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Author Topic: David Frum Suxs
jeff house
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Babbler # 518

posted 10 January 2004 11:16 AM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Eric Alterman has a good bit about Dave, and Richard Perle today.

quote:
For spectacular misuse of the first-person, it’s hard to beat the comedy team of Perle ‘n Frum, now appearing on a panel show in your neighborhood, flogging their latest work entitled, I’m paraphrasing here, “Let’s Kill Everyone Who Isn’t Us.” Take in this slim-but-potent little vial of vicarious testosterone and you find yourself enmeshed in beauties like this one:

”We have offered concrete recommendations equal to the seriousness of the threat, and the softliners have not, because we have wanted to fight, and they have not.”

If you’re keeping score at home, that “We” stuck in there is the single most indecent word yet typed in the 21st century.

We?

Who in the bloody hell is “We”?


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3449870&p1=0

He continues, pointing out that Frum and Perle have never even volunteered for combat, even once.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 10 January 2004 11:56 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Now that was an awesome rant. The best part:

quote:
honorarium-fattened hyenas have no compunction about using other people’s children to act out their imperial dreams (Perle), or as bleeding punctuation marks to the kind of high-flown rhetoric (Frum) that gets you invited once again to duel upon the greensward at Cocktail Frank Fields.

As skdadl would say: Yee hee hee hee.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
josh
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Babbler # 2938

posted 10 January 2004 12:26 PM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Another article on the "dynamic duo," which includes this chestnut from Frum:


"Frum, who left the White House in 2003, was as unswerving as Bush himself.


"Sometimes the right answer, when a person has a grievance against you, is to say: 'You're completely mistaken; that grievance comes out of a completely wrong way of looking at the world and you're just going to have to get over it'," Frum said.


"We're not going to change." "


http://tinyurl.com/2tomr


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 10 January 2004 12:33 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Flattering photo, too, dontcha think?

By the way, the article says:

quote:
Perle appeared with Robert Frum, the former Bush speech writer who coined "Axis of Evil."

Isn't it David Frum? Or is there yet another Frum that I've missed?

[ 10 January 2004: Message edited by: Michelle ]


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 10 January 2004 12:48 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yee hee hee hee hee.

If Frum sees that, he is going to be so mad. Hee. (Yes, he's David.)

I notice that Perle uses the expression "in the construction of Europe" as he is talking about France. I wonder whether he is using "construction" there in the sense that deconstructionists do. If so, how trendy of him.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
beluga2
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posted 11 January 2004 03:04 AM      Profile for beluga2     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here's another review/evisceration of the Dynamic Duo's new tome: (BTW, who's Batman and who's Robin? )

Sick Puppies.

quote:
The title is not part of my usual vocabulary, but sometimes an expression fits so perfectly that it becomes irresistible. And so it is for the authors of a neo-con "manifesto" on foreign policy. The Gomer Pyle of American Presidents recently was presented with a plan to reorder much of the world, a plan intended to build on his remarkable achievements in Iraq and Afghanistan, spreading resentment and future mayhem against Americans across the world.

Have you ever noticed how many of those odd people, the American neo-cons, use the rhetoric of nineteenth century European radicals? You'd be hard put to count all the references to "revolutionary," "radical," and "manifesto" in the American Right's industrial-scale output of pamphlets and tracts. This practice may have started as a marketing gimmick, the catchy application of a term from an unexpected context, but this kind of language is far more revealing than its authors realize.

Hitler was partial to just this kind of language. That lover of fire engine-sized roadsters, cane and cape at the opera, and tea with elegant pastries always used such terms to describe his political movement when he strutted in public with whip and jackboots.

...

This is a mad vision of a world which perhaps resembles nothing so much as Orwell's 1984 politely introduced through the back door in the name of stopping terror instead of being imposed by a police state, although in this vision America would become effectively a police state vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

The manifesto might be viewed as a call to fulfill what was once known as America's Manifest Destiny when only Indians and Spaniards in western North America were affected. Now that call is openly to assume the imperial purple of Rome on a planetary scale. You have the military power, America; use it. To hell with what the other ninety-five percent of humanity thinks or fears.


I'm undecided as to whether I should actually read Perle/Frum's thoughtful opus. On the one hand, it would be good to know what "thoughts" are passing thru the twitching masses of misfiring neurons these neocon fruitcakes pass off as brains. On the other, I suspect MY brain might spontaneously strangle itself rather than let itself be exposed to this stupifying and terrifying drivel.

'Tis a quandary.


From: vancouvergrad, BCSSR | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
'lance
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posted 11 January 2004 12:36 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
BTW, who's Batman and who's Robin?

Based on age, wealth and power, the part of Batman could be played only by Perle.

