At long last, have you no sense of shrillness?

[womzilla]

James Wolcott, author of Attack Poodles:

Now at this point a certain type of liberal will quote Joseph Welch's famous question to Joe McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Liberals of a certain age love quoting that stirring heroic retort. When Anthony Lewis was a Times columnist, he used to quote it every other week it seemed, and I saw Richard Cohen pull a Joseph Welch a few columns ago.

But I won't. The question is no longer worth raising, even rhetorically. Because we know the answer.

They have no decency. Not a sliver, not a shred. Look at how Max Cleland has been treated, look at how George Soros has been smeared as some sort of Jewish intriguer who oozed his way out of Nazi Germany by Tony Blankley* and a drug kingpin by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, look at--oh, we know what the examples are.

. . . .

Do you really think that Rush and Newt and Dick Cheney and the rest of them regret that they didn't serve in Vietnam, that they didn't do their part for a war they supported and whose cause they still think was just? . . .

They have no conscience, they have no decency, so let's stop fake-pretending that they do.

Nils Bohr, I believe, once said of quantum physics that if you think you comprehend it, you don't understand it. I believe that if you think it's possible to be a decent person and support the current Republican party, you don't understand what you're supporting.

Comments

Enlightening Senator McCarthy on Pixies

[(Anonymous)]

Niels Bohr spelled his name with an "e," the Sparrow began pedantically.

As you know, I e-mailed former Senator Dole taking him to task for saying that Senator Kerry's medals reflected an insufficiently bloody shirt. In it, I quoted Joseph Welch's "have you sense of decency" remark, and perhaps that -- rather than summing up Dole as "a mean-spirited Kansas Republican" -- is why I haven't had a response.

"I swear, Libby," he growled, "if I have to read those words one more time, I'll break Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment and start talking really ill of my fellow Republicans, starting with Woody, that no-good offspring of the SOB who lied about my record in '88..."

What helped get McCarthy in 1954 was the relatively new medium of television. Politicians today know how to use it too well to get caught, alas.

When the Governor of California mentioned that Richard Nixon made him a Republican in 1968 at the Convention, there were cheers. Can you see Tail-Gunner Joe enjoying a similar rehabilitation outside of lesser works of William F. Buckley and John Dos Passos?

Re: Enlightening Senator McCarthy on Pixies

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Ann Coulter is working on that very thing.