Common Sense Bashing at the Wall Street Journal
By Alan Tonelson Monday, November 27, 2006
Three cheers for the Wall Street Journal headline writer who has just given the nation a priceless lesson in mudslinging. It was bad enough for Journal readers to wake up the morning of November 16 to read that “China-Bashing Could Flourish Under Pelosi.” What was worse was just what this writer thought the new House Speaker-designate’s offenses actually were. According to the Journal, China-bashing apparently consists of denouncing as “butchers” rulers who order the killing of peaceful civilian protesters. But it also apparently consists of warning that China’s massive holdings of U.S. government debt could threaten American national security. And of deriding as “wishful thinking” Bush administration hopes that a government determined to support the likes of North Korea, Iran, and Sudan will become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. It even apparently consists of urging the White House to combat China’s predatory economic practices by using a World Trade Organization designed precisely to eliminate such abuses. At the least, Journal headline writers should adopt an equal opportunity approach to invective Henceforth, let them label all who decry the mass murder of civilians, as well as the repression of women and non-Moslems as “Al Qaeda-Bashers.” All critics of the Khartoum government’s policies of genocide in Dafur and elsewhere should be lumped together as “Sudan-Bashers.” What a shame, in fact, that this practice didn’t start decades earlier. Then The Journal could have treated us to such gems as “Nazi-Bashing Could Flourish Under Roosevelt.”
(Source: “China-Bashing Could Flourish Under Pelosi,” by Neil King Jr., The Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2006)