Editorial: Quit starving the schools

Is the editor correct that the Legislature should follow state law and provide inflation adjustments on school funding? Yes. Could he say it in a way that's simple and direct enough for the legislators to understand? One would think so. So why doesn't he? Why, whenever he's compelled to criticize Republicans, does he resort to this mealy-mouthed we'll-see crap?

Williams: Whining is the New Manly

Buz achieves a new low for trivial bunkum on the opinion page, it must be noted with the full support of the Courier editors, in his white-knight defense of Sarah Palin, set up as the innocent damsel of the "conservative" movement, against the dragon of the Angry Left in the person of mean old Bill Maher.
     In the first graf we get the gist, and we have to wonder how Buz imagines that he can predict the actions of people he doesn't know working in institutions whose missions he doesn't understand. From there you just know the path will have to be a bit crookedy.
     Buz is outraged that Maher would say mean things about Palin on a comedy show that's primarily about making fun of Republicans. He extends his mock chivalry further to other women and black "conservatives."
     With this he seems to mean to lance progressives for the hypocrisy of demanding equal treatment of people and then treating them equally as targets of scorn.
     There's no funnier moment in the piece than where he attempts to instruct on "the logical fallacy known as 'poisoning the well,'" as if Buz has ever paid the slightest attention to logic.
     As I stand back a bit and take the big picture of what Buz is saying, consciously and unconsciously, I'm struck by the white-male paternalism that motivates him to place Palin, Bachmann, Cain and Thomas behind his mighty white shield (for in Buz's world, women and nonwhite men are weak, second-class humans). His understanding of why they have become jokes ends at his own frame on them as "conservative" and nonwhite or female. Anything they've done to elicit public criticism is of course immaterial.

   

Buz imagines how Palin might abuse Maher's nose in person, but I find it funnier to imagine how Palin might react to Buz telling her she needs his protection.
     Since we're talking hypocrisy, I have to wonder where Buz was when his teammates were gleefully photoshopping the President as a bone-through-the-nose Hollywood witch doctor, or insulting Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton for years in the crudest terms, or slut-shaming Sandra Fluke.
     Here's a clue, Buz: If you hope to hold the high moral ground, drive the snakes from your own nest first.