Greg Mitchell reminds us of the NYT’s coverage of Chimpy McFlightsuit’s aircraft carrier landing, five years ago today. It’s painful reading, but nothing compares to reliving the MSNBC coverage, e.g., G. Gordon Liddy saying Bush’s parachute harness “makes the best of his manly characteristic.” But, the following exchange from the May 9, 2003 airing of HARDBALL remains my all time favorite moment in the history of cable news. It says it all, without really saying anything at all.
MATTHEWS: We have a visual while we’re looking here. In Hollywood, they say how did you get the part. I fit the costume. You know, it’s an old joke in Hollywood. I fit the costume…
(LAUGHTER)
NOONAN: Right
.
MATTHEWS: … because they have the — this guy fits the costume, doesn’t he?
NOONAN: Yes.
MATTHEWS: I mean Bill Clinton — do you think they had jump-suits in Bill Clinton’s size?
NOONAN: Oh…
MATTHEWS: Just asking.
NOONAN: Oh, well, Bill Clinton used — you remember Bill Clinton landed on the Theodore Roosevelt back about 1993 or ’94 and he was in his bomber jacket. Do you know what I mean? It was lots of show business then.
The key with Bush, however, is that, you know, he seems like one of these guys and one of these gals because he’s just like them. He’s a regular American male. He also…
I’ve got to tell you what I think — can I tell what you I think the key to the great landing on the aircraft carrier was?
MATTHEWS: That’s why you’re here, Peggy.
NOONAN: All right. This is what I think it was. It wasn’t just it was showy, it was showbiz, it was “Top Gun,” it was Tom Cruise’s suit, it was all that wonderful stuff. It’s that the American president not only put himself in harm’s way going to see American troopers, but he showed them by coming in on that ship I trust you.
MATTHEWS: A little risk. Just a little bit of risk.
NOONAN: It wasn’t just risk. It was trust. It was faith. You’re going to take care of me. You’re going to hit that second trap, the third trap, or the fourth. I’m safe in your hands. It was a compliment, you know.
MATTHEWS: Even a daytime carrier landing is tricky.
NOONAN: Oh, absolutely. I mean it’s taking a chance. I’ll tell you one of the ways you know you’ve gotten a little old? If I’d been in the White House now I would have told them don’t do that, that’s a bridge too far, you’ve got to be crazy, and, instead, it turned out to be, I think, one of the brilliant moments…
MATTHEWS: It’s like knowing to bring…
NOONAN: … indelible political moments.
MATTHEWS: … a meg — to bring a bullhorn to ground zero on September 14, not to bring a mic. It’s that little difference. If he’d had a mic there, if he was like Wayne Newton with a mic or some show-business guy, he would have looked like a lounge act.
NOONAN: Barney Rubble.
MATTHEWS: Because he had that bullhorn, he was a guy like them. We’ll be talking more…
NOONAN: He was a guy with his arm around the…
MATTHEWS: … about this accoutrements of…
NOONAN: … other firemen.
MATTHEWS: … greatness with Peggy Noonan, an expert at the verbal discussing the pictorial.
Happy Mission Accomplished Day!! If you have a favorite piece of wankery, post it in the thread.
And if that doesn’t sum up the past, present, and future of the stupidity that is American foreign policy, I don’t know what is.
Must see video over at C&L:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/01/happy-mission-accomplished-day/
Short and sweet.
I assume we can expect a full retrospective today on this auspicious moment by all those mentioned in the MSM, particularly Matthews?
Any moment, actually.
/snark.
They are still lying, trying to justify this. That says it all.
So…how’s the beer?
I allowed myself to read that this morning. It made me throw up my breakfast. But man oh man it sure did set the tone for the past few years of propaganda didn’t it?
I’m so glad I ate breakfast after I read this half an hour ago. It actually gets more and more disgusting every year I read it.
It is also Law Day and May Day.
Good times. hey remember the Walter Reed scandal and how the Chair of Veterans Affairs didn’t know about it?
Good times. Goooood times.
National Day of Prayer!
Won’t you join me as I lead the congregation?
Dear Lord:
On this special day, on which so many special events occur including Mission Accomplished Day, Law Day, May Day, and the National Day of Prayer, please hear this prayer from your humblest of humble servants.
On this day, Your Day my Lord, I pray that that the people who led us to war through lies and distortions, and who destroyed our economy through avarice and greed, get what they deserve.
Lord, let them feel the pain of outliving their adult children.
Lord, let them know what it’s like to lose your limbs in a war fought for no good reason.
Lord, let them experience what it’s like to choose between heating and eating.
Lord, let them get denied care by an enormous insurance company because of a pre-existing condition.
Lord, let them experience what it’s like to see their loved ones dragged away to some godforsaken secret prison where they’re tortured, raped, and abused with no recourse to the courts. Let them be trapped in a system that would make even Kafka blush. Let them experience Room 101. Let them be waterboarded, since it’s not REALLY torture, just a dunk in the water really.
Dear Lord, let Harry Whittington return the favor to Dick Cheney’s face: it’s only fair.
Dear Lord, let them watch their entire savings go down the drain. Let them know what it’s like to suffer through a hurricane and then be left to drown.
Dear Lord, on this National Day of Prayer, I ask that you answer my prayer and fulfill my wishes.
Your humble servant, forever and ever,
Brendan Skwire
I need to shower now.
look at this pic and you’ll need to shower again..look who was waiting for her “fly boy” on Mission Accomplished Day.
http://www.isebrand.com/Assets_for_all_pages/photo_Condi_Grin.jpg
From the beginning it was a story marked by the miraculous. It was a miracle a six-year-old boy survived the storm at sea and floated safely in an inner tube for two days and nights toward shore; a miracle that when he tired and began to slip, the dolphins who surrounded him like a contingent of angels pushed him upward; a miracle that a fisherman saw him bobbing in the shark-infested waters and scooped him aboard on the morning of Nov. 25, 1999, the day celebrated in America, the country his mother died bringing him to, as Thanksgiving.
http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=3
You couldn’t make this sh*t up, I used to think.