When the MSM wants to be particularly nasty toward President Bush, it breaks out the references to his dissolute younger days. Witness this week's 'Time' cover story 'Can Bush find an exit?,' which manages a two-fer in the genre: a reference to W's hard-drinking past and an allusion to him as nothing less than a drug addict.
The story's very first lines:
"George Bush has a history of long-overdue U-turns. He waited until he woke up, hung over, one morning at 40 before giving up booze cold. He fought the idea of a homeland-security agency for eight months after 9/11 and then scampered aboard and called it his idea. But Bush has never had to pull off a U-turn like the one he is contemplating now: to give up on his dream of turning Babylon into an oasis of freedom and democracy . . . "
And later:
"The Baker-Hamilton commission's work has been compared to family interventions for a substance-addicted cousin."
Makes you wonder: just who has been making the comparison that 'Time' reports? Does political reporting get much more condescending and vile than this?
Finkelstein recently returned from Iraq. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net