The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Palm Beach Post columnist George McEvoy. Mr. McEvoy is the third Palm Beach Post columnist to get an award, plus a fourth went to the entire paper's editorial board and a fifth to the paper's political cartoonist.

I've railed against the liberalism of the Post many times. Click here and here for two examples. Part of the problem at the Post I think attributes to group think. The Post doesn't have anything close to a conservative or Republican among its columnists. Not even the often outrageous NY Times can say that. As left as Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd go, the paper has had or columnists on the right including William Saffire, John Tierney and David Brooks.

What does the Post have? You can go here to read a sampling. I've also commented on them at TFM

Here is Randy Schultz. He is the editor of the editorial page
Here is Tom Blackburn.
Here is Jac Versteeg
Here is Elisa Cramer
Also here is the Paper's political cartoonist, Don Wright

You'll quickly learn all are avowed opponents of Bush and the Republicans. The vitriol that spews on a regular basis from this crowd is incredible.

Now back to Mr. McEvoy. The columnist is no fan of Bush in the least but that's not why he gets today's knucklehead. McEvoy turns his hate towards the US military in the lowest of democratic or ways.

That's why I got to wondering on Wednesday while I watched President Bush make his big speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. I couldn't help but put myself in a pair of Iraqi sandals and try to see how I would react.

First, I believe I would ask myself, if democracy is so wonderful, how come President Bush always is making these speeches on military bases, before audiences made up of soldiers, sailors and Marines, all trained to cheer on cue? Talk about preaching to the choir.

First of all Mr. McEvoy has little chance of knowing an Iraqi thinks. Has he lived 30 years in a country run by a man who murdered thousands of his own people? Not counting the Kurds and the war against Iraq. The state of fear an Iraqi had to live in is far beyond his or my perceptions.

Here he starts in against our military. 'Trained on cue'. Is he saying the troops were trained to applaud? I guess who is using a metaphor. Then I'd counter applause at a speech done by the President is the norm. Is Mr. McEvoy forgetting state of the union addresses? Even people in the other party applaud then. Its called being polite.

This is mild for Mr. McEvoy's column. There is more.

After Mr. Bush spoke, a Pentagon spokesman came on one of those TV panel programs and said, "The president prefers to speak to these young men and women who have put their lives on the line... "

Oh, c'mon. That audience at the Naval Academy was mostly students. The only line they've been on is the chow line.

Shot #2 at the military for Mr. McEvoy. Anyone familiar with military or academy life, can tell you about lines. I'm an ex-Navy serviceman myself "Hurry up and wait" as its called. Plus there is pre-military life. I can remember lining up in class for K-3rd grade.

Mr. McEvoy will probably say this is just a metaphor. I call it a swipe at our fighting men and women. Again there is more.

"This is a military program to help get factual information about ongoing operations into Iraqi news," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, an Army spokesman in Baghdad.

Paying — or bribing — newspapers to run pro-American stories hardly enhances the promise of a free press, which is the cornerstone of any democracy. If I were an Iraqi, I might see the similarity to the state-controlled newspapers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Oh and how wonderful was that free press conducted by CNN in its Iraq coverage during the Hussein years.

Mr. McEvoy either is forgetful or has a selective memory. During WW II The US govt. had the following. (Hat tip- Betsy)

The Office of War Information (OWI), America’s official propaganda agency during World War II, was established by executive order on June 13, 1942. OWI’s mandate was twofold: domestically, to coordinate information policy and control the news from the battlefronts for the home front; overseas, to engage in experiments in psychological warfare.

and the Office of Policy Coordination the branch of OWI that oversaw the propaganda war that was waged in Europe, Asia, and Africa. From August 1942 to December 1945, this office generated countless propaganda directives in its effort to undermine enemy morale and cultivate a pro-American postwar climate.

These directives took many forms. The Central Directives were sent weekly to all OWI offices worldwide and contained the general propaganda themes that OWI wished to see included in radio broadcasts, leaflets, and, where possible, newspaper articles and editorials. The Regional Directives, which constitute the largest component of Part II, were targeted primarily at enemy, occupied, and neutral countries; were tailored specifically for the target country; and contained discussions of the major propaganda themes to be exploited. A third category, Special Directives, were issued as a response to events that required immediate attention. A fourth category, Long-Range Directives, laid the groundwork for the postwar U.S. propaganda apparatus in such key nations as China, the Philippines, Syria, Lebanon, and India.

We were doing the same sixty years ago in a war no one argues the legitimacy of. I'd argue its needed to counter the mostly negative press. There is good going on in Iraq, we took out a despotic dictator and are helping to build a democracy in its place. The Iraqi public needs to know the good and the bad.

What galls me is the last part. The military pays journalists and McEvoy compares that to the Nazis and Soviets. The Bush/Nazi analogy is well documented, now the left is doing it in regards to the military too. They are finally showing their true colors, McEvoy and the left hate the military.

There is one last insult left in Mr. McEvoy's column.

In fact, I'm not an Arab, and I'm wondering right now. Is this the free nation to which my mother sailed from Ireland in 1914, a teenager full of hope and idealistic dreams? Is this the country for which my father was wounded in the Argonne Forest after hearing President Woodrow Wilson say that war was being fought to make the world "safe for democracy"?

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I don't think tough speeches to trained-seal audiences is what democracy is about. And I don't think a little flag in your suit lapel is democracy in action.

Mr. McEvoy calls our fighting men and women trained animals. Can this hate fulled man go any lower? I'll go as far to say what Mr. McEvoy's WWI vet father would do if he was alive and called a well trained seal by his son. George McEvoy would get his butt kicked.

Instead something else will have to suffice. For writing a hate filled insulting attack on our brave fighting men and women, George McEvoy is today's Knucklehead of the Day.

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