Some folks have all the subtlety of a whoopee cushion.
In a Washington Post column about the influence of freshman Senator Ted Cruz, Dana Milbank remarked that Cruz “is the same age Joe McCarthy was when he amassed power in the Senate.”
The reader is supposed to recognize in natal form a dangerous McCarthyesque demagoguery in Cruz, who is a vigorous and no doubt sometimes wrongheaded polemicist. Milbank offers no substantive comparison of the two men. He just let slip a hit-and-run innuendo, then raced away.
Why? I can’t read Milbank’s mind. Typically, though, smear artists defame a person in hopes that others will reel back in horror or contempt, thus diverted from relevant considerations of fact. Perhaps the smear-wielder also wants the target to be cowed into silence.
Turnabout is fair play and underscores the silliness here. After the Instapundit blog linked to Milbank’s rapier-like thrust, readers gave reciprocity a try. Christopher Arfaa came up with: “Dana Milbank will turn 45 next week, the same age as Walter Duranty was in 1929, when he secured an exclusive interview with Josef Stalin.” Jay Brinker proposed: “John Kerry is 69, the same age as Neville Chamberlin when he signed the Munich Agreement.” You get the idea.
Sounds easy to get caught in such a net.
I may as well admit it: I too am of a certain age — the same age at which any number of disreputable persons perpetrated some enormity or another.
All my known associates have regular birthdays as well.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.