Well, Technically, He Didn’t Call Him Unpatriotic

by tristero

Reality imitates art. In a boneheaded error straight out of an Evelyn Waugh novel, a high-level muckymuck at the Times must have barked, “Get me Billy Crystal for the Op-Ed page!” and some poor schnook thumbed through a rolodex and called The Wrong Guy. Not to worry. In William Kristol, the Times still got a clown::

[Obama’s] happy to have fantasy debates with unnamed people who are allegedly challenging his patriotism.

What a joker Billy Kristol is! He knows perfectly well who’s been challenging Obama’s patriotism. Why, in one remarkable column but two weeks ago, Kristol all but called Obama a Commie pinko rat. He also typed that Obama’s “disdainful of small-town America” and wound up with

If he were a war hero, if he had a career of remarkable civic achievement or public service — then he could perhaps be excused an unattractive but in a sense understandable hauteur. But what has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?

And in an earlier column, Kristol tackled Obama’s patriotism head on:

Leave aside [Obama’s] claim that “speaking out on issues” constitutes true patriotism…

It’s fitting that the alternative to Obama will be John McCain. He makes no grand claim to fix our souls. He doesn’t think he’s the one everyone has been waiting for. He’s more proud of his country than of himself. And his patriotism has consisted of deeds more challenging than “speaking out on issues.”

Yes, it’s quite true that Kristol hasn’t impugned Obama’s patriotism. All he did was merely imply Obama was a Marxist AND an elitist who holds “bourgeois America” (Kristol’s phrase) in disdain AND a person whose quality of patriotism fails miserably when compared with St. John McCain’s. Sure sounds like Kristol thinks Obama has no love of country, but he doesn’t quite say so, now does he?. (And I could go on: y’gotta read the columns for the full effect, such as the way Kristol pulls remarks by Obama’s wife out of context to make her seem unpatriotic as well.)

Call this tactic – where you pretend not to say what everyone knows you think, but rather you just coyly hint at it – the Sixteen Words Ploy. You remember the Sixteen Words, of course. But what you probably recall is that Bush asserted Saddam had tried to procure nuke fuel from Africa. Not true!

What Bush actually said was:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Get it? “The British Government has learned” and that’s a fact. Bush never claimed Saddam tried to procure uranium, what’s wrong with your hearing? How could you be so malicious as to assume he had?

Uh huh. And Kristol never questioned Obama’s patriotism. Riiiiight.