Guess who the Enemy of the Week should be? According to Ms. Jean
Toles, who on May 6 sent us a mysterious communique from an
undisclosed location, none other than “R. Emmett Tyrrell himself.”
He doesn’t even get to share the prize. This creates quite an
ethical dilemma for Enemy Central. Are we to be good little
Stalinoids and do in our own benefactor? Is Tyrrell deserving of
the fate of a Bukharin or Yezhov or Beria or Gorky? We worry it’d
be like sentencing President Bush to hard labor at Guantanamo.
It does appear that Ms. Toles is a firm believer in class
struggle, which is where Mr. Tyrrell falls short, if we understand
the part of her indictment that reads: “Probably the only
difference between former President Clinton and George W. Bush is
that the Bush family is rich enough to squash things that George
did, or frighten people into not verifying anything.” She’s also
firmly anti-McCarthyite, noting that “Bill and Hillary are far from
being ‘Marxists.’” Rather incisively she declares, “No group of
people is more clever at twisting the truth and out and out lying
than the Republican Party and George W. Bush.” But generously she
does offer Mr. Tyrrell a chance to utter a final prayer: “Are you a
Christian?” she asks us to ask him. “If so, what would Jesus say
about ‘Judge not that thou shall be judged’”? We suspect He
wouldn’t dare disagree with what she says in her final judgment:
“Bill Clinton was a better president than George W. Bush will ever
be despite what you say.” Case closed. Next.
Some best-laid plans have gone awry, all because a mean little
man won the presidency in France. It was going to work this way: a
confederation of mature, competent women would lead their countries
to heights male rule could never scale. So thus we’d have a string
of beauties starting with Michelle Bachelet in progressive Chile,
moving on to Hillary in the U.S., jumping to Segolene Royal in
France, joining Angela Merkel in Germany, and concluding with Tzipi
Livni in Israel, assuming its current prime minister resigns as she
has demanded he do. For now, though, it’s back to the ironing
board.
Luckily Hillary isn’t all we have here at home, even though
we’ve lost Kathleen Blanco to post-Katrina backwash. That’s because
the nation has just been introduced to Kathleen Sebelius, the
awesome governor of Kansas who blamed the Bush administration for
her inability to respond to a tornado that leveled a small town in
her state. So much for being as corny as Kansas in August.
For a time it was assumed that Gov. Sebelius had a friend in
Sen. Barack Obama when he lamented the death of 10,000 in that
tornado…only to discover that he was off by some 9,988 lives.
That’ll teach him to rely on Democratic voter rolls from a town
with 1,500 residents.
Truth be told, Sen. Obama did not respond well to his
miscalculation. “There are going to be times when I get tired,” he
said. “There are going to be times when I get weary. There are
going to be times when I make mistakes.” There are going to be
times when we get nauseous. There are going to be times when we ask
FEMA to bail him out. There are going to be times we’ll go with a
real man even if her name is Hillary. (Hat tip: Bruce
Bartlett.)
Then there’s Oprah. For the first time since becoming a kind of
Don Imus, she has endorsed someone for president and by luck of the
draw he happens to be mistake-prone Barack Obama. Her reasoning?
Because she knows him “personally.” What kind of criterion is that?
Imagine whom Paris Hilton could endorse on those grounds. He might
even be a prison warden.
Republicans also know each other personally, which is why
they’re all geared up for civil war. It’s hard to know who’s been
bloodied the most. Perhaps Rudy, not just by McCain and other
leakers, but by Laura Ingraham, who took a page from Sheryl Crow to
remind a terrified Mayor Rudy that she’s a citizen too. Meanwhile,
McCain and Mitt haven’t spared the Republican incumbent. As the
mysterious Ms. Toles would concur, Republicans are the most
grievous sinners imaginable, recklessly disregarding the 11th
Commandment in order to win favor with the Devil.
So who has bailed them out this time? One of the Devil’s own,
naturally, the dirtiest old man since Strom Thurmond. Did Mike
Wallace really have to ask the Romneys about their pre-marital
life? Oprah would have been more discreet. But there we have it:
Mike’s this week’s skunk. Ms. Toles will be mighty
disappointed.
Send your Enemy of the Week nominations to Enemy Central
c/o editor@spectator.org.
