doodledee

The latest trend in liberal circles seems to be making huge lists of all the lies and broken promises that Bush has made over the last couple of years. The lefty websites and forums have been full of them, so it's not really surprising to see them start showing up in more 'mainstream' locations.

Steve 'Look at Me!' Perry did it in this City Pages article from a week or so ago. It was bundled with this less-listlike piece, creating something like 20+ pages of angst. Wow. I think I stopped after 11.

Then last Thursday Al Gore whipped an activist crowd at NYU into a near frenzy with his own version that contained a lot of same stuff that Perry had written [transcript here, video here]. I forget, is Gore running for president or not?

It's all the same information over and over again. Websites, newspapers, television, everywhere. You read Gore's speech, for example, and he talks about this quote from George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize winner for Economics:

This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy. What we have here is a form of looting."

Surprise! This same quote showed up in Bob Herbert's editorial in today's Times. And I bet that's just the beginning. Quick! Make haste! Copy and paste!

The repetitiveness bugs me. Sure, it's mostly the result of our hyperconnected environment where ideas and news travel super freakin' fast - a concept that I normally dig - but it still bugs me.

And the monotone criticism bugs me, too. I guess I don't expect anything more than from the Pages, but from some of these other clowns, I want to hear an occasional 'I told you so' or a 'here's what I would have done'.

A letter in today's Strib seems to agree:

Reading the text of the speech former Vice President Al Gore delivered last week at New York University (Star Tribune, Aug. 12), it made me wonder just one thing: What is the solution? I guess it is easier to point fingers, complain and criticize then it is to offer a solution.

Exactly. I'm all for pointing out the lies - they make me want to spit - but I can't stand it when smartypantsknowitalls go off on something like this without proposing an alternative solution. Hell, they've got hindsight for chrissakes, just make something up that would have *obviously* worked and say you would have done that. It seems so easy, but nobody ever does it.

Come on, if 'the bad guys' can tell us how to think, why can't you?