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This Doug, that Doug Saturday, Sep 17, 2005 By Doug Thompson Arkansas News Bureau I've never wondered aloud whether President Bush is drinking again or called him a terrorist. That's the other Doug Thompson. That Doug Thompson has more readers than I ever will. He works in Washington, D.C., and started writing columns long before me. He writes with an armor-piercing directness. "D.C." Doug calls the president, who tends to shun blame, a "weapon of mass deflection." He applauds the Mississippi resident who shouted to Vice President Dick Cheney to go away and take certain actions upon himself and quoted the Mississippian directly. He's called Bush a despot out of control and, yes, argues that Bush is a terrorist who's showing signs of drinking again. I've known I'm the second-fiddle Doug Thompson columnist for years, but never wrote about it. I didn't mind much, and assumed nobody else would notice or care. Last week, though, I started getting e-mails from people asking about "my" article claiming that Bush, who struggled with alcoholism, may be showing signs of a relapse. The time has come to make some distinctions between the Dougs. After all, we both write columns available to everyone on the Internet. Those columns have been straightforward about the president's shortcomings. Doug and Doug are both big guys will full beards. I'm not as gray as D.C. Doug, but I'm catching up. "D.C." Doug is also very conservative. Man, is he conservative. Don't take my word for it. Just glance at his publication called "Capitol Hill Blue" at http://www.capitolhillblue.com/. Brace yourself first. "Others can be polite if they want. It's a waste of time. You don't fight demagoguery with civility," he writes. "President George W. Bush lied outright to reporters in Mississippi Monday when he claimed he did not know embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown resigned." That's the lead on one of the news stories picked for Capitol Hill Blue on Wednesday. The site also carries recent Thompson's columns, "The Rant." One of those starts: "There comes a time in every political partisan's life when they start feeling like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." "? Republican partisans tell me that, in these troubled times, we 'must support our President.' That, they say, 'is the American way.' "They're wrong. Horribly wrong. America was not founded nor built on blind support of despots. It was founded by brave individuals who, in even more troubled times, had the guts to stand up and say 'this is not right and we're going to do something about it.'" I wish this Doug Thompson had written that. There are some things of his that I could have written, and vice-versa. Some of the quotes from columns below are mine. Some are D.C. Doug's: - "Stripped of the usual lies that have driven his Iraq policy from the start, President George W. Bush Tuesday went back to square one and played the big one - trying to tie the 9/11 terrorist attacks to his failed war." - "The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Hitler's Germany is developing the Bomb. FDR responds by invading Franco's Spain." - "From the many lies told to push this country into an ill-conceived war with Iraq to his puppetmaster Karl Rove's leaking of a covert CIA operative's identity as political revenge, the Bush administration's record is a shameful mockery of the foundations of freedom, justice and fairness that are supposed to define this country." - "The problem is not that you went to war, Karl. The problem is that you went to the wrong war. Our soldiers are fighting to make something worthwhile out of this mess. Their courage, endurance, professionalism and self-sacrifice have masked a blunder for a very long time. It's finally wearing thin, though." - "The blame, indecisiveness and screw ups that kept hundreds of thousands of hurricane victims from getting needed help crosses party and philosophical lines. Few, if any, can claim the high ground here because too many had a hand in ignoring warnings or misplacing priorities." - "I can't believe that people are defending Louisiana leaders and attacking Bush, or defending Bush and attacking Louisiana leaders. Nobody in any position of responsibility will get out of this with a clear conscience or a whole skin." Has a certain Al Gore/Unabomber quality, doesn't it? I'll let readers decide which Doug is Gore and which is the Unabomber. Anyway, the first quote is D.C. Doug's. The second is mine. They follow the same pattern from there. ------ Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and The Morning News. His e-mail address is dthompson@arkansasnews.com. |
