One might think that, with President Bush on his way out and the Washington Post’s favorite son on his way in, the paper’s case of Bush derangement syndrome would subside. But the Post’s coverage of the Baghdad shoe thrower is strong evidence to the contary.
Here was the Post’s front-page headline about the incident on Monday:
Shoe-Throwing Mars Bush’s Baghdad Trip:
President Defends War in Surprise Farewell Visit Before Ducking an Iraqi Journalist’s Rejoinder
A “rejoinder” is “a sharp or witty reply.” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary). The Post’s view that tossing shoes constitutes such a reply, or any reply to Bush’s defense of the Iraq war, tells you everything you need to know about the standard for reasoned discourse that the Post applies to those who see the world as it does. The Post has no rejoinder to the president’s success in Iraq so it takes what it can find.
To “mar” is to “impair” or “spoil.” In what sense did the act of throwing shows spoil Bush’s visit? Bush’s main purpose, I imagine, was to meet and thank our troops and perhaps the Iraqi politicians with whom the president has worked. The incident certainly did not impair or spoil that objective.
If the incident impaired the trip at all, it was only because Bush bashers like the authors of the Post’s story (Dan Eggen and Sudarsan Raghavan) decided to write the story that way. Anyone can throw a shoe. It takes left-wing American journalists to elevate the act to a “rejoinder.”
If some fool had thrown his shoes at Barack Obama, either at a campaign event or during his trip to the Middle East, would the Post have claimed that the event had been marred? And if the answer is “no,” as it surely is, how can anyone view the Washington Post as other than a blatantly partisan operation?
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