Besides, however much he'd like it to be forgotten, David "Boy Wonder" Frum is Canadian. How could he anything but the sidekick?


From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
bittersweet
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posted 11 January 2004 02:02 PM      Profile for bittersweet     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Some may remember Frum's humiliating televised encounter with Noam Chomsky shown in the doc Manufacturing Consent. Frum was so obviously ill-informed and had so badly misread Chomsky (one subject was Kurdish oppression) that, after seeing every one of his attempts to bully him with absurd accusations demolished, he was reduced to finally charging Chomsky with failing to support the cause.

Well. You could almost see the blunder, as if Frum had just puked on his own lap. It was obvious that he immediately regretted the, ah, outburst. Chomsky, left with but the style of denouement with which to finish this first round knockout, chose compassionately, with a quick succession of jabs to Frum's startled cranium. He responded by quoting precisely the remarkable number of times he'd written about, and lectured internationally on, the Kurds--including a courageous visit to Turkey--and concluded by reminding Frum that he was just one man, not the United Nations. Perhaps he would like to compare his own contributions. Frum's expression passed swiftly from dread to embarrassment to abject terror. It gave new, and satisfying, meaning to the phrase station break.

[ 11 January 2004: Message edited by: bittersweet ]


From: land of the midnight lotus | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 11 January 2004 02:20 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That was a good precis, Bittersweet. I remember seeing this a while ago, and then I forgot all about it.

We should try to get it set up somewhere on the net, so people can access it easily!


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
beluga2
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posted 11 January 2004 04:12 PM      Profile for beluga2     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here it is.

quote:
David Frum (journalist on "Ideas" CBC radio, Canada): You say that what the media do is to ignore certain kinds of atrocities that are committed by us and our friends, and to play up enormously atrocities that are committed by them and our enemies. And you posit that there is a test of integrity and moral honesty which is to have a kind of equality of treatment of corpses in that every dead person should in principle be equal with every other dead person.

Chomsky: That's not what I say at all. In fact, what I say is the opposite. What I say is that we should be responsible for our own actions primarily.

David Frum (journalist on "Ideas" CBC radio, Canada): Because your method is not only to ignore the corpses by "them" but also to ignore the corpses created by neither side, but which are irrelevant to your ideological agenda.

Chomsky: That's totally untrue.

David Frum (journalist on "Ideas" CBC radio, Canada): Well, let me give you an example. One of your own causes that you take very seriously is the cause of the Palestinians. And a Palestinian corpse weighs very heavily on your conscience. And yet, a Kurkish corpse does not.

Chomsky: That's not true at all. I've been involved in Kurdish support groups for years. Just ask the people who are involved in Kurdish support groups. I mean, they come to me, I sign their petitions, and so on and so forth. If you look at the things we've written, [you will see this]. I mean, I'm not Amnesty International. I can't do everything. I'm a single individual person, but if you take a look at the book that Edward Herman and I wrote on this topic [The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume 1 and Volume 2], in it we discuss three kinds of atrocities. What we call "benign bloodbaths" (which nobody cares about), "constructive bloodbaths" (which are the ones we [the U.S. government and its allies] like), and "nefarious bloodbaths" (which are the ones that the bad guys [enemies of the U.S.] do.

The principle that I feel we ought to follow is not the one that you stated. You know, it's a very simple ethical point: You're responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions. You're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions. The most important thing for me and for you is to think about the consequences of your actions. What can you effect? These are the things to keep in mind. These are not just academic exercises. We're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the 18th century or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in. We, as citizens of democratic societies, are directly involved in and are responsible for. And what the media are doing is insuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people, and not even the needs of American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that is dripping from their hands because of the way they are allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by this system.


I think Chomsky's visit to Turkey was much later -- this exchange was back in the late 80's, I believe. (Poor young Frumboy musta just sprouted his pubes a week or two earlier! )

No wonder nobody wants to debate Chomsky one-on-one. Much safer to hurl mud from a distance.


From: vancouvergrad, BCSSR | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Geneva
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posted 15 January 2004 04:59 AM      Profile for Geneva     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
NYTimes book pan:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/books/13KAKU.html


From: um, well | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged
Geneva
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posted 15 January 2004 11:04 AM      Profile for Geneva     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
... and Dave replies:
http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/diary011404.asp#022782

BTW, as a longtime Frum-watcher, I have been intrigued by the small group of adjectives repeatedly applied to his work/persona;
one Toronto Life writer hit the trifecta, calling his column at the Black-era Post that of a "smug, self-righteous know-it-all""

Interestingly, each of those 3 adjectives is used by Kakutani in her Times review above. -Coincidence??

for Google searchers:
David Frum & smug self-righteous know-it-all

[ 15 January 2004: Message edited by: Geneva ]


From: um, well | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged

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