Safire, Sulzberger, Brooks, and the New York Times: Relentlessly cheering for Bush's GESTAPO war-time powers bill

[Note: this post was formerly titled "David Brooks Shocked to Discover America Exists Outside the Beltway."]

Another great post by David Sirota. This time Sirota unleashes his blazing spotlight on the arrogance and scorn of David Brooks, the New York Time's resident Right-Wing shill and replacement for William Safire.

William Safire was the former NIXON SPEECHWRITER turned NEW YORK TIMES columnist who RELENTLESSLY harangued the Clinton administration from 1992 to well past 2000. Among Safire's other sneering editorials were his promise "INDICTMENTS [against the Clintons] WILL BE HANDED DOWN THIS WEEK!" and his infamous op-ed "Hillary Clinton is a GONGENITAL LIAR." Note: "Congenital" is a birth or genetic defect, so in essence Mr. Safire was echoing the Nazi smear of the 1930s, that a person could be born with "subhuman" or criminal attributes, as of course the Nazis accused the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Africans, and other "subhuman" races of being.

Well, Brooks isn't quite as bad as Safire... yet. But then, Safire seemed reasonable enough in the early '90s, before his vitriol agains the Democrats and Clinton White House ratcheted up. Indeed, Mr. Safire was an extremely literate and well read writer, and has authored a half-dozen books on the proper usage of the English language. But along the way of subordinating proper English to his own prejudices and projections, Safire was so RELENTLESSLY dedicated to smearing the Clinton administration that, like other Republican critics, he took to conjecture, insinuation, and unsupported accusation as a journalistic "right." As, for example, the above misuse of the word "congenital" to emphasize, for smear and scorn affect, the charge of lying. As, for example, Safire, the Times, and the Republicans even managed to make the Clinton's overnight guest list at the White House into "A SCANDAL," the so-called "Lincoln bedroom scandal." AS IF a Democratic president did not have the right that every other American has, to invite guests to spend the night. (Note: the so-called "Lincoln Bedroom Scandal" followed the pattern and template of Repubicans TRYING TO INVENT SCANDALS against the Clintons, they had first tried to make the Clinton's firing of the private, Republican friendly White House travel office staff into a scandal, AS IF a Democratic President did not have the right every other American has, to fire his travel agents and find another. The very idea of Republicans and Wall Street, who cheer when a company lays off workers on during the holidays ("Cheers" with higher stock prices), criticizing the Clintons for firing the Bush- and Reagan friendly travel office! Which just goes to show, RUTHLESS, RELENTLESS REPETITION is an effective tactic in Republican/New York Times/Wall St. Journals (et al) SMEAR MONGERING.)


Safire, Brooks, Suzlberger, the NEW YORK TIMES: because of the smear-mob jihad of these Journalistic Thugs, on September 28, 2006, the US House and Senate based America's own NAZI ENABLING ACTS, giving absolute, dictatorial, life-and-death powers to the US president over ANY and ALL American citizens.

Just as Adolf Hitler gave to his Gestapo and SS Concentration Camp commanders.

Thank you, Mr. Safire, Mr. Sulzeberger, and the New York Times. And you too, Mr. Brooks.

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David Brooks Shocked to Discover America Exists Outside the Beltway
David Sirota
10.01.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/david-brooks-shocked-to-d_b_30678.html

Every now and again, there are moments when establishment spokespeople suddenly grasp what's actually going on in the country and proceed to make statements that indicate a potential sea change. The most famous of these was Walter Cronkite's missive about Vietnam. But today, we may have another of these moments (granted, from a far less important media figure).


That's right - in today's New York Times, elitist columnist David Brooks suddenly discovers that America is comprised of more than just the Washington Beltway.
In his column that echoes what many of us have been saying for years, Brooks notes that:

"Democrats are running strong Senate campaigns in the upper South (James Webb in Virginia, Harold Ford in Tennessee), in the big job-loss states (Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Claire McCaskill in Missouri) and even in a few places out West (Jon Tester in Montana). And in each case, the candidates are running as factory-floor populists who would throw up if they had to sit through a Renaissance Weekend...Today's most prominent Democratic candidates are more Mines and Mills than Towns and Gowns...The Democrats were once a free trade party. But Sherrod Brown wrote a book called 'Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed' and most of this year's strong Democratic candidates rail -- like John Edwards -- against outsourcing and trade agreements. Their core issue is the economic resentment of the struggling middle class."
Not surprisingly, in classic Brooks fashion, Brooks goes on to disparage what he has just reported on. He dishonestly caricatures reality by stating: "Can a politics that evades the modern realities of Islamic extremism and the skill-based global economy really be the basis of a majority movement? I doubt it." Right, because standing up for America's middle class and demanding trade deals include labor, environmental and wage protections would bring on the downfall of the modern economy and the worldwide victory of Osama bin Laden. Please.

Nonetheless, the damage is already done. Brooks has shown just how frightened the establishment is that ordinary people in the American heartland are running for office on platforms that represent - gasp! - ordinary people. The Brooks, Broders, Rothenbergs, DLC staffers and others are really scared out of their minds because their whole fake world and faux "centrism" is collapsing before their eyes.

I want to be clear - the 2006 elections will not be the final arbiter of all this. Brooks wants us to believe that if any one of the candidates running on this populist platform loses, it means middle-class populism is dead, and that we should go back to the "Third Way" nonsense that makes the cocktail party crowd comfortable. But that's a trap - the fact that the establishment is publicly throwing temper tantrums about candidates representing ordinary people shows that progress has only started to be made. This is a long-term movement that will carry on well after 2006 - and there's nothing David Brooks can write that can prevent that.