"The little man" -- article

[fastpat]

Originally posted by stuartj
Post a pic. I'll bet we cant tell the difference.

[widebody911]

[pwd72s]

Wow Thom...what a perfect design!

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by stuartj
Post a pic. I'll bet we cant tell the difference.

If you cannot tell the difference... well, there are people in the world who are happy driving a Morris Minor, then there are those who like a responsive sports car.

Hopefully the photo below will help you with your decision.

[juanbenae]

Originally posted by yellowline
More armchair quarterbacking than ever in this thread...

Somebody help me out here. I'm a young guy, I want to hear both sides of the issue. I can vote in the upcoming elections of '06 and '08. What would you DO differently? I want detailed answers. Not "the opposite of what Bush does." Not a nondescript Kerry "plan." Not "well, I'd have done this differently.." Let's hear it. Details. What would you do to fix the country starting today, Feb. 9, 2006?

Put half the energy into the answer to that as you do criticizing Bush and we may have a viable alternative plan.

is that you bryan?

(trying new avatar out currently)

[rrpjr]

I will examine Garrison Keillor’s “little man” theory more closely. It occurred to me this might be worthwhile, as he is a folk artist of some renown and his essay contains a charge of some weight (the verdict of history) not normally associated with humorists.

In his opening paragraph he cites an AP article about President Bush as the implied provocation for his essay, but then admits he didn’t read it. He goes on to describe Bush as “small”, “petulant,” “hissy” and “squinty.” I guess these are good enough words for a humorist, but he leaves them hanging like ornaments on strings. Why and how, exactly, is Bush all these things? Citing no example, not having bothered to read the article, he leaves us with the assumption that he is not writing to persuade the unpersuaded but rather to coax a familiar response from a familiar audience.

His second paragraph is a back of the hand to Bush’s talents as a preacher. Fair enough – he’s not a preacher. But one would think that is the last thing a man like Garrison Keillor would want him, or any president, to be.

The third paragraph is a dry lamentation on the growth of government, the inequity of wage gaps, the inefficiency of bureacrats – all under George Bush. A jab at airport screeners and shiftless paper-shufflers is thrown in, neither of which is especially funny or pointed. But the paragraph fails to trace any of these charges, if that is what they are, to George Bush, or to Keillor’s case for “smallness.”

The next paragraph is a non-sequitor about underpaid musicians, farmers and “genius” comedians (nothing about the $40 million offer comedian Dave Chappelle recently thumbed his nose at or the healthy bankability of Will Ferrell) in our neo-Depression economy. In view of the fact that unemployment is around the lowest in history and quarterly growth among the most robust, this paragraph is hard to make sense of, though there is another dig at paper-pushers for our non-amusement.

After this detour into drolly weird psuedo-libertarianism, he seems to find his voice again. More insults! Bush “flubbed his way through college and flopped in business.” But again, nothing to support this alliterative slur – and certainly no mention of his record at Yale or Harvard Business School, in the former at which he bested John Kerry, and at the latter, well, let’s just say HBS is one of the hardest post-graduate schools to get into, and stay in.

Now the pace picks up, the mood darkens. Bush is small, it seems, for visiting wounded soldiers whose bodies are broken from his decisions and not having his soul properly seared nor his conscience scoured as a result of these visits. Keillor cannot say why he knows there has been no searing and scouring. His only evidence: Bush continues to exhort the country to believe in his policy. Let me understand: the only way the President can be “seared” and “scoured” is by NOT exhorting the public to believe in the cause the young men and women sacrificed lives and limbs? That is, to give up on the purpose of their sacrifices? Or is there another way to show his stricken conscience? Perhaps by retreating from the public stage, pulling the shutters to the White House and brooding in self-pitying misery like some kind of romantic, or rather, hand-wringing liberal, hero? Keillor doesn’t say. He only says that the aspect of a president standing among fallen victims exhorting the public for support constitutes a “plot worthy of Shakespeare.” I guess Shakespeare got some of his plots from Winston Churchill. Aside from the unalloyed defeatist presumptions of this farce of outrage – which is based on his and his chosen audience’s total faith in the “mistake” of the war – Keillor slips up big here. For anybody with even casual experience with Shakespeare knows that there is nothing “small” about his plots, or characters. Bush cannot exactly be both small and Shakespearian.

The final paragraph gives it all away. Keillor asserts that “most of us” (i.e., all of us smarter people “in the know”) realize that Bush will be reduced by history to a man of “ordinary incompetence overwhelmed by events.” Is it necessary to mention the inconsistency between “ordinary incompetence” and everything Keillor has already said and impled about Bush?

I did not expect of course to hear anything about how one could associate an attempt to restructure the most enduringly violent region of the world with “smallness”? Nor about how George Bush’s continued effort to restore the image of his disgraced predecessor with high-profile appointments, despite the fact his gestures are met with spite at every opportunity, could be called “small.” Nor about how a president who is more vilified than any other in modern history and maintains the equanimity he does, and who at least publicly ignores the hateful smears and outrageous slander of politicians, reporters, comedians, musicians and filmmakers, could be called “small.” These are all conundrums beyond Keillor.

There is smallness here, all right, only Keillor, understandably, doesn’t grasp the irony. Otherwise this is a lazy, mean, poorly reasoned, humorless and occasionally incoherent screed.

[WOODPIE]

Originally posted by lendaddy
So you don't like him then?

[stuartj]

Originally posted by Joeaksa

Nope, that doesnt look like GWB. Maybe if she lost the G. Could be a metaphor for the American electorate at present tho.

Why do you drink that lite schlit?

[Rodeo]

Originally posted by rrpjr I will examine Garrison Keillor’s “little man” theory more closely.

Dude, whatever you do, don't quit your day job.

[Joeaksa]

Stuart,

I would not drink that crap unless it was out of her ... Well, anyway I drink good beer and thats usually German Weissbier. Did not have a photo of a woman with a German bier so this one had to do!

JoeA

[Dixie]

I will examine Garrison Keillor’s “little man” theory more closely. (rrpjr)

Wow! Someone on this board finally provides a solid analytical critique of Garrison's theory. Regardless of your personal position about GWB, Garrison's opine is weak, whiny, and drafty.