As long as I'm on takedown's, Glenn Reynolds pretty much knocks Sylvester Brown's block off. The problem isn't that Sylvester has a poor memory, it's that so many people have bad memory's and share the same view. And if you don't understand our strategy in the War on Terror, you won't be able to decide if it's the right one or not, or if it's effective.
But I have to admit I read Sylvester pretty much to find out what a particular demographic is thinking, not reality. Reality rarely intrudes, usually as a distant line on the horizon, sometimes glimpsed but never arrived at. Here's another howler of a column, wherein Sylvester grapples with the real meaning behind an IMAX film at the local Science Center. Seems some local peace activists (where were they during our war in Kosovo?) don't like an aviation themed movie financed by Boeing with the full cooperation of the Air Force -- it's just a long military recruitment ad in their opinion -- no word on their take of Top Gun. I loved the response of the Science Center:
John Wharton, vice president of strategic initiatives at the Science Center, said he can hardly comprehend the activists' concerns."The film may not deal with the Iraqi war, it may not teach aviation, but it certainly deals with the application of technology," Wharton said.
"We recently ran 'Super Speedway,' a film about auto racing. We weren't trying to recruit drag racers. We ran a film about raising the Titanic. Was that an attempt to recruit scuba divers?"
Still, Sylvester's not sure:
"Are there ulterior motives behind the military film? Maybe, maybe not. I haven't seen it. I'm more bothered that since President George W. Bush's election, Americans are often asked to accept a manufactured reality. "
Like no pre-war speechs about delivering democracy to the Middle East? Or
"That news came on the heels of the conservative fake news reporter-Internet porn escort who was allowed access to the White House for two years. That exposure came after revelations that conservative columnists were paid to promote the administration's pet projects and policies."
Of course you can't blame Sylvester, he recalls reading it the paper, so it must be true. Or perhaps in a book or even a movie. I mean, just read this howler of a column (you'll laugh until you realize he isn't alone in his paranoid fantasies) all about seeing a movie based on a book about Karl Rove and how he pretty much runs the country with his brilliance containing gems like this one:
"It would take an audacious genius to create fake news and slip it under the radar of seasoned journalists. Dan Rather, a real newsman, damaged his reputation and almost lost his job under such accusations. Rather produced documents critical of Bush's military record shortly before the election last year. OOPS! He didn't bother to validate the authenticity of the documents and was accused (mainly by conservatives) of a partisan attack against Bush. No one knows definitively if the documents were forged. We do know, however, that media attention shifted away from Bush's dubious military record to the origination of dubious documents. Some wonder whether Rove somehow leaked dummied documents to CBS? Hmmmm."
And in Sylvester's not uncommon trademark, he doesn't have the facts straight. It isn't that Dan didn't bother to authenticate the documents, it's that he did and his experts told him they couldn't authenticate them. And every expert has in fact reached the conclusion that the documents were forged - even the experts CBS brought in for their internal investigation.
And if you go back to when he was gloating about his bet with Bill O'Reilly, there's this gem "You're no Bush clone. In fact, I heard you criticize Bush on your radio show Jan. 19. You were commenting on his ever-morphing reasons for invading Iraq."
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Would one of those ever morphing reasons be, oh I don't know, perhaps bringing democracy to the Middle East? Of course, no mention of what those reason's might be.
If you want to know what the latest weird leftest fantasy is, Sylvester is your man. If you want a grasp of reality, best to give Sylvester a wide berth, along with most of the rest of the paper he appears in.
