The Anchoress alerts us to this column by Scripps-Howard’s Jay Ambrose about the elite media’s kneejerk presentation of George W. Bush as not only dumb and anti-intellectual but “incurious”:
“The truth is that many of the critics who keep telling us that Bush is incurious are themselves incurious, loath to put their favorite asininities at risk through the exercise of open-minded, honest inquiry. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic argued prior to the list’s release that Bush was too dumb to be president, citing among other things the president’s supposed ‘disdain for book learnin’.’ Had Chait been more inquiring himself _ is he too dumb to write for The New Republic? _ he might have learned that Bush has a thing for books. It was easier to rest his case on some meaningless impressions, sloppy analysis and one-sided evidence.
“Once the story was out, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times reacted specifically to the news that Bush had read Albert Camus’ ‘The Stranger’ _ and did so in typical dowdy fashion, shabbily getting in a line wondering if Mad magazine was ‘tucked inside the … classic of angst,’ and telling us how absurd it was that the president would be reading the philosopher of the absurd. Not really. Camus _ who respected the moral possibilities of religious belief though not a believer _ was forever struggling with how you find meaning in the world. In an era in which so many are engaged in such a struggle, it makes sense for a serious president to ponder this novel.”
And the Anchoress adds a few scathing words of her own:
“The incurious press never did want to know about John Kerry’s military records…they never did actually want to hear what the Swiftboat Vets had to say…hell, they weren’t even curious enough about Plamegate to ask Joe Wilson a question beyond ‘so, how is the Bush Neocon Cabal out to get you?’ They never were curious enough to ask Valerie Plame nuthin’ at all. They weren’t curious about Sandy Berger’s pants, or Air America ‘s use of public monies, either. They are not interested in the 45,000 boxes of documents which came out of Iraq and which are unearthing so much interesting stuff. They were not especially interested in Juanita Brodderick (imagine how interested they’d have been in her, however, had she shown up on Bush’s watch!). They’re not interested in why Bill Clinton was asked to leave Oxford University as a young man (but Bush’s TANG dentist – he got asked questions!) They have no curiousity about why Hillary Clinton – whose pet issues include education – was not taking part of the Eductation Consortium which took place in the rotunda of the Capital, on 9/11. Actually the press never seems able to ask Hillary a question that moves beyond, ‘how’d you get to be so great?'”
As the Anchoress herself remarks: Incuriouser and incuriouser.