The Smarm Also Rises

One of the small, but continuing pleasures of being out of Manhattan is that one no longer risks reading the emissions of the ever-smarmy Joe Conason in those defenseless moments when, having devoured most of a New York Observer, you are still stuck between subway stations, and are forced to choose between reading Conason and watching the rider across from you drool onto the floor. And that is a close run thing, I'm here to tell you.

Still, the persistence of this scribbler on the Net means that you will, sooner or later, have a lapse into intellectual masochism and dial the doofus up. Earlier today, since much of the news seemed to be

drooling onto the floor, I slipped again and brought up a Conason column. Suffice it to say, he does not disappoint.

If one wishes to take the current measure of our leftist elite, Conason is always a dependable if faint pulse. This week he's running true to form and performing in the key of high petulance (his single chord).

Like most leftists. the recent slight tilt of the country from the Republican thieves to the Democratic thieves has left Conason, after a slight orgasmic rush, still feeling limp and unsatisfied as the world, dammit, still refuses to mirror his feverish vision. You see, it is not enough to win in Conason's Happy World. No, one must be able to see the world doing everything, right now, 'the correct way, dammit!' Anything less is just never, ever good enough.

Case in point is what Conason really got when he finally got his wish to be rid of Donald Rumsfeld. It was a cheap and brief thrill and then Joe was right back whipping out the crying towel and bemoaning the fact that the last American boots weren't off the ground of Iraq the very next day.

Instead, Conason has had to come to terms with the blunt, brute fact that, despite his deepest and darkest desires, he really doesn't have all that much to say about the clear and present American foreign policy. Nor, being a mere peddler of smarm and spite, is he likely to have.

"[D]espite [incoming Sec-Def Robert Gates] thoughtful tone and refreshing candor, there is little reason to believe that his arrival at the Pentagon will mark a significant change in American policy toward Iraq. Nor will the bipartisan mush emerging from the Iraq Study Group -- which included Mr. Gates until his nomination was announced -- promote useful new directions." -- A Belated Dose of Truth About Iraq

The irony here is that Conason is forced to cast about for a vision that matches his hallucinatory passions and finds it, not in one of the Holy Texts of Noam Chomsky, but in the last leaked memo of .... wait for it ... Donald Rumsfeld.

"The latest glimmer of a sane exit strategy appeared, of all places, in a classified memo authored by Mr. Rumsfeld, of all people, that someone leaked to The New York Times. While several Senators wondered why he had neglected to tell them of his urge to change course over the past several months, Mr. Rumsfeld's tardy list of policy options included at least one potentially useful suggestion. The U.S. might just start to pull out some troops, he wrote, "so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."

Already we see Nostalgie de la Rumsfeld begin to ooze out of the American mindset most resistant to analytical self-examination, that of the hyper-entitled leftistas. It would seem that Rumsfeld, in leaving, gave the Conasonites a festschrift they could not otherwise obtain during his tenure.

This small, slim reed that Conason is pleased to, almost literally, pull out of Rumsfeld's ass has an aroma intoxicating to our lad. He is almost immediately transported from Rumsfeld's parting shot to a festival of intellectual self-abuse that climaxes in Conason's vision of the whole Middle East region taking a group talking-cure as a means of resolving their 'minor' differences. After all, the talking cure works so well for the Conason set, why shouldn't it bring the headchoppers and the suicide bombers of the region right round?

Conason, like the rest of his lackluster lackeys, sees it all so clearly:

"Convened under the aegis of the Iraqi government, formal talks could bring together the armed factions, including representatives of the Sunni insurgents and the Shiite militias, with the promise that a cease-fire and settlement would lead to a timetable for American departure.

To which clear-headed people must calmly respond lest Joe's Happy World vanish like the highland mist:

"Why, yes, Joe. Yes, talking with these sorts really, really might not only elicit that promise and that settlement, they would also very probably agree to that settlement. And they would hold to that promise, Joe, and to that settlement, Joe, right up to the very moment that the last pair of American boots hit the helicopter and ascended straight up into heaven and back to these fair shores.

"The next moment, Joe, would mark the beginning of a hot and heavy Muslim Murder Marathon that would not stop until the Red Sea ran crimson. Those abandoned bulldozers and back-hoes at the deserted American bases would be revved up and gunned out into the desert overnight, Joe. Because the thing Iraq would be most short of on the day after America abandoned the country would be mass graves.

"But since none of them would be for you, Joe, you couldn't care less. You'll be too busy daisy-chaining the congrats all around your small smarmy circle of friends. After all, like all petulant children throughout the world and time, you will have, at last, have gotten your way. And that's what really counts, isn't it? Not being right. Not being just. Not being fair. Neither morality nor honor. But just getting your way.

"That's really been the point of your whole extended bitch and moan media marathon since, well, the Florida Recount, hasn't it?

"Well, you and all your ilk may well -- in the fullness of time -- get your way. But I wouldn't hold your breath.

"On second thought, since it will certainly be more than a year before you can possibly get your way, please do hold your breath. Otherwise you risk drowning in your own smarm."

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Posted by Vanderleun at December 11, 2006 4:02 PM | TrackBack
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