How Old is David Broder Again?
For someone who looks like he’s 194 years old, David Broder writes like he was born yesterday:
The situation the United States and its allies face in Afghanistan and Iraq is one almost without precedent. In two countries where we used our military might to rout the menacing dictatorial regimes running things, we now find ourselves sponsoring governments with notably shaky holds on popular support.
Gee whiz, you mean we’re propping up ineffective and unpopular puppet regimes in foreign countries? My God, that is totally unprecedented!
Gavin adds: It’s also cool how he sticks the word, ‘menacing,’ in there. Saddam Hussein stopped being referred to as a ‘threat’ some time ago, after it became common knowledge that there were no WMDs, and quietly became a ‘menace’ instead.
“Hiya, Mr. Broder! Whatcha doin’?”
*falls over dead from shock*
T-Rex- yeah I know it’s amazing. Next week David will write a column about how people don’t like it when you invade their country and start telling them what to do.
A huge American investment of money and lives now rests on two men with a loose grip on power.
If we are no longer able to prop up the Bush-Cheney putppet regime, a popular uprising could see the return of a radical leadership unfavorable to our interests.
Well, technically he’s right. He said it was almost without precedent. In other words, it would be the case if only it weren’t for all those times when it wasn’t the case.
A lot of things in life are like that, really.
See, this is what I don’t understand.
How the hell did anyone with anything past a fifth grade education NOT see that our involvement in Iraq is nothing more than the SAME DAMN THING we’ve been doing for at least a century now?
Especially people who claim to be of a “progressive” bent. All I can think of when I realize that people who think they’re on the left end of the political spectrum fell for the bullshit Iraq war justification is that I need to hunt down their tenth grade World History teacher and smack him/her.
If I end up producing a crop of students like that, I will die of shame.
How do I get paid for spewing stupid shit all the time? Right now I get no financial compensation at all for saying things that stupid.
No kidding, fish. I’d be a freaking millionaire instead of a mere freaking thousandaire.
“Are you saying, Mister Duke . . . that you were attacked out here?”
“Well . . . no . . . not literally attacked, officer, but seriously menaced. I stopped to piss, and the minute I stepped out of the car these filthy little bags of poison were all around me. They moved like greased lightning!”
I’m not sure who the Taliban were menacing either, apart from their own people. They couldn’t give a shit about foreign policy, according to Jason Burke.
What’s most disturbing is the size of the hand Dennis is waving. Is that an artificial limb? Haven’t read the strip in ages so maybe it’s taken a darker path in recent years…
I’m not sure who the Taliban were menacing either, apart from their own people.
Giant Buddha statues worldwide heaved a sigh of relief when the Taliban were deposed.
I have an urgent dispatch from the Quibble Dept.: Shouldn’t that read, “Hi-ya, Mr. Broder! Whatcha doin’?â€?
It seems the problem with America is…
That it is full of Americans.
(Except of course for Sadly No! readers and some from some other blogs, you people are okay)
But by the way, really what do they teach in American Public Schools? How to eat paste?
“What’s most disturbing is the size of the hand Dennis is waving. Is that an artificial limb? ”
it’s cyborg-Dennis–he’s a transhumanist. that’s why he’s such a menace.
I have an urgent dispatch from the Quibble Dept.: Shouldn’t that read, “Hi-ya, Mr. Broder! Whatcha doin’?�
It is done.
You forgot Panama and Nicaragua.
Thanks, Gavin. I’ll pass that on to the boys back in Quibble, but you know how they are; they’ll probably ask me why it took so long or something. (That’s what makes them so good.)
really what do they teach in American Public Schools?
we never get past World War II. I am serious.
oh, and nothing on the Phillipines. except maybe a bit about Hearst and yellow journalism.
All I ever learned about in public school social studies courses was The ‘Nam.
This may be the result of having every history/civics/history teacher in my school from elementary to graduation being a ‘Nam vet.
Mine were mostly Korean War vets… very reactionary, authoritarian and pissy group of teachers, I’m afraid.
Join us next week, when David Broder laments the fact that there’s no political party that stands for fiscal prudence, sound policy, and respect for the rule of law without resorting to thuggish demogoguery, and then wistfully fantasizes about a magical third party that would be all those things. When oh when will someone offers the voters an alternative!
