Newspaper roundup

One of the most endearing things about Estonia (perhaps it is true in many European countries) is that morning television hosts will at some point start telling us about what's in the papers that day. It's somewhat of an awkward moment -- the host will physically get out the newspapers and start rustling and leafing through them, and reading/summarizing passages. Though it's worse than dead air from a TV production quality standpoint, I'd love to hear McLuhan's take on this phenomenon.

Anyway, I will try to do something similar in this blog from time to time.

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Starting with my old hometown paper, the Washington Post. From the "Daydream Nation" category, here's an op-ed by Michael Gerson entitled "Compassionate to the End". It's about his ideological father and social welfare specialist George W. Bush, who as we know is quite the compassionate one. The question was of course if he is still true to form.

(I confess: I initially suppressed shock at the headline's suggestion that something had befallen Bush, other than just lame duck blues.)

"Compassionate to the end"...Even as I write this, some liberal-scum moral relativist in a cave is probably countering Gerson with the argument that Saddam didn't kill babies with his bare hands, either. That Saddam had his social initiatives, too; it couldn't have all gone into maintaining his own standard of living during the sanctions.

But there are actually plenty of more subtle points in Gerson's piece, it almost seems...could it be...Satire?

When President Bush took his final walk to the rostrum of the House chamber, his speech and manner conveyed little nostalgia. He views both meditation on the past and speculation about his legacy with equal suspicion, preferring to live in the urgency of the now. So his last State of the Union address had no Reagan-like, misty-eyed wistfulness.

Ah, the long measured walk.

A note on the misty eyes. Alzheimer's is bad that way, so let's not stoop to judge Reagan too harshly. Even though Reagan's is now Obama's ideological father and the bane of conservatives.

The "urgency of the now"? Sounds like Gerson has been spending too much time at Esalen or something.

I wonder though: if Bush views both the past and perception of his past with suspicion, preferring to live in the present, what about the future? Isn't this sort of speechwriting device supposed to refer to all three parts of the linear conception of time?

I leave deconstruction of the rest of this increasingly silly piece to you.

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