Honestly. I’m not kidding.
Actually titled “We Can Do Better” – and cynically presented “[a]s a Labor Day celebration” – Smiley’s clarion call referenced a speech by former California Governor Hiram Johnson in which the harshest language was used to describe Harrison Gray Otis, then publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Johnson referred to Otis as being “disgraceful, depraved, corrupt, crooked, and putrescent.”
As shocking as it might seem, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Smiley wants liberals to use such language to describe America's current president (emphasis mine):
And that is what I call polemic! Here in our day, we are content with calling Bush an idiot and Cheney a pig and Rumsfeld "deluded". Where is "putrescent"? Where is "debased"? Why don't we apply that oh so appropriate word to their actions and intentions, "infamy"?
Amazing, huh? Yet, in a classic example of liberal hypocrisy, Smiley beseeched the reader to express such vitriol in defense of – drum roll please – “decency”! I kid you not:
At any rate, in 2006, it is worth remembering that decency has to be fought for and won over and over. There is and never has been a shortage of wingnuts, never a shortage of shills for the rich and powerful, never a shortage of grasping, lying, power-mad psychopaths at the top. We are too shy! We can insult them more eloquently, expose them to deeper contempt! We can do better!
Sadly, this is how progressives think that they can improve the caustic tone in Washington. Kind of like throwing gasoline on a fire, isn’t it?
