Ex-Presidents

Here’s how America’s media and intellectual elite help Americans keep track of what’s important. Two recent articles about former presidents serve as illustrations below.

A Jihad on Jimmy

The first example comes from one of America’s leading lights of scholarship: The World According to Jimmy Carter by Alan Dershowitz (Huffington Post). In this, the eminent israel apologist and all-around war hawk takes Carter to task for his latest book about the Middle East, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid (Amazon).[1] After taking a moment for the obligatory false praise of Carter’s achievements, he proceeds to disagree with absolutely everything Carter says and believes—all written in a condescending, puzzled tone that invokes images of a parent disappointed that a once-promising child has gone so wrong. In so doing, he heavily employs his well-worn personal history of the Middle East, rife with careful omissions and specious interpretations.

“I don’t know why Jimmy Carter, who is generally a careful man, allowed so many errors and omissions to blemish his book. Here are simply a few of the most egregious.”

He then lists a dozen fat bullet points full of clear refutations of any wrongdoing by Israel with such gems as “Carter faults Israel for its “air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor” without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if they succeeded in building a bomb.” Oh, yeah, what a moron Carter is to think that Israel wasn’t totally justified in bombing a sovereign nation that issued threats to them. It’s morally reprehensible of Carter to believe for a minute that Israel is in any way a bloodthirsty loose cannon answering to no law but its own. Dershowitz continues in this vein, refuting point after point by drawing from his infinite wellspring of a history that has little to do with reality. At the end of this enormous list of minor corrections, he exhorts Carter to “seriously consider addressing these omissions and mistakes”. As if, once Dershowitz so kindly points out that everything Carter has written and believes is wrong, Carter will just rewrite the goddamned book or something. This level of hubris on Dershowitz’s part would be amazing were it not so well-documented. Ask Noam Chomsky how much fun it is to have Dershowitz—Israel’s greatest defender—tugging at your heels[2].

Minting Nixon

The second example arises from the announcement that the U.S. mint pushes new $1 coin (CNN). The mint will issue four dollar coins per year, with the president’s faces on them and will hope and pray that people actually use them, instead of disdaining them in favor of their precious, precious one dollar bills. After mentioning that they’ll start with “George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 2007 … [and that the] Van Buren dollar will be released in 2008 and the Fillmore in 2010”, they skip a century to mention that “Richard M. Nixon … will appear on the coin in 2016.” Why on earth does Dick Nixon warrant special mention? Why does the crook even get a coin? Other countries put bloody scientists and artists on their money—the fools.

Read to the very end of the article and you’ll discover the big problem facing the complete rollout of this program, namely, that the “law specifies no living former president can appear on a coin”. The first problem they mention is that, at four coins per year, there is every likelihood that both Bush the first and Clinton will still be alive to halt the program. But, wait, didn’t we just celebrate Ford’s 93rd birthday? Of course, he’s still alive now, but there is every expectation that he’ll clear the way for “Ronald Regan … the next eligible candidate to appear on the face of the coin”. Really? What about Jimmy? Yeah, Jimmy’s the real problem, as “the [Reagan] coin will not be released until the demise of Ford and Carter because the coins are released in order of when they served as president”. You read that correctly: the mint can’t wait for Carter to die so that they can issue the Reagan coin. You hear that, Jim? Stop writing books full of lies and die already.

The Lesson Learned

• If you left office in disgrace after being outed as a criminal who pathologically kept records of “enemies” and assigned government resources to track their every move, you get yourself a dollar coin and an honorable mention.
• If you left the presidency to join forces with Habitats for Humanity and won a nobel prize, you’re seen as standing in the way of the noble goal of finally gracing this nation’s coinage with Reagan’s visage.
• Special Bonus Lesson: Bush the Senior—five years ago acknowledged as a failure of a president—is today getting lauded by the press as America’s savior. And what about Jimmy Carter, nobel peace prize winner and all-around humanitarian? He should really just shut his damned cakehole.