Monday, February 19, 2007

The Angriest Dog in the World   [John Podhoretz]

For years, the movie director David Lynch published a cartoon in alternative newspapers called "The Angriest Dog in the World." No matter what the content, the image was always the same: a dog growling on a leash. I've always thought that the left-liberal columnist Joe Conason was the pundit world's version of the Angriest Dog in the World. No matter what he writes, no matter when, his work growls with fury — undifferentiated, unrelenting, unlimited fury at the Monsters on the Right Who Are Destroying This Country And Everything It Stands For.

He has never been motivated by anything but anger. Even though he has always stood far to the Left of the Clintons, for example, he became a Clinton court apologist during the 1990s because of the Evil Right-Wing Cospiracy Out to Do Clinton In.

In this way, in his work for the Village Voice and later in the New York Observer, Conason set the stage for the kind of exhausting rage that characterizes so much of the prose to be found in the liberal blogosphere. Certainly, anger has an important role in the work of any polemicist — it's fuel and fodder both.

But when anger is the sole motivating factor behind a person's writing, when he offers little but dismissive rage of those who have the temerity to think differently, one almost feels embarrassed for the writer in question because, after a while, the anger seems less righteous and more self-righteous. And after decades, the anger begins to seem less like a passionate response and more like an automatic response.

Now I see Conason has written a new book called It Can Happen Here about the potential rise of fascism in the United States due to the Evil Bush and Everything He Stands For. He actually likens the current situation in the United States to Sinclair Lewis's catchily titled but utterly preposterous dystopia of the same name. Money quote from Conason: "For the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon more than three decades ago, Americans have had reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in our own country."

Grrrrrr. The Angriest Dog in the World strikes again. Ggggrrowwl.

02/19 04:44 PMShare