Posted 6:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

Michael Kelly’s Sophistry
In the past 15 days, Michael Kelly has written two incredibly execrable columns. Two weeks ago, Kelly wrote a column dealing superficially with the chicken hawk issue. This week, Kelly writes about the Democrats’ plight. I will address both columns.

In my 11/8 post, I warned Democrats not to take “advice” from the right because their advice is wrong. Today’s column by Kelly is a good example of the kind of crap that doesn’t merit their attention. Earlier today, I noted how Kelly wrote, against all evidence, that Not-My-President Bush had the potential for greatness. This is swill. In other places, Kelly makes some noteworthy omissions. For instance, Kelly writes:

More is fundamentally wrong with the Democratic analysis-by-wish-fulfillment. As the New York Times reported last Saturday, Democratic strategists studying the elections are coming to realize that, in closely contested races in key states (South Carolina, Maryland, Georgia and Florida), the immediate conventional wisdom was wrong: What cost the Democrats these races was not the failure to motivate "base" (especially African American) voters, but the failure to win over middle-class, independent-minded, moderate white voters -- the voters who put Bill Clinton into office. Blacks, in fact, turned out in expected numbers -- it was non-left whites who stayed home or voted for Republicans.

What Kelly ignores is that in at least two of the races (Georgia and Florida), there were areas in which the media were abysmal for their underreporting of major issues that should have sunk the Republicans in those races. For instance, regarding the Florida Governor’s race, early in the campaign, Bill O’Reilly was getting on Jeb Crow’s case regarding the Child Protective Services debacle. Of course, for balance, O’Reilly would blather about how Bush’s likely opponent Janet Reno was worse. Echoing the rest of the “fair and balanced” network, O’Reilly’s criticism of Jeb Bush diminished substantially when a more viable candidate Bill McBride got the Democratic nomination. McBride was the kind of Horatio Alger candidate who should excite a “working class” commentator like O’Reilly (In case you can’t tell, I was being sarcastic for calling O’Reilly working class). As the Church Lady would say, “How convenient.” Also, the mainstream media didn’t do squat when Jeb Crow and company continued to keep tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters in the same plight they faced in 2000—when Governor Crow and Katherine Harris stole the election for George W. Bush.

Almost as bad was the Senate race in Georgia. Saxby Chambliss had an outrageous commercial that impugned the patriotism of Max Cleland—who lost three limbs in Vietnam. The idea that such a scoundrel could get way with this without a hue and cry that should have sunk his campaign is a an indictment of the competence of the mainstream media.

This discussion segues into the topic of Kelly’s column from two weeks ago. Kelly wrote a column full of sophistry defending the chicken hawks (those in favor of war who assiduously avoided doing any of the fighting when they had the chance; click here for a full list). Kelly tries to explain away the culpability of the chicken hawks (I prefer the term “war wimp”). Kelly’s column is not completely without merit. If one is opposed to military action against Iraq and one’s main argument is that many of the latter-day Rambos (1980’s hawk Sylvester Stallone himself never served in Vietnam) in favor of military action avoided military service when they had their chance to become cannon fodder, then Kelly’s article makes some sense. However, the issue isn’t that simple (and even if it were, it would be no good reason for Kelly to cite Orwell on his behalf).

For me, the Chicken Hawk epithet became particularly salient beginning around 1992 with the emergence of what I call the Chicken Hawk Brigade. During the 1992 presidential campaign, a loathsome movement emerged with Bill Clinton’s presidential candidacy. When it was uncovered that, as a college student, Clinton avoided military service in Vietnam, a chorus of Republicans came out of the woodwork to criticize Clinton and distort the words in his letter to Colonial Holmes (claiming that Clinton claimed that he wrote that he personally loathed the military when he wrote no such thing; in fact, Rush Limbaugh had an actor who sounded like Clinton record the words “I loathe the military” in order to confuse his listeners). Members of the alleged liberal media such as Tom Brokaw have also spread this vicious canard.

What these critics conveniently forgot to point out was that Clinton didn’t want to go to Nam, but he didn’t want any other Americans to go either. Many of these critics also failed to mention that Vietnam was a very unpopular was not with just those who opposed it. The list is striking of young Republican types who avoided the war when they were in favor of military action in the war. For example, Rush Limbaugh was able to use his famous pimple-on-the-ass excuse to keep out of a Southeast Asian rice paddies. This led me to think of these people as the Chicken Hawk Brigade because their willingness to criticize Clinton for not wanting to fight in a war he opposed matched their unwillingness to fight in the same war they wanted others (working-class whites and minorities) to fight.

The utter noxiousness of the Chicken Hawk Brigade deserves some elaboration: Since many of the Chicken Hawk Brigade were from affluent and connected Republican families, they could use family connections to avoid stepping on a bouncing betty or being sent to the Hanoi Hilton. One example of this was then-Representative George H. W. Bush and his ne’er-do-well son, George W. Bush. Representative Bush approved of military action but wanted to keep George W. out of harm’s way. So Friends of Daddykins pushed George W. to the front of the Air National Guard line. On his application, “fighter pilot” Bush requested no overseas duty. Then for the last eighteen months of his Air National Guard obligation, Dubya didn’t bother showing up. A long bender? Anyhow, it was a foolproof plan (except, of course, for the guy who had to take George W’s place in Vietnam).

Members of the Chicken Hawk Brigade sent others to do their fighting. They usually provided lame excuses for not serving--e.g, Tom DeLay told reporters that all the minorities had taken all the well-paid military positions leaving no spots for patriotic Americans like himself. I wish DeLay would go to a small town near to where I grew up, Beallsville, Ohio and tell the people there that (The American mortality rate for the Vietnam War was about one in 4000; in Beallsville, it was one in 90. Yes, one in 90. ).

Utilized in the proper context, the Chicken Hawk epithet is neither tautological nor reactionary. The crucial question is: if it is right for the right to criticize Bill Clinton for not wanting to fight in a war he opposed, is it right for the left to criticize those avoided fighting in a war they supported--and, by logic, wanted other Americans to fight? Fucking-A right it is.