if you assert it on tv and the correspondent interviewing you just nods and goes to the next question, it must be true. it's a scientific truth, at least according to BushCo science.

Those crazies and their notion of an ideal Biblical... sorry, no... Qu'ranic era directly relevant to the present day! Tsh!

In fairness to poor Mr. Armitage, who clearly needs muchas medication, his mentor was considered insufficiently insane to serve as Secretary of State.

"Your theory is crazy -- but not crazy enough to be received wisdom in the US oligarchy! Aroint thee, witch!"

TO BE FAIR, America is hegemonistic, but not ethnocentric. Anyone can join in the business of helping America exercise disproportionate power beyond its borders, so long as you respect the Almighty Dollar while doing it.

He's quite right to alert us to the dangers of a "hegemonistic appetite." I had it once and gained 12 pounds in just a month. Then I dicovered the "Abu Ghraib Diet Cookbook," and three weeks later was as slim as a supermodel again.
As one of DC's great analysts once said, Life gets Adler and Adler.

That's not an attitude limited to our leaders--as you probably remember, some of the liberals at Obsidian Wings like to criticize Reagan for wimping out and not retaliating against the people who sent the suicide bombers against the Marines. There's an unconscious assumption that we have the right to go anywhere and kill anyone we think is a bad guy, but that no one has the right to strike back, even when we are in their country. I don't know how to get people to see how insane this is, but maybe humor is as good a way as any.

Donald, I think most of those ObWi liberals are bringing it up to tweak conservatives for inconsistency, not as an actual criticism of Reagan.

I'v tried to imagine how Mort Sahl would approach our recent obsession, but can't. We've gone way beyond the MAD-ness of the Reagan era,some our doing, some the nature of our latest enemy.
Kremlin jokes you could make, but jihad jokes? The humor always had to cut both ways. Now, neither way. The comics today are Seinfeldian.

Having served in America, I am fearful of their hegemonistic appetite. Even during the time of the Wilson, I find that I've never seen a more ethnocentric country in my life. I have never seen a country for whom the days of Westward Expansion was, unlike for you and I, 150 years ago; they see it as yesterday. So this leads me to some fear about their view of themselves on the world stage.

Armitage keeps coming up like food poisoning. Whenever these clowns reappear on the public stage I have to go pouring through my old books to figure what parts they played in old scandals. Iran-contra? The October Surprise? Patti Hearst? The Vietnam War? JFK? Maybe he was in Manson's Family?

When did this guy first shake hands with the Devil?

ALL AMERICA needs is AMERICA and all of OUTER SPACE.( oh, and a different Administration, 1-202-225-0100 DEMAND IMPEACHMENT)

"EVEN under the Shah . . ." Yeah, that Shah was a way cool guy, and why wouldn't he be, since Armitage's government put him in charge? Democracy wasn't such a great idea even back then, especially when they nationalized their oil.

Hapa, good one. :-)

At least some of them seem to mean it, KC, IMO, but next time it comes up I may ask for clarification.

At least some of them seem to mean it

I'm sorry to say Hilzoy clearly meant it. She also clearly didn't know anything about Lebanon, or what we'd been doing to Lebanon before the attack on the Marine barracks. Which I assume is why she meant it.

donescobar wrote

Life gets Adler and Adler

i'm afreud you're correct - it's not really possible to stay forever jung

Whatever the hell happened to the ole Shah. Last I heard he got cancer and went to Egypt.

The Shah is dead. He died soon after his exile, of cancer, in Egypt.

Let's really see if he was right and attack Iran now. It'd be just like a science project. Who wants to volunteer to go first? Are these guys right about anything?

And after all the good (and mostly bad) puns, we are still left asking "And how many divisions does humor have?"
We keep on laughing through the carnage.
We're not going to impeach. Power will remain in the same hands.
Forty years ago the kids of the rich and powerful (well, some) were in the street. That was then.
It's another country,now. Nobody knows it better than the boys and girls of K Street. The System R us. Can't reach them.
Hollow best and brightest.

The quality of Armitage's thought is laid bare for all to see in his grammar and syntax. "for you and I" "I have never seen a country for whom" " I have never seen a country for whom the days of Persepolis was" "I have never seen a country for whom the days of Persepolis was . . . 2500 years ago" You have to be an editor to even figure out what he's trying (but failing) to say. That's on top of the mistakes in grammar, diction, and syntax.

Those crazies and their notion of an ideal Biblical... sorry, no... Qu'ranic era directly relevant to the present day! Tsh!

Persepolis, which the Shah embraced as a symbol of Persian glory, is pre-Islamic. IIRC, the government of the Islamic Republic is not terribly interested in celebrating the country's pre-Islamic heritage, for obvious reasons.