¡Chinga la maldita Broder!
She has no Blog-Integrity©.
Broder ees la dinosauria de las dinosaurias, even the other dinosaurias must be hoping for the providential tarpit.
so.
we never get past World War II. I am serious.
Hell, we barely got up to the Civil War and Reconstruction. Every year, swear to God, start at the beginning and get to a point where whichever coach is teaching the history class can show Silverado. Mississippi school system, I do declare.
The best part, of course, is Mississippi History in 7th grade (1988 for me). The books were from 1963 and refered to the Civil War as “The War of Northern Aggression”. Yep.
I can top that.
I had a science book in 7th grade which opined that “One day, man might even walk on the moon!”
I’m not even thirty-five yet.
Mine were mostly Korean War vets… very reactionary, authoritarian and pissy group of teachers, I’m afraid.
Mine were almost all drunks. A LOT of alcohol consumed in california public schools in the late fifties and early sixties. In gym class, my job was to get the coach his “coffee” (half coffee, half jim beam from his desk). My english teacher was a funny, brilliant, cynical, train wreck who was incoherent by lunch.
What’s most disturbing is the size of the hand Dennis is waving.
That totally jumped out at me too. Is Dennis, er, well “endowed”? I mean, I’ve always been willing to speculate on Blondie naked and Betty Rubble in Dino-Lingerie. And dood, have you SEEN Luanne lately? One word–HOT!! So this really isn’t that far beyond the pale (is it??). I mean, sure, on the one hand, Dennis is seven, but on the other hand he’s been around for like fifty years, so it’s not comicpedophilia. I think. But it’s almost as if Rodin had drawn him. Yikes. The Burghers of Dennis the Menace…
mikey
Oh yes, history class. lemme see, there’s the junior high one with the football coach. A black friend of mine said he was the only black guy in the class and when coach/teach showed a slide show (went with the text book) about the civil war, the coach/teach and the kids laughed and joked about the slave pics and joked ‘there’s your granddaddy! Hahaha!”
Then there’s high school with a man who looked like a turtle and who would read from the book (you know, the ones with the big letters in easy to read type) and then have us do the answers at the end of the chapter whilst he studied his attendance book. The text book went up to Nixon being president and that was one year before Reagan hit big.
Or the high school history teach, a vietnam vet whose lesson on ‘nam’ was: ‘we shoulda just blown cambodia sky high, but the lefties couldn’t have that could they?’ and who used to sport a semi-erection visible through his polyester pants everytime I wore a low-neck blouse. hehehe.
Broder looks like a turtle and sounds like he’s about to fall asleep at any minute, ever seen him on that friday PBS pundit roundtable snoozer?
High school History class was the most worthless subject I ever took, and I’m including square dancing in gym in that assessment. It was all, “Such-and-such event took place at this-or-that date,” with the occasional historical figure thrown in for good measure. It was 100% rote memorization, which I am utterly terrible at. Never was anything put in context, nor related to other events and people. The dots were not connected. It was fantastically boring and dull–you just wanted to die during class. There weren’t even windows to stare out of for respite. Thank gawd some of the other students were physically attractive–a horny highschool student is never at a loss for things to daydream about! Ironically enough, my school district was considered one of the best in the state. Oh, yeah–Geography was nearly as bad, though seemingly I picked up on a lot more of it than 90% of other Americans. Ugh.
My civics teacher was at Kent State, he also got arrested for spitting on a sidewalk in Mississippi.
A great teacher. This was the DOD school system in Germany.
Of course, he had problems with my southern accent and would pick on me a bit. I told him he’s lucky he only got arrested for spitting on the sidewalk because we used to treat uppity Negroes a lot worse.
He thought that was funny.
I live in Washington state, now.
I remember one thing from high school history class. I don’t remember what we discussed or how far in the textbook we read or even the textbook itself, but one day in the middle of a lecture about something or other the teacher said, “Eventually, it was never replaced.” So my HS history learning is summarized and distilled to that one quote. But you’ve got to admit, it’s a funny line.
From Broder: “we now find ourselves sponsoring governments with notably shaky holds on popular support.”
And, as I recall, this was one of OBL’s original complaints about the West, and hard to argue with.