Thursday, December 11, 2003

You Don't Have To Be Smart To Write Editorials....


A few really, really dumb editorials:

First, we have Trevor Bothwell writing "Jennings stumps for socialism". How does Jennings evidence his socialist values?
In a nutshell, the ABC program blamed the federal government for "contributing to obesity by giving subsidies (to farmers) to create fattening food."

Now granting that Bothwell is trying to suggest that Jennings is arguing for greater government control over what we eat - a claim not evidenced in his essay - he might argue that such control would be "socialist" in nature. However, what Jennings is unquestionably doing (at least according to Bothwell) is arguing against government subsidies of the farm industry. Some people would call that an argument for capitalism - with farmers growing crops which will fetch them the best prices on the market, as opposed to those which fetch the highest subsidies. You know, with prices determined by the free market. But I guess Bothwell uses a different definition of "capitalism" than the rest of us....

But the idiotorial of the week may well be that of Rich Lowry and "The amazing American job machine". Apparently it's a good thing that good, middle class jobs are being permanently lost, and that new jobs are being created mostly with much lower wages and benefits (or no benefits at all) - because that improves our standard of living! What can you really say, beyond "They must have exceptionally low hiring standards for editors at the National Review".

(Honorable mention is given to Ann Coulter for Vegan Computer Geeks for Dean. At least Lowry was coherent....)

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