Thanks to Tara for passing along a letter she recently spotted in the Washington Post indicating that, without even realizing it, I’ve joined the latest trend sweeping the Beltway. In the letter, Michele Dyson says “the surprise gold-medal winner, the most talked-about topic in the circles in which I travel, has been the comic strip ‘The Boondocks,’ specifically Aaron McGruder’s series about national security adviser Condoleezza Rice”, a subject which I mentioned here recently. I’m not sure whether to be proud to be hip to such a trend, or to suggest that maybe Michele Dyson and her circles need to get a life, if that’s their “gold-medal” topic. Well, I guess she’s less pathetic than those who prattle ad nauseam about the latest “reality” shows. Although I found the strip amusing, it didn’t raise much of a stir in my “circles”.
I suppose one reason I’ve heard less chatter about this topic is that The Lexington Herald-Leader only carries Boondocks on Sunday, so in these parts, the daily strip is only available to those sufficiently addicted and connected to view it online, which doesn’t seem to include many in my circles besides myself. Those that I mentioned it to hadn’t seen it, and chuckled politely when I described it, but didn’t seem inclined to discuss it for hours. Another possible reason is that Ms. Dyson, a failed Republican congressional candidate and a modestly successful federal government contractor, travels in circles who are more likely to be upset by anything suggesting that anyone in the Bush administration is less than perfect. (The outcome of Ms. Dyson’s political attempt is history. My estimate of her level of success in feeding at the public trough is based on her level of financial contributions to Republican party coffers, as documented by the Federal Election Commission. She’s obviously not nailing any Halliburton-size contracts.)
Although I usually try to avoid topics that are getting beaten to death elsewhere, and Ms. Dyson suggests this is such a topic, I mentioned it here before I was aware of its “gold-medal” status. Since I already started on it, and since hunting got rained out this weekend, I’ll take up the gauntlet Ms. Dyson threw down. Maybe I need a life almost as badly as she does.
Ms Dyson’s letter uses tactics that would make her hero Dr. Rice proud: make blatantly false statements and back them up with more fabrications. Her first mis-statement is that McGruder has unfairly singled out Dr. Rice for criticism. She wonders “why, out of all the things McGruder could satirize, he chose Rice as his target. What was his point?” She then goes on to explain that his point is to make fun of women, since Dr. Rice is one.
This ploy is unfortunately common among people of all political persuasions; if someone criticizes a member of a minority, accuse him of being prejudiced against that minority. She’s correct that the Bush administration presents virtually unlimited opportunities for satire and criticism, but her suggestion that McGruder has ignored all the others indicates that either she hasn’t spent enough time reading Boondocks, or she’s completely dishonest. Dr. Rice is definitely not the first Bushie McGruder has chosen to skewer, and probably won’t be the last.
Continuing in typical Rice style, having falsely accused McGruder of singling out Rice, Dyson then proceeds to build false explanations for McGruder’s offense that he didn’t commit. It’s because he’s “so unable to think of anything refined or polished to make his point about foreign policy that he just grabbed hold of the sexism grenade.” She then backs up this whopper with some very twisted arguments.
The issue of sexism that Ms. Dyson raises here would be a legitmate issue in some circumstances. It is unfortunately common for some who feel intimidated by an assertive, intelligent, successful woman to resort to name-calling and innuendo. I’m sure Ms. Dyson is aware of this; in fact, it’s probably even more prevalent in her circles than in mine. She doesn’t say how many times she has had to chastise her Republican friends for calling Hilary Clinton a lesbian, but it’s probably a common occurrence. But her suggestion that Dr. Rice’s gender is the only reason McGruder criticizes her is ludicrous.
She mentions that “many others have held the post of national security adviser before Rice” (no kidding??? You mean Dubya didn’t invent the job?), and specifically mentions Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Sandy Berger. I’m not sure why she chose those three out of all the people who have been in the post in that time frame, but it’s amusing that she uses Kissinger as an example for her statement that “no one ever dared to suggest that finding these men a new ‘squeeze’ would make the world a safer place.” Maybe the reason nobody ever suggested that about Kissinger was that lack o’ nookie never seemed to be his problem. As he was well-known for cavorting with leggy blonde models and publicly boasting that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”, it would have been more reasonable to suggest that the world might be a safer place if he had been getting a little less action. In fact, in those pre-Viagra days, maybe the testosterone rush of ordering the carpet-bombing of a civilian village was just what he needed to consummate a date with a gorgeous blonde twice his height.
Having suggested that anyone who criticizes Rice must be a sexist, Dyson then moves on to suggest that the importance of Rice’s job makes criticism of her unfair. “Rice is the first person President Bush meets with in the morning … Each day, she bluntly speaks to a range of issues central to the security and safety of the United States… Hardly light breakfast reading or salon chit-chat.” In fact, the importance of her position, and its impact on the rest of the world, is precisely why she should be subject to scrutiny. Nobody who holds the power to destroy the world should be beyond question.
Dyson goes on to say “it is her job to be as certain as possible that the president has the critical information he needs to go to work each day to avoid another Sept. 11, 2001.” And this is why it’s important to be as certain as possible that she’s doing a good job, and the “critical information” that she gives the president is as accurate and relevant as possible. And it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Dr. Rice has failed her duties in that area. She was responsible, probably intentionally, for giving the president false information justifying the war in Iraq. And the inquiry is still going on into whether the president was not properly advised about intelligence that could have avoided the first Sept. 11, 2001. Yes, Dr. Rice’s duties are impressive. No, her performance of those duties does not shield her from public scrutiny.
In fact, if Dyson had taken a closer look at McGruder’s strip, she might have seen that it was Dr. Rice’s penchant for prevarication that McGruder was skewering, not her lack of a “squeeze”. In one strip, the character who is concocting a personal ad on behalf of Rice is accused of embellishment when he lists her interests as “video games, baking cookies, and massages”. His response is that “there may have been intelligence failures.” In another strip, he responds to an accusation of complete fabrication by saying “I know. Condi would be so proud.” It’s obvious that this is a dig at her tendency to lie to the president and the American people, with consequences far more drastic than the mundane exaggerations that lonely hearts add to their personal ads.
I still think that Condi and Dennis would be an interesting couple. On the other hand, since Dyson’s letter conveniently provided her email address, maybe someone could enter her in the First Lady competition.