11/2/06

Memo to Mark Halperin

What is absurd and troubling about the anger on the right and the left is that these people seize on whatever wisp of a phrase they wish in a wider discussion and twist it to their own purposes.

That's Mark Halperin writing in today's installment of, well follow this link. It's one of those Slate things.

Now that I've quoted that, here's a wisp of a phrase from later in the article.
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are extraordinarily polarizing figures...

The difference between these two "extraordinarily polarizing figures", of course, is that George W. Bush is polarizing because he is the figurehead of an extraordinarily inept administration most notable for its extraordinarily shameless and hateful approach to politics, whereas Bill Clinton is polarizing because he was a target of a Republican machine employing an extraordinarily shameless and hateful approach to politics. This isn't rocket science or French philosophy. It isn't complex, and yet distinctions matter.

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