Does George F. Will Write Like a Weasel

By Homeless Hank

April 11, 2012

Recently George Will, of a now more shoddy Washington Post newspaper and Writer’s Group, wrote a column as to whom Mitt Romney might choose as his Vice President. He starts his column with this sentence:

“Barack Obama’s intellectual sociopathy—his often breezy and sometimes loutish indifference to truth—should no longer startle. It shold, however, influence Mitt Romney’s choice of a running mate.”

Within the context of exaggerated hyperbole (alleging Obama “flagrantly” misrepresented Supreme Court decision Citizens United; misrepresented Ryan’s budget; defended “reactionary” liberalism; id. est., his meretricious claims and dereliction of duty) Will proposes Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan or Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Thus this aging crank spent more time with blatant labeling of Obama (and the “entitlement state”) rather than making much of a case for either of his choices.

Yes, this is the superstar pundit of the retrograding Washington Post who, over the years, continually posed to have so much “… intellectual firepower … to explain complex policy issues” (his stated reason for Paul Ryan).

If cartoonist and author Scott Adams wrote a parallel book on politicians, along the same lines of his enlightening insights on business practice (Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel), there is little doubt George F. Will’s writing style could inspire several chapters. What blowhard has written with more insinuation, illusion of logic, confusing sophistry, guilt by association, and whimsical vagary than this pretense of intellectual firepower? His political biases are almost always more prevalent than his ability to write rational arguments.

One of Will’s favorite tactics is to pile on a bunch of esoteric historical references and/ or a lot of factual baggage. In this recent example he uses several inches of valuable column space. Rather than actually making much of a case for either Ryan or Jimdal he lists 16 presidents (since World War II) who have become the president. How truly relevant is this barrage of esoterica and how does it support his choices to explain complex issues?

If any group of people have assumed some kind of “entitlement state” it has been newspaper owners, editors and opinion columnist, and other weasel-like political pundits, who assume are entitled to manipulate peoples’ opinions—just because they work for big, corporate media. Maybe Will shouldn’t take his cocktail to mess with his medication before he writes his God-like diatribe?

Yet one really has to wonder how this republican pundit can point fingers at a democratic President with his accusations of psychopathy, loutish indifference to truth, and misrepresentation, when these are precisely qualities many republican candidates and legislators exude in abundance? No hypocrisy here George?

It is not like the most common tactic of the right-wing is to accuse the opposition of every form of scurrilous attitude, intellectual pretense, and criminal propensity one’s own party frequently partakes—not to mentions masters? But then this is the same man who complains in this same opinion that Obama is “… not weighed down by a ballast of scruples”. As the World Turns so does the soap opera of what people think of as “professional” media.

Granted, Obama has not delivered on his campaign promises, and has compromised far too much like “most” politicians. One could reasonable suspect he has even deliberately lied to people. He may even have psychopathic tendencies? But the fact that republicans are making this kind of allegation is beyond the pale.

What George Will is really arguing is that Mitt Romney needs to get some intellectual capacity and reality-based weight behind his ticket because he, as a flake of questionable ethics himself, doesn’t have the wherewithal to carry the day.

It is just too bad we did not have more political parties with clout to take on the mediocrity and criminal corruption of both the democratic and republican parties.