The American Spectator

Enemy of the Week

Sir Donald Parnell of London, a long-time talent scout for Enemy Central, wired us the other day to "nominate Chuck Hagel as EOW for insinuating Impeachment for President Bush because he will not listen to him regarding Iraq." Hear, hear! Inspired by Senator Hagel's decisiveness, we hereby inform him that we're here today to announce that we and our family will make a decision on his political future later this year. For now, let's only say we're just laying out options here. Hagel's a handsome man, but he faces stiff competition.

And who comes stiffer than dear Al Gore, an Oscar wiener who's never been to Vienna, much to the detriment of the Freud Foundation's researches into anxiety, transference, and efforts to save the Vienna Woods rainforest. The cerebral Al put a hand to his temple last week and declared, "The planet has a fever." (The hand was later treated for third-degree burns.) Next, confirming that he'd carefully read the anthropological classic It Takes a Village, he noted, "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor." Whereupon supporters of universal health care could only think of Peggy Lee, though the kind of fever Al set off wasn't exactly the one she had in mind, whether in the morning or all through the night.

If Ms. Valerie Plame could sing, perhaps she too would elicit comparisons to Miss Peggy Lee. For now we're stuck with having to compare her to Marilyn Monroe, even though she's never dated a Kennedy. To be sure, Marilyn also had a husband named Joe and both Joes happened to come from San Francisco. Nonetheless, if you believe Ms. Plame, she would never sing, not under torture, not for Vanity Fair, not about diamonds being her best friend, not even covertly in Guantanamo, and certainly not for the supper she and her husband shared with Sen. Hillary, who has led a tortured life of her own.

The Smithsonian has lost a model public servant, Mr. Lawrence M. Small, whose appetites were big. He raised zillions for his institution, spent millions on several perks, including a few for the missus, and has now walked the plank at the Navy Yard -- forced to do so by those who happily spend incomparably greater sums and condemn anyone who would dare prefer a more modest spending regimen. Even more unfortunate, the man from the Smithsonian was completely Jack Abramoff free. A lot of good it did him. At last report, the Smithsonian's roofs were still leaking.

Which reminds us: Yet again we learn just what kind of drip Sen. Jim Webb is. His Senate campaign last year characterized his commitment to public service as "A Matter of Honor." One of his novels was called "A Sense of Honor." And of course his most famous novel is entitled "Fields of Fire." As it happened on Tuesday, a close aide of his got caught in a field of fire and the Senator's first and last reaction was to cut and run and wash his hands of a fellow Marine. Imagine that. Less than three months into his first senatorial term, he tosses honor out the window, as if needing to impress Sen. John Kerry. How long before Webb tosses his own medals over the White House fence? It's a free country, true, but we pray he doesn't include the EOW pin we've now awarded him. The thing is, it's the last decoration he's likely to receive. He should treasure it the way we do.

Send your Enemy of the Week nominations to Enemy Central c/o editor@spectator.org.

topics:
Health Care, Law, Iraq, NATO