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Batting for the Winning Team
As expected, the sacking of Baghdad by victorious coalition forces — that is America, Great Britain and a handful of Australian and Danish troops — has moved pro-war commentators to lyrical flights of fancy not witnessed since, say, the liberation of Afghanistan. No more so than in America, where the Media Research Center and Town Hall provide a welcoming home to some of America’s more radical conservative commentators and writers. Like Ann Coulter, for example. Coulter is the poster girl of choice for America’s more discerning conservatives. Sometime lawyer and author of not one but two New York Times bestsellers (High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton and Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right), Coulter wages a semi-permanent war against the mores of American Liberalism and acts as a tireless champion of the war on terrorism from the rarified confines of AnnCoulter.org. When not lamenting the shortage of available dates within her coterie of Washington policy wonks, Coulter can be found directing her own particular brand of splattergun conservatism to the great issues of the day. “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” she wrote of alleged terrorist threat Muslim nations way back in 2001. She was subsequently sacked by the National Review when editors spiked a follow-up piece which proposed tighter passport security checks for ’suspicious swarthy looking males.” Coulter’s April 4 syndicated column, titled “Shock and Awe Campaign Routs Liberals,” proudly boasts: “Liberals are no longer a threat to the nation. The new media have defeated them with free speech — the very freedom these fifth columnists hide behind whenever their speech gets them in hot water with the American people. Today, the truth is instantly available on the Internet, talk radio and Fox News Channel.” Yes, you heard it here: The truth is instantly available on the Internet, talk radio and — yes, that’s right — Fox News Channel. And what exactly is the truth according to Coulter’s political and spiritual comrades in arms? Drunk on a cheap but potent mix of ‘told you so” sanctimony and post-war chest-beating bravura, the darlings of America’s right wing media have been moved to pen triumphalist eulogies by the score. WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah reclaims and gives new meaning to the “Shock and Awe” phrase in a gratuitous display of down-home hokum not normally seen outside the gushy prose of Hallmark greetings cards. “Victory is so sweet” he crows in his “Liberation!” headlined column of April 10, before taking a swift and unexpected detour into rhetorical profundity (or should that be profanity?): “Isn’t it ironic that in courageously defending our own country from terrorist attack we serve to liberate others. That’s the way it always works.” A veritable cottage industry of right-wing punditry has sprung up in America post 9/11, of which the likes of Coulter and Farah are but the tip of a very substantial iceberg. Keeping tabs on the "other side" is the Media Research Center (”The Leader in Documenting, Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias’). The center boasts a “Special Gloat and Quote Edition,” which highlights the erroneous war predictions made by the liberal media. Issuing the equivalent of a Republican fatwa on the not-so-great and good media lah-lah land in the Washington Dispatch, Patrick Rooney (director of special projects at the crazily titled “Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny” tree-hugging group dedicated to ‘rebuilding the family by rebuilding the man”) writes: “Even the idiotic Michael Moore, he of Oscar’s speech infamy, will see his comeuppance. So will Madonna, who recently had to pull back her video showing the aging entertainer tossing a grenade into the lap of a President Bush look-alike. The negative blowback from this outrageous and desperate act will likely catch her unawares and unprepared.” Moved almost to song, Rooney’s column reads as a love letter to God’s own country: “For the greatest force for good in the world is embodied in the United States of America. We have the wisest leader; and the strongest, best equipped military in the world. Most important of all, we have the American people, much more resilient and powerful than their enemies — or even they themselves — may have previously realized.” David Horowitz, editor in chief of FrontPage Magazine and lapsed libertarian (the progeny of two lifelong communists and a one-time radical left trailblazer best known for “his lifelong intellectual and political journey”), also steps up to bat for the winning team. A 1990 recipient of the Teach Freedom Award from Ronald Reagan, Horowitz eschews originality in deference to the triumphalist spirit of the times. Using the “Liberation” headline to similarly dazzling if hyperbolic effect as Farah, Horowitz comes, not to bury Caesar, but to praise him: “Baghdad is liberated. In the days to come let us not forget that if it was not for one man, and one man alone — George Bush — the people of Iraq would not be celebrating in the streets and pulling down Saddam’s statues today. Instead the jails would still be full and the torture chambers still operating and the weapons mills still turning out the instruments of future destruction.” Like those before him, Horowitz pooh-poohs the idea of a recalcitrant left waking up to the error of its anti-war protesting ways. “Should we now get ready for apologies?” he asks. “Don’t hold your breath. In The Nation today, Medea Benjamin, head of Global Exchange, pro-Castro communist and leader of the anti-American anti-war left [that's a truckload of antis], calls for a worldwide effort to send human shields to North Korea, Syria and Iran, the pillars of terrorist power, to give aid and comfort to the enemy” he concludes. (That Benjamin actually wrote: "Let’s send grassroots teams to the world’s hot spots — North and South Korea, Iran, Syria — to link up with appropriate local and regional groups to prevent the next war, instead of sending human shields at the 11th hour," is but a minor detail.) Employing sections of the George W. Bush Speechwriters Handbook to dizzying effect, Horowitz gleefully looks forward to the battle ahead: “The good news is that America is back. Our military has performed superlatively. Our leadership has stood tall. We ourselves can celebrate over this and look confidently towards what lies ahead.” What lies ahead indeed. Writing two days prior to what will be remembered in the history books as VB Day, Dennis Prager asks, “Dear Germany: Have You Learned Anything?” Germany’s refusal to become involved in military operations in Iraq is tastelessly posited as a timely reminder of the national stain that won’t go away: “Nazism taught you nothing. Instead of learning that evil must be fought, you learned that fighting is evil.” Prager glibly signs off by facetiously thanking Germany for Bach. According to the Washington Times” Diana West, the most evocative image of the liberation of Baghdad is that of ‘the young man, dressed in a denim jacket, holding a homemade poster celebrating the “Hero of the Peace” — George W. Bush — and kissing the president’s faintly smiling photo.” Displaying what would be considered a disturbing penchant for fairytale endings in even the most weak-kneed of romantics, West muses, “Maybe it’s the kiss itself, reminiscent of all the fairytale kisses that break evil spells, or maybe it’s the expressive face of Iraqi gratitude towards an American president who has awakened a nation from a nightmare of brutality and repression.” Who needs embedded journalism when you can have in-bedded journalism?
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