And They Say We're Angry?

Not that we're not or don't have a perfectly good right to be pissed off, but let's not hear any more tut-tutting from the righties about how unseemly it is for the left to be blunt -- or sharp -- with our words.

The White House's new domestic policy adviser doesn't mince words... at least not once he's gotten over re-editing his own quotes.

Bill Clinton is a "virtuoso deceiver" and Hillary Rodham Clinton a "true chameleon" guilty of "self-serving behavior, comparative radicalism, and dubious personal morality."

Al Gore is a "mad dog" known to "foam at the mouth." John McCain is given to "showboating." And Jacques Chirac, Nelson Mandela, Gerhard Schroeder and Kofi Annan are all "feckless fools."

Says who? President Bush's new chief domestic policy adviser. While most White House aides carefully trim their public commentary, they can't take back what they said before arriving in the West Wing, and few in this day and age arrive with a more provocative paper trail than Karl Zinsmeister, who started his new job yesterday.

[...]

In fact, his antipathy for Washington got him in trouble when he was appointed. In a 2004 profile by the Syracuse New Times, Zinsmeister was quoted as saying, "People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings." But the New York Sun discovered last month that he doctored that and other quotes when he posted the profile on the AEI Web site. The edited quote said, "I learned in Washington that there is an 'overclass' in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that's just as morally repugnant as our 'underclass.' "

Zinsmeister later said he was "foolish" to change the quotes and did so only because he had been misquoted. The New Times disputed that and denounced him for altering its account. White House spokesman Tony Snow defended him and described Zinsmeister as someone with "sharp elbows" who "expresses himself with a certain amount of piquancy."

[...]

Foreign policy won't fall under his new portfolio, but he has written extensively on social issues that will, such as race, class and culture. He has condemned "feminist absolutism," "Green irrationality," "limousine leftists" and "the dreary left-wing, homophilic P.C. propaganda that has dominated Broadway."

This is how it works in Bushland: when a liberal speaks out against the Bush administration, he's "foaming at the mouth." But when a Republican trashes gays, environmentalists, and just about anybody else that he can look down on, it's "piquancy." And Rush Limbaugh is Little Mary Sunshine.

Gee, I wonder why they hired this guy, especially after he was busted for altering his resume and some quotes therein. Could it have anything to do with the upcoming election? Nah...