April 6, 2004
YOU'RE WORSER:
-AUDIO INTERVIEW: with John Dean (Diane Rehm Show, 4/06/04, NPR)
The oleaginous Mr. Dean was on pimping his new book, in which he says that Mr. Bush should be impeached for various statements about the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Ms Rehm, of course, lapped it up like a cat would milk, at one point asking in pained tones: But what will it take for people to turn on this president?
At any rate, Mr. Dean's book is titled Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, which raises a tantalizing possibility: you could have a whole series of these books, where criminals argue that George Bush is really worse than they are:
Worse than Imclone by Martha Stewart
Worse than Barings by Nick Leeson
Worse than Pedophilia by Michael Jackson
Worse than Chappaquidick by Ted Kennedy
Worse than Assassination by John Hinkley
Worse than the Sniper Killings by John Mohammed
Worse than the Tate-LaBianca Killings by Charles Manson
Worse than Columbine by Dylan Klebold
Worse than Srebrenica by Slobodan Milosevic
Worse than the Holocaust by Adolf Hitler...
Posted by Orrin Judd at April 6, 2004 4:03 PMWe do have this fascination with taking moral instruction from people who were on the wrong side to begin with. The evangelical churches fill their coffers with this sort of bilge.
I prefer, myself, to take advice from people who were right from the start.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 6, 2004 5:03 PMand of course, "Worse than Whitewater, Travelgate, Paula Jones, Lewinsky and perjury" by what's-his-name....
Posted by: Foos at April 6, 2004 6:38 PMHarry:
So since only Christ was without sin, you must be a closet Christian?
Posted by: oj at April 6, 2004 7:28 PMHarry:
Nobody is right from the start. The best examples are people like Muggeridge, Churchill, Whittaker Chambers, even George Bush - people who change as they get older, rather than just spout the same old stuff until they are completely addled.
Posted by: jim hamlen at April 6, 2004 7:47 PMHarry:
So everyone is supposed to have it all together at age twenty? That doesn't leave much for old foggies like you and me to be wise about, does it.
Posted by: Peter B at April 6, 2004 10:00 PMEven the folks at the National Lampoon Radio Hour 30 years ago, during their "Special Richard Nixon Impeachment Coverage" show, managed to stick in a jibe at the special counsel during a segment the "Impeachment Parade" down Pennsylvania Avenue. It featured the John Dean float, in the shape of a giant rat.
The Nat Lamp crew was pretty liberal (and in the case of the "parade commentator" Chevy Chase, still so), but their Dean analogy holds up three decades down the line.
Posted by: John at April 6, 2004 11:16 PMWorse than the Wilson prosecution and omprisonment of 'dissidents' like Gene
Debs, along with mass deportations. worse
than the jailing of opponents under the
Alien & Sedition Act, Roosevelt's internments
of citizens as well as enemy nationals. Then
again what did Nixon do that was so bad anyways
a little surveilance, of the kind sanctioned by
the FBI and CIA for a generation, fixing the
nomination for McGovern
Didn't Teddy do a reading of "Worse than Chappaquidick" yesterday?
Posted by: jsmith at April 6, 2004 11:35 PMGet a grip Harry, you're being kneejerk again.
Posted by: jefferson park at April 7, 2004 11:28 AM