It Takes A Drama Critic

If you're like me, you've been enjoying Frank Rich's columns in the NYTimes for a while now. Well, now he has a book, and Salon has a feature/review.

Again, this all looks pretty different when you're an American living in Canada, seeing and reading media that's at least a little more fact-based and less fear-based than most of what I see on CNN, or read when I visit cities like Detroit, New York, Orlando, Houston, Buffalo, or Chicago. (All of which I've been to in the last little while, and sat open-mouthed when I see the terrible -- verging on inane -- crap being fed to you by your news media.) Liberal media? Yeah. Right.

Anyway, two things: I've started watching Countdown, because Olberman's commentaries are just too rich. And it's a damn fine news program. A little humor, plenty of light, not quite as much silly heat. It's ... dare I say it ... almost Canadian in its seriousness.

'Course then Olberman goes and does one of these again:



Second, my favorite passage from the Salon review of Rich's book:

"Bush was a competitor who liked to win the game, even if he was unclear about what to do with his victory beyond catering to the economic interests of his real base, the traditional Republican business constituency ... Iraq was just the vehicle to ride to victory in the midterms, particularly if it could be folded into the proven brand of 9/11. A cakewalk in Iraq was the easy way, the lazy way, the arrogant way, the telegenic way, the Top Gun way to hold on to power. It was of a piece with every other shortcut in Bush's career, and it was a hand-me-down from Dad drenched in oil to boot."

The only people Bush has left are the rich who are too priveleged to care, and those who are so frightened that they have slipped entirely into infantile fantasies of authoriarianism which is the very antithesis to the roots of American democracy.

The verdict is already in: worst president ever. Now it remains to be seen if enough people have the courage and smarts to vote something other than their fear. If they choose fear again, then maybe we all truly deserve the approbation of the world.