2008 Woodie Awards
A caricature of casus belli
Drew Bullock, Copy Editor
Issue date: 2/22/06 Section: Editorial
Things haven't looked this bad since the Peace of Augsburg. With the freedom of speech now held hostage by religious fanatics and raging, savage zealots, how quickly can we expect to see our other rights mortgaged off as appeasement? What's next, the right to bear arms? Freedom of assembly? Exemption from unreasonable search and seizure during the execution of a fatwa? And of course, our inane, mealy-mouthed media who scream bloody murder at the mere suggestion or accusation of the trampling of civil liberties when it is imputed to the defenders of civilization have exhorted the sacrifice of our right to freedom of expression to the surging hordes of barbarians all in the name of tolerance and sensitivity.
New pictures of Abu Ghraib and Dick Cheney shot a geriatric in the face? Let's play that on A1, top of the hour, front-loaded for maximum exposure. Let's get that on every channel twenty-six hours a day for a week. Pictures that incite hordes of rabid plebeians to stampede and firebomb embassies and businesses? Bury it. Exposing the very nature of our enemy would be downright jingoistic and a threat to diversity and awareness everywhere. The rioters show us democracy in action, but it serves neither the information business nor the administration to examine that prospect.
The media's vacillation and cowardice in the face of Muslim apoplexy is par for the course and something I could overlook, if it weren't contemporaneous with a government policy of spreading democracy to these very same barbarians using mob violence to pursue their agenda. Our Wilsonian misadventures are committing our blood and treasure to the expansion of participatory government to people who's idea of participation is sacrificing their children as explosives and gathering enough brute force together to obliterate any independent thought. Very Athenian this tyranny, but is it really what President Bush means when he delivers his one-dimensional apotheoses of democracy whenever pressed on the goings of the First Terrorist War?
New pictures of Abu Ghraib and Dick Cheney shot a geriatric in the face? Let's play that on A1, top of the hour, front-loaded for maximum exposure. Let's get that on every channel twenty-six hours a day for a week. Pictures that incite hordes of rabid plebeians to stampede and firebomb embassies and businesses? Bury it. Exposing the very nature of our enemy would be downright jingoistic and a threat to diversity and awareness everywhere. The rioters show us democracy in action, but it serves neither the information business nor the administration to examine that prospect.
The media's vacillation and cowardice in the face of Muslim apoplexy is par for the course and something I could overlook, if it weren't contemporaneous with a government policy of spreading democracy to these very same barbarians using mob violence to pursue their agenda. Our Wilsonian misadventures are committing our blood and treasure to the expansion of participatory government to people who's idea of participation is sacrificing their children as explosives and gathering enough brute force together to obliterate any independent thought. Very Athenian this tyranny, but is it really what President Bush means when he delivers his one-dimensional apotheoses of democracy whenever pressed on the goings of the First Terrorist War?