From the department of False Equivalencies
Nov. 6th, 2008 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In today's New York Times, Maureen Dowd reveals (as always) standard Beltway thinking by writing that Barack Obama "has the chance to make the White House pristine again" -- somethings, she says, we haven't had for 16 years:But the monuments have lost their luminescence in recent years.These things are not equal. They're not even comparable. But in her desperation to establish false equivalencies -- the central article of faith in the modern journalist's religion -- Dowd argues that Clinton dirtied the White House by having oral sex and liking hot tubs and, likewise, George Bush also dirtied it by destroying the Constitution, torturing people, invading and destroying another country based on false pretenses and spying on American citizens (and, just by the way, Bush and Cheney weren't "making torture and domestic spying legal"; they were doing those things in violation of the law).
How could the White House be classy when the Clintons were turning it into Motel 1600 for fund-raising, when Bill Clinton was using it for trysts with an intern and when he plunked a seven-seat hot tub with two Moto-Massager jets on the lawn?
How could the White House be inspiring when W. and Cheney were inside making torture and domestic spying legal, fooling Americans by cooking up warped evidence for war and scheming how to further enrich their buddies in the oil and gas industry? . . . .
How can the National Archives, home of the Constitution, be as momentous if the president and vice president spend their days redacting the Constitution?
The stain Bill Clinton left on Monica Lewinsky's dress isn't remotely comparable to the stain George Bush and Dick Cheney have left on the Constitution, our political values and our national image -- to say nothing of the indelible bloodstains on their hands. But for so long, Beltway journalists have treated those things as though they're equal; more accurately, they were -- and remain -- far more offended by the former than the latter. To this day, David Broder still insists that Bill Clinton should have been forced to resign over the sex he had with Monica Lewinsky, whereas nothing that George Bush did merits removal from office or even resignation, and especially not criminal investigation and prosecution (holding lawbreaking Bush officials accountable is to commit the ultimate Beltway sin of "criminalizing our politics").MORE