Dear Norm Coleman
It’s certainly true that George Galloway’s speech yesterday left no wiggle room. He’s either a big perjurer or has delivered the most ringing rebuke of Congressional malfeasance since “Have you at long last no shame, Senator?” But what that means, Senator Coleman, is that it’s put up or shut up time for you, now. Muttering darkly that “If in fact he lied to this committee, there will have to be consequences,” as quoted in the Post report, won’t cut it.
Galloway is, even by the accounts of British lefites I respect, a horrid piece of work. But and character assassination is character assassination.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
May 18, 2005 @ 3:35 pm
Come now, a horrid piece of work? Surely anyone who could call Hitchens a “drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay” to his face should be forgiven any minor peccadilloes such as lack of constituent service.
Comment by Mrs. O. —
May 18, 2005 @ 3:42 pm
I don’t know what the truth about Galloway is, but Norm Coleman is acknowledged on the Hill to the be the biggest idiot in the Senate.
Comment by Doctor Slack —
May 18, 2005 @ 6:49 pm
DSquared’s “Gorgeous George” rant was pretty revealing, actually. There are throwaway lines in there (”friend of dictators,” “lifestyle seemingly out of proportion to his income,” “stirrer of racial tensions”) that are indistinguishable from the ill-founded cant the looney right has levelled at Galloway for months. We need a term, I think, for the sort of liberals who find sport in proving (to whom?) how good at pseudo-urbane leftist-bashing they are. Too bad in DSquared’s case — he’s usually brighter.
Comment by washerdreyer —
May 18, 2005 @ 10:30 pm
Doc Slack, are you implying there isn’t a factual basis to those “throwaway lines”? Otherwsie, true statements don’t stop being true just because other people mis-use them against other targets in other contexts.
Comment by Doctor Slack —
May 18, 2005 @ 10:42 pm
_Doc Slack, are you implying there isn’t a factual basis to those “throwaway lines�_
.
I’m implying that if there is, they shouldn’t be there as throwaway lines — dude should be backing them up, and with something substantial, instead of just insinuating. I’m also implying that the fact he doesn’t see fit to do so renders the lines themselves suspect… in much the same way as the truckload of largely content-free innuendo that the ‘mongers targeted at Galloway was suspect. (The family resemblance DSquared’s statements bear to the other guys’ bullpucky doesn’t help matters.) IOW, given the context and recent events, I’m not disposed to give throwaway anti-”Gorgeous George” asides the benefit of the doubt.
Comment by dsquared —
May 19, 2005 @ 4:06 am
“Friend of dictators” refers specifically to Tariq Aziz, who Gorgeous George fondly remembers dancing with in a Damascus nightclub.
“Lifestyle seemingly out of proportion to income” refers to the villa in Portugal and the suits and cigars (interestingly, after GG was chucked out of the Labour Party his first port of call was Tommy Sheridan’s (then) Scottish Socialist Party, but he fell foul of their rule that none of their representatives would draw a salary greater than that of the average Scottish worker).
“stirrer of racial tensions” is more arguable because both sides were guilty of this in Bethnal Green and Bow, but GG certainly did his part.
I should also have added “veteran of some of the nastiest parts of the Scottish Labour Party”, because GG is one; this would however be a genuine innuendo and guilt by association.
I’m not in general a “basher” of leftists (or a liberal) and if I could be bothered I would provide a number of links to instances of me defending GG against specific factual charges of which I believed him to be innocent. But I have disliked the man for a long time, dating back to a period well before the second Gulf War when to do so was “neither popular nor profitable” and continue to regard him as an actively dangerous figure to have in charge of a popular-left movement.
Ironically, before his current involvement with them as the footsoldiers of RESPECT, GG was notorious for his hatred of the SWP and associated Trotskyists – he was quite active in the left-sectarian wars. I have no idea why the SWP have fell so hard in love with a guy who they would formerly have known as a hardcore tankie. (”Tankie” = british trotskyist term of abuse for communists, based on the latter’s alleged apologism for the tanks sent into Czechosolvakia in 1968)
Comment by jamie —
May 19, 2005 @ 5:09 am
I’m not sure GG’s personal extravagance is such to generate suspicion of extra curricular earnings. It’s more that he chooses to dispose of his income flamboyantly – after all, Michael Meacher’s extensive property holdings have never brought him under suspicion of corruption (NB, Meacher is a junior Labour minister of a canting Green-ish tendency).
In this regard he’s a typical Scottish Labour five percenter. Is the scots stereotyope of an aggressive, inarticulate drunk who dresses in a sack and eats fried Mars bars? Fine – then George is going to be a dapper teetotaller who enjoys the finer things in life and employs an extensive, slightly archaic vocabulary.
I was told by a Labour party figure who knows him that his main reason for choosing the Palestinian side as a young councillor in Dundee was because the Scottish Labour establishment at the time was pro-Israel and that this is the way you rise in Scottish politics: pick a fight with your elders – any fight, over anything – and win it. He’s since continued in that mode.
It was obviously pretty good training for meeting the senators the other day. It occured to me while watching the scene unfold that if the US was run by a bunch of Glasgow city councillors you’d have long since finished the military phase in Iraq and be well embarked on building huge swathes of really ugly public housing.
Comment by Ray —
May 19, 2005 @ 5:30 am
The SWP has also fallen for people like the MAB, who’d they might otherwise have described as religious reactionaries. The SWP/Galloway deal is attractive to both – he gets footsoldiers for his election campaigns and organisers for his meetings, they get the visibility of having an MP and plausible deniability on the ‘front’ issue. They have absolutely no control over what he says or does, but he has no paper he must recruit people to sell, so they can stay out of each others way a lot of the time.
Comment by dsquared —
May 19, 2005 @ 6:17 am
I don’t think it’s fair to say that the SWP has “fallen for” the MAB. They appear to be very much eyes open on that one; for example, the MAB isn’t actually part of RESPECT.
Comment by Ray —
May 19, 2005 @ 7:51 am
Sure, but they’re ccoperating with them much more closely than you might have imagined given the SWP’s self-description as Marxist revolutionaries, and positions on women’s rights, etc.
Comment by Diana —
May 19, 2005 @ 1:53 pm
Me, I enjoyed the culture clash. The pomposity surrounding the Senate is disgusting, given that the US is supposedly a country founded by revolution against a crown. Senators are used to being treated as if they are gods. Seeing someone squirt projectile vomit in their smug faces was loads of fun.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
May 20, 2005 @ 12:17 am
But does the SWP have a RQZ with GG over the MAB that sits in the corner near the WMD?
Comment by mawado —
May 20, 2005 @ 5:34 pm
Well I guess we know which way this one’s going to break:
Galloway Testimony goes AWOL
In the immortal words of Dr. DeLong, I’ll stop accusing the Bush administration of being Orwellian when they stop using 1984 as an operations manual.
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 20, 2005 @ 8:24 pm
Oh my Lord.
.
I wanted to read the exchanges after the speech too. Guess that’ll be harder.
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May 31, 2005 @ 9:55 pm
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