And The Truth Shall Set You Free

So I was reading John Kass in the Chicago Tribune yesterday. I've seen him reprinted in other papers around the country, which seems a little strange. He mostly writes about local politics, and crime. Also he sucks.

My friend Meg used to read him religiously, till she just could not take anymore of his crap. Meg doesn't like the fact that he claims to be a conservative, though he doesn't spell that out very well. He's more against liberals than a conservative. At least as far as I can tell. Meg also thinks he's an idiot, uses faulty logic, and just doesn't write very well.

I wouldn't call him an intellectual, but I wouldn't call him necessarily an idiot. He's written for both the Trib and the Sun-Times. Although, both of those papers are in bankruptcy, so I'm not sure that is as ringing an endorsement. I once wrote to him to try to correct him on an address he used in a column. It took six or seven e-mails back and forth, including a Google Earth satellite picture, to get him first to understand what I was attempting to do and show that he was using the wrong numbers. This though I think is becasue he doesn't listen to, or read, what other people are saying.

His logic is faulty. I've imagined him having had a pet cat he named Dumbo, because of a drawing of his that his mother praised. The drawing, of course, was a connect-the-dots drawing of an elephant that he had drawn as a cat.

I have to agree with Meg though, he just doesn't write very well.

The column from yesterday is not put together very well. The bulk of it is comparing the support needed for CIA agents and the like, with the support needed to be an investigative reporter, which is what Mr. Kass likes to think he is. This is mostly because his column replaced Mike Royko's, who also fancied himself an investigative reporter. Royko really wasn't. I happen to know that the biggest story he "broke" was due to a phone call he received from the pissed-off future ex-wife of one of the principals in the story. But at least Royko could write!

In his lead up to his analogy, Kass attempts to denigrate President Obama, so that the reader, who he hopes will understand the analogy, will then dislike the President. He uses a couple of quotes that Kass says proves that the President "bowed to his base in the hard political left by reversing himself", though a simple reading of the quotes shows it is indeed an elephant, not a cat.

The quotes are from Rahm Emanuel:

"He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided," said Emanuel, no fool. "They shouldn't be prosecuted. ... It's time for reflection. It's not a time to use our energy in looking back in any sense of anger and retribution."

and from the President:

"With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say, that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general," he said. "I think there are a host of very complicated issues involved there."

It's pretty clear that there are different people referred to here. Those "operating with the guidance they were provided" and "those who formulated those legal decisions."

I want to interject here that most people on every side of this issue should agree that the Army personnel from Abu Ghraib were acting under orders, we now know came from the DOD. They were not "bad apples" as Don Rumsfeld indicated, they were not letting things get out of hand, they were following orders and should be released from the stockade immediately.

Back to my point. Kass is sort of dumb, but he should be able to tell the difference between the people referred to in the quotes. So should his editors. But the references are there intentionally. He is lying, at the very least misleading.

What I don't understand are people who will lie, mislead, obfuscate to prove a point. If their point is right, they should not have to lie. They really need to step back and think that if they need to use mis-truths to prove their point, it might be time to re-think their point.

I have no idea what Mr. Kass would draw from this. Maybe a duck.