12