September 25, 2007--

Novelist John Grisham exposes hatred for George Bush matched in intensity only by his fawning adulation of Bill and Hillary Clinton.   

What does Grisham prove by his characterization of the Bush administration as "bad men with evil intent"?   More about himself than about Bush.  Everyone remembers the high-school cliques and the willingness-- nay, the compulsion-- of those craving acceptance in the "cool" clique to prove their acceptability to their peers in their clique by viciously and maliciously attacking those outside such cliques. It appears that a very large percentage of entertainers are people who have not outgrown-- and perhaps cannot outgrow --such adolescent mentality.

Expressing serious disagreement with the political judgment of a politician is a time-honored and valued American freedom. Expressing vitriolic hatred is not. Especially vitriolic hatred at a President at a time of war. A recent newspaper interview of novelist John Grisham quotes him at length on his political views.  After gushingly conceding himself to be a great admirer and supporter of (and campaigner for) Bill and Hillary Clinton, Grisham characterizes the war in Iraq as "an immoral abomination" and characterizes Bush and his administration as "bad people with evil intent." This is the kind of juvenile, narcissistic moralizing one has come to expect from the vast majority of "celebrities."

It's not that expressions of vitriolic hatred for opponents as a form of narcissistic self-love are new; they're not. What's new is the extent to which too many Americans tolerate, rather than shun, such behavior. Indeed, many laud it while simultaneously condemning condemnation of it as an attack on the "patriotism" its practitoners. Unwittingly exemplifying this latter tendency on Hardball (September 21, 2007), Charles Cook characterized as "smears" the "right's" justifiably caustic criticisms of MoveOn.Org's patently hateful defamation of Petraeus.  Welcome to Animal Farm.  CookSpeak.  HardballSpeak.  LeftSpeak.  Ignorance is strength.  Freedom is oppression.  Sacrifice is selfishness.  Describing idealogues' attacks on the patriotism of an honorable general at a time of war as being "attacks on his patriotism" is an "attack on the patriotism" of the attackers of the general.  Hypocrisy is piety.  Piety is apostasy. Contradictions are congruent. Circularity is linear.  Hardball is Fardball for the Left.

Most decent, ordinary Americans seem utterly clueless about the baseness and venality of the motives that evoke such hateful expressions of political "views."  Probably few readers of Grisham's novels will ferret-out news reports about his self-loving hatred of Bush, so most of them will probably continue funding his hateful nonsense by buying even more of his books.  Sad.  Help Fund Fawning Adulation of Bill and Hillary and Hatred of Bush:  Buy Grisham's books.

When will Americans cease viewing celebrities as though they were royalty or intellectual giants and begin viewing most of them as the self-absorbed, spoiled children most of them are? Before America lost its common-sense/common-decency center of gravity, most Americans would have shunned any celebrity spewing such hateful views.  Of course, those self-centered celebrities are so intellectually shallow that they view anyone suggesting that ordinary people ought not patronize their work in order to avoid subsidizing their hateful rhetoric as being "fascist."

Grisham, and other celebrities of his ilk, apparently can't emotionally or intellectually grasp the difference between  vicious smearing on the one hand and sharp dissent on the other-- i.e., the difference between saying "Bush has made colossal and disastrous mistakes by (or in) toppling Saddam" on the one hand and saying Bush and his team are "bad men with evil intent."  It's not just juvenile, high-school-clique-ish, narcissistic posturing to pander to, and be deemed "cool" by,  those inside their clique, it's the malicious smearing of those outside the "cool" clique.  They dish-out offensive rhetoric, and, when someone correctly describes their rhetoric as "malicious," they squeal like stuck pigs.  Such narcissistic childishness.

If John Grisham is proof of anything, it's that extensive reading and extensive writing does not always improve the mind or guarantee intellectual maturity beyond adolescence.    

--Jim Wrenn, Editor at WrennCom.Com and Editor at PoliSat.Com.

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