Curiouser and Curiouser---MSM Silence and Noisiness---if that's a word!

Liberal claptrappery exults as the WaPo plays up a couple of mini-defections on the Right. Typically hyperbolized by the hyperventilating Managing Editor, the headline uses the religiously charged word "renounce," which is a gross exaggeration of the polite misgivings Rich Lowry, the only serious writer mentioned in the article, expresses in his National Review musings. "Recant" would have been a better choice for the illiterate night-shift lefties at the Post, but "retreat" would have been accurate, never a strong suit for the editorialists on the front page of the Post.

However, defection was predictable for the numbnut Scarborough, who resisted pleas to run for the Senate seat in Florida now shabbily chased by Katherine Harris as he is chasing the almighty dollar harder than he supposedly chased his interns around his Congressional office. Joe is a politician in the lesser sense of the word, aligning himself with the future in his own conniving mind so he can keep his well-paid punditry slot on MSNBC---itself largely unwatched, but an MSM fave-rave due to its pro-left tilt.

Scarborough is just another media slut, as getting a whore like O'Donnell on his show might indicate. Behold the star-struck WaPo prose:

Few have struck a nerve more than Scarborough, who questioned the president's intelligence on his show, "Scarborough Country." He showed a montage of clips of Bush's famously inarticulate verbal miscues and then explored with guests John Fund and Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. whether Bush is smart enough to be president.

While the country does not want a leader wallowing in the weeds, Scarborough concluded on the segment, "we do need a president who, I think, is intellectually curious."

"And that is a big question," Scarborough said, "whether George W. Bush has the intellectual curiousness -- if that's a word -- to continue leading this country over the next couple of years."

[by the way, the word is "curiosity," numbnut]

The hilarious part about GWB's glaring lack of brain-power is that John Kerry, the supposed "smarter" choice in '04, graduated with a lower grade-point at Yale than the obviously not-so-smart GWB. Kerry is a sonorous-bore not-very-smart hustler, and Dems really adore Billy Jeff-type skirt-chasing charm hustlers, when they aren't in their reformist hangover-mode pursuing just plain sonorous pious bores like Carter, Dukakis, and Mondale.

The bigger story is how a fellow as well-grounded and ethical as Rich Lowry can show signs of jumping overboard. WaPo quotes:

"Conservatives for a long time were in protective mode, wanting to emphasize the progress in Iraq to contrast what they felt was an unfair attack on the war by the Democrats and media and other sources," Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, said in an interview. "But there's more of a sense now that things are on a downward trajectory, and more of a willingness to acknowledge it and pressure the administration to react to it."

Lowry's magazine offers a powerful example. "It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq," Lowry wrote in April 2005, chastising those who disagreed. This month, he published an editorial that concluded that "success in Iraq seems more out of reach than it has at any time since the initial invasion three years ago" and assailed "the administration's on-again-off-again approach to Iraq."

"It is time for the Bush administration to acknowledge that its approach of assuring people that progress is being made and operating on that optimistic basis in Iraq isn't working," the editorial said. Lowry followed up days later in his own column, suggesting that the United States is "losing, or at least not obviously winning, a major war" and asking whether Iraq is "Bush's Vietnam."

But pulling out of Vietnam would not lead to a disaffection by surrounding states---indeed, I make the argument that our struggle in Vietnam prevented the overthrow of Sukarno in Indonesia during the Year of Living Dangerously when the Chinese Fifth Column in that country may have been planning a huge coup with ChiCom support.

Pulling out of Iraq would signal weakness, if not betrayal, to our key allies in the region including much maligned Saudi Arabia. Plus, the MSM would want to continue "counting coups" with a wholesale gutting of Repub gains over the last 25 years, especially on national security, where we could expect Sharia Law to trump feminism if the current Dem leadership holds true to form. Tents and chadors, get ready, ladies!

Finally, a man bites dog story. Completely ignored by the MSM press and media, about a hundred motion picture bigshots signed an LAT ad supporting western values and opposing appeasement of tyrannical religious nuts---Muslim style.

Even Nicole Kidman, who ditched weird hubby Cruise because she didn't buy into his whacko pseudo-religion, signed on, probably imperilling future megabucks as her PR flame may begin to flutter. Traditional values and patriotism doesn't sell in Hollyweird.