The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.

The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.
The scholar

2006/10/14

Re: "The Sounds of Silencing" Oct 13

Peggy Noonan at Wall St Journal's OpinionJournal

Commentary from lawyer/blogger Glenn Greenwald

Ms Noonan asks why the left could not silence a critic. Katie Couric featured the father of a student killed in the massacre at Columbine High School making crazy and preposterous statements about the massacre having something to do with women controlling their own bodies and deciding on their own whether to bring pregnancies to term. But the unnamed "blog critic" had it right. The question was not "Why wasn't this critic of abortion rights silenced?" The question was "Why was this lunatic given a national platform from which to make crazy statements?"

Ms Noonan claims that the left does not want debate. Fuuny, but when former President Bill Clinton reacted heatedly to a Fox News person repeating talking points from the Disney/ABC miniseries of less than a month previously, conservatives and most of the news media demonstrated absolutely zero desire to debate the issue of presidential responsibility for 9-11. Clinton was portrayed as crazy and belligerent and cartoonists portrayed him as lunging at the poor, defenseless Fox News person.

No one in the media, to my knowledge, took up the point of "Yeah, just what did Bush do between January 2001 and early September 2001 to head off 9-11?" It's curious that the side of the political aisle that is now lecturing leftists had so little interest in the solid and substantive issue of presidential responsibility when it came to their own president. Had your beloved, "civilized" right wing, Ms Noonan, stopped to question themselves over that point, we liberals might take your crocodile tears seriously.

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