Godwin's Law, corollary 1, as invoked by the Chicago Sun-Times

Johno Johno

There are a million ways to take the Bush administration to task. There are a million and one ways to catch them in a bald-faced lie, or at least a mendacious prevarication.

And yet Andrew Greeley of the Chicago Sun-Times feels the need to invoke Godwin's Law, corollary 1 with his first sentence in this editorial.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief (director of communications, in the current parlance), once said that if you are going to lie, you should tell a big lie. That may be good advice, but the question remains: What happens when people begin to doubt the big lie? Herr Goebbels never lived to find out. Some members of the Bush administration may be in the process of discovering that, given time, the big lie turns on itself.

Is that the best he can do? Hitlering the President? Pathetic, and approximately as mature as the outrageous canards launched by Benjamin Franklin Bache against John Adams. Except Adams had Bache arrested for treason, and that hasn't happened yet to anyone this time.

<paranoid>Yet.</paranoid>
 

Posted by Johno Johno on   |   § 6

§ 6 Comments

1

References to Hitler and the Third Reich are used so often and so loosely that it is clear that the speakers have no clue about what Hitler and the Third Reich stood for and did. That being said, the references are thrown around so frequenlty that I find it difficult to raise up my hand to speak against it--how can you let some be exposed to such an attack. Of course, there are many political figures who have advised people not to lie half way.

ndr ndr

2

NDR, certainly true on all counts. I just found this count so clumsy that I had to remark on it.

Also, it's in keeping with our sky-is-falling-on-political-discourse theme that we've been harping on this week.

Johno Johno

[ You're too late, comments are closed ]