Democrats are willing to go on trial for their accusations, but Republicans hide?” asks Neolib BrianCrook, adding that Clinton was never “proved guilty of perjury, and when the Senate tried him for perjury, it found him not guilty.”

   Here’s a perfect example of Neolib’s selective memory. In fact, a federal judge later found Clinton in contempt of court for not telling the truth under oath (i.e., perjury). And he eventually admitted giving false testimony about his relationship with Lewinsky, surrendered his law license, and paid about $1 million in fines and settlement costs.

   But these mere historical facts are not even on Neolib’s radar screen.

3. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   Stopping her ears to fbjsr’s cogent demonstration—-that Clinton’s lying merited impeachment whereas Thomas’s did not—-Neolib still backs Trudeau’s efforts to revise history from partisan motives.

   Neolibs make lousy historians because their selective memory perverts their judgment. To quote some of their arguments from yesterday and today:

   Anita Hill “paid a heavy price for her bravery and honesty” whereas Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky are dismissed as Republican stooges. And Clarence Thomas is vilified for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee whereas President Clinton is excused for his flat lie to the American people.

   Why? Because his fellatio in the Oval Office (as compared with Thomas’s remark about pubic hair) “is not something [Clinton] should have been asked about in front of a Grand Jury.”

   Blindly partisan historical judgments like these are right up (or down) there with Fox news.

4. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   Neolibs make lousy historians because their selective memory perverts their judgment. Thus Anita Hill “paid a heavy price for her bravery and honesty” whereas Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky are dismissed as Republican stooges. And Clarence Thomas is vilified for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee whereas President Clinton is excused for his flat lie to the American people because his fellatio in the Oval Office (as compared with Thomas’s remark about pubic hair) “is not something [Clinton] should have been asked about in front of a Grand Jury.”

   Blindly partisan historical judgments like these are right up (or down) there with Fox news.

5. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   @poohbear

   If Thomas “lied,” it was to avoid being Borked by the ideologue Democrats. Here’s what Ted Kennedy said within an hour of Bork’s nomination in 1987:

   “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”

   This lying, cartoonish distortion is very much in Trudeau’s vein. Neolibs are too eager to lap up Trudeau’s historical revisions. They need to examine what actually happened before offering their politically correct, or Doonesburied history.

6. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   Trudeau’s senile penchant for revising history has brought the Neolibs out in force today. He should use more caution in disseminating falsehoods among his readers whose “liberal” experience goes back only to Bush and Clinton. Mark tells them that Anita Hill “remains credible” after twenty years and will for another twenty. Do he and Trudeau think Bill Cinton’s credibility has grown (rather than vanished) since Clinton was impeached? What will be the verdict on Clinton ten years from now, when nobody will remember Anita Hill or Arlen Specter or Joe Biden?

   Clarence Thomas just has to survive until Doonesbury has been retired to the archives along with the Justice’s tepid opinions. It’s doubtful that Mark will be around to keep a date with Mrs. Thomas in 2020, much less 2030.

7. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   Their outraged response to the needling by Nemesys proves that Neolibs are still alive if not quite well. So far, their responses have all been predictable and thoroughly in character: Bush was the worst president (excusing our incumbent from the competition, of course); his fleeting popularity owes everything to the media; the only progressives who can save us from that Neolib bogey “a return to the Bush years” are the Senate Democrats.

   It was precisely because they believed—or at least said—these things that the Democrats got their teeth kicked in by an angry electorate. Neolib is constitutionally deaf to the vox populi.

   I’m not surprised that BCrook managed to tear himself away from his “duties” to remind anybody who cares to listen that he’s compulsively recording “history” as it unfolds. For him, that history includes the logic, the grammar, and even the reading of anyone in the forum who mentions George W. Bush. Or as he would say, what the vox populi spoke doesn’t “make sense.”

8. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   @mroberts88

   I can’t answer that. I have to admit that Trudeau’s caricature rings true: Bush lost no sleep over his decision to respond with force when we were attacked on 9/11. How many Legacyshooters have been hurt as a result of his decision? More important, does he care? (His memoir doesn’t say)

   I may have more respect for Obama who agonized over his decision to renew the original war against al Qaida, our enemy of 9/11. But if Obama is guided by the will of the people, then so was Bush.

   War is hell, and the irrational choices we make in wartime can and should be second-guessed. Moreover, success doesn’t prove a president was right. Think how we’d judge Lincoln today if Lee had prevailed at Gettysburg. We’d blame Lincoln for misreading the “will of the people” and for sacrificing all those lives for nothing.

   Ps. @DavyG. For my idiosyncratic use of “neolib,” see my avatar.

9. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   @yuggib

   Trudeau planned the strip to coincide with Bush’s memoir, and both works were meant to come out at election time.

   Trudeau and I are both as anti-war as you are. All three of us differ from the Neolib pacifists who deny or avert their eyes from the historical experience of war—-a convenient excuse for not taking part in it.

   How can you hate war if you don’t know what it is but only know it disturbs YOUR peaceful dreams?

   Ps. @ Nelly, below

   Neolibs and Chickenhawk fascists deserve each other. Between them, they manage to obscure historical reality (at least for themselves).

10. about 14 years ago on Doonesbury

    After a disastrous week, Trudeau has wisely decided to drop the Bush-bashing that cost Democrats the election. He returns to personal anecdotes from the lives of his fictional characters.

    I wonder if Trudeau is aware of the irony in his decision? His despised classmate read the mood of the electorate far better than Trudeau did when he set about making fun of Bush’s memoir. Listen to this admission by an inveterate Bush mocker, Maureen Dowd:

    “The book lacks the vindictive or vaporous tone of many political autobiographies. It’s peppered with endearing personal stories, like the time W. made a Rose Garden speech supporting a Palestinian state and his mother called afterward to ask sarcastically, ‘How’s the first Jewish president doing?’”

    In their fight for the attention of politically distractable readers, the first round clearly goes to Bush. Trudeau had better find a new icon for W. Or at least retire him from the Doonesbury repertory, along with the Palin doll.

    Ps. to Yuggib

    You must understand that Trudeau is a liberal who hates war, but he’s too intelligent to pretend (as Neolib does) that wars don’t exist. Leo’s nightmare is the cartoonist’s way of acknowledging the tragic reality that war is a part of our lives and that a traumatized spouse can bring it even into the bedroom.