Announcing the Save Frank Rich Society

From Roger Kimball:

I never thought it would happen. I am actually feeling sorry for Frank Rich. True, my feelings of sorrow and compassion — I won’t call it “empathy” — have stiff competition from irritation and contempt, the jolly old stand-bys that always step forward when someone brings a column by Rich to my attention. For, truth be told, that is the only way I encounter anything published in The New York Times these days. I long ago gave up my subscription — Free, free at last! And out of regard for both the preciousness of time — you can’t waste time without injuring eternity, said Thoreau, who (unlike Frank Rich) wasn’t wrong about everything — and solicitude for my blood pressure, I resolved some time ago never to visit The New York Times web site unless a trusted friend had directed me to a specific article.

So imagine my reaction when a friend sent me a link to “The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers,” Rich’s column in the June 14 issue of the paper. The ostensible subject of Rich’s column is right-wing “haters,” a large and diverse population (according to Rich), membership in which you, too, Dear Reader, may qualify for if you deign to offer any but the mildest criticism of our Dear Leader, a.k.a. Barack Obama. No article by Frank Rich is complete without a swipe at President George W. Bush, and so it was only business as usual that he should indulge in a little preliminary Bush-bashing before getting down to the subject at hand: “In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation.” For support, Rich links to another article in The New York Times. Never mind that that article actually apportions the blame for the deficit rather evenly between Bush and Obama. Personally, I think Bush was profligate with the taxpayers’ dough. But I see now that he was a rank amateur when it comes to serious economic blow-out. To appreciate this, all you need to do is to savor this chart which Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has been posting frequently in recent weeks as a public service ...

More at the link.