George Will, who’s nothing if not self-referential, often draws upon his spoken commentary for his opinion editorials. The following deconstructs a number of arguments he has made using this pattern:
For an allegedly brilliant and independent intellect, George Will certainly makes himself easy pickin’s.
Readers of this newspaper may or may not be aware that Mr. Will, in addition to the writing aspect of his journalism duties, is a regular commentator on Sunday morning’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC. It is on that program he makes many of the pronouncements that wind up in his columns in an elaborated version. So if the viewer were to be moderately perplexed by Will’s spoken comments in the first venue, the reader might well be astonished at the extended argument in which Will liberally quotes himself.
Take two weeks ago, for example, when Will held his own against guests Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation Magazine, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, and host George Stephanopoulos, by questioning the existence of global warming with supplementary skepticism of human behavior as a factor in accelerating it. In challenging the overwhelming scientific consensus that not only is it real, but that human beings actively contribute to it, Will began by vaguely alluding to the climate some 200 years ago. Without blinking, Mr. Zakaria retorted, “George, there was no record-keeping 200 years ago.” To which any sentient member of the audience might have added, while there are no available official statistics from the early 1800s, there are anecdotal accounts of frigid winters and vicious snowstorms rendering it practically miraculous that anyone survived.
Undaunted, Will persisted with another vague reference, this time citing a prediction (to be labeled “global cooling” in his newspaper rendition) from the 1970s which reminded me of my own encounters with frostbite, dead batteries, keys breaking off into automobile door locks, and warm coats I haven’t worn since the 1980s. Indeed, at this point vanden Heuvel observed that he was now making her case for her, effectively shutting him down. A moment later Stephanopoulos, whether or not as stunned as the other panelists, rescued Will by switching the discussion to another topic. Considering that left unsaid were the rather dramatic increase and severity of acts of nature (tornadoes, anyone?) which apparently don’t faze the supercilious one, Stephanopoulos did Will a particular favor.
While this may be the most audacious case of Will’s delusional thinking (and whether the corporations who benefit from tamping down public alarm are paying for his advocacy can only be speculated), it’s hardly the only instance. Not that long ago, Will, again borrowing from his broadcast declarations, insisted in print that the answer to “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” is a smug, curt “not much,” based on his rationale that “values voters” were not duped by bait-and-switch big business which enticed them into voting against their economical well-being. And who can forget when this principled conservative, having defended him on television, fawningly interviewed Tom DeLay for an editorial admiring his ability to reward faithful constituents with homegrown goodies while barely alluding to charges that the guy is as corrupt as it gets?
It seems like yesterday that Will jovially voiced the joyous advantages of conservatism over liberalism only to make liberals giggle within the week as he inadvertently conceded the inherent altruism of liberalism in order to champion “happy” (never mind ignorant) conservatism in his subsequent opinion piece.
Thus was last week’s column disputing global warming as a liberal scare tactic as predictable as it was inevitable. As an amusing aside, while Will’s autobiographical page on the Internet conspicuously avoids even a cursory explanation of what informed his conservative perspective, it does mention that he was born in Champaign and graduated from the University of Illinois. Of course, as Mr. Will is a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., where he is affiliated with the Washington Post and from where he makes his This Week appearances, he may not have visited central Illinois since winters were merciless and natural disasters were infrequent at best. Lest we be quick to mock him for the irony of his anti-global warming column being published on the day Springfield was menaced by the second tornado in three weeks, that is.
With Will’s penchant for drawing upon his spoken remarks for his articles, I’m anticipating tomorrow’s assault on another debatable scientific phenomenon preceding the following Sunday’s column ridiculing the “gravity myth.” At which point, as his primary detractor, I’ll invite him to climb onto the nearest roof and jump off. Let’s see whether gravity acquiesces to his denial of it, or whether, in fact, it believes in him.
George Will. Global Warming. Coincidence of initials? Surely.