Tough Guys, Real and Imagined

An article on the cinematic tastes of U.S. presidents turns up some interesting nuggets. Bill Clinton requested the shoot-out classic High Noon over 30 times while in the White House (because of its “strong-willed leader taking a situation of imminent danger into his hands – and winning”); George W. Bush’s “all-time favorite” is Saving Private Ryan. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander on D-Day, “refused to view war pictures.”

I wouldn’t believe he existed. . .

If I didn’t see his goofy visage so damn often. Clifford May, of the mega-bogus Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, lets us in on a secret. There’s a small, backwards, theocratic state in the Middle East that funnels some of its massive U.S. aid back into American public relations efforts. It’s Saudi Arabia! (Oh, yeah, the stateless Palestinians do it, too!)

“It’s no secret that both the Saudis and the Palestinian Authority employ sophisticated American public relations consultants,” sez Cliff. Who are we to question a defender of democracy?

But let me get one thing straight: Frank Luntz is on the Saudi/Palestinian payroll?
(For the whole Luntz document, click here.)

Cognitive Dissonance at Reason

Speak favorably of Antiwar.com on the Free Republic website, and you’ll have your logging privileges revoked. Hey, that’s their right, and closed-mindedness is by no means inconsistent with their platform.

But we should be shocked when a writer at a libertarian mag has to preface a reference to Antiwar.com with the following:

The last time I linked to something on antiwar.com, an angry fellow wrote me to say that he was never going to read anything I wrote again. At the risk of losing still more readers. . .

That’s Jesse Walker on Reason’s interactive blog, Hit & Run. (He linked to Justin Raimondo’s article for today.) His reticence is tongue-in-cheek, but the militant liberventionism and Bush worship among Hit & Run readers is real. What gives?