Thursday, July 12, 2007

As regular as Marching Season

Today at National Review's The Corner, Kathryn-Jean Lopez takes time out from cheering on death and destruction in Iraq --

"Right now, I could kill George Bush" ... Says an Irish Nobel laureate.

Click on the link. It's 1976 Peace Price co-recipient Betty Williams being quoted from an event in Dallas --

"Right now, I could kill George Bush," she said at the Adam's Mark Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas. "No, I don't mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that."

So a few points. First, K-Lo clipped the quote. Second, since one doubts she carefully reads the Dallas Morning News, it's more likely that someone else clipped the quote and is e-mailing it to all the big reactionary blogs. Third, K-Lo has no memory because these same blogs worked themselves into an "outrage" this time last year when Betty Williams seemed to say the same thing in Australia (Williams probably tries, like many Northern Irish people, to be abroad in July) --

"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence,' because I don't believe that I am non-violent." She went on to say, "Right now, I would love to kill George Bush", blaming him for the deaths of children, particularly in the Middle East. "I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life."

Again the full quote is from a person enraged at George W. Bush but knowing there's not much can be done about it. She clearly refined the quote a bit for the Dallas event, but not enough for the members of the Bush Personality Cult. Maybe she needs to rephrase again and wish that God would get rid of Bush, because Bush has used that construction himself.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is aboard the outrage bandwagon, but at least has the wit to remember (or be told) that it's just a rehash of the same "outrage" last year. Given Malkin's Fox News connections, expect a festival of Betty Williams-bashing tonight.

UPDATE 13 JULY: Powerline joins the "outrage" -- but listen to the sound file with the post; the clipped quote is completely unrepresentative of the tone and overall sentiment.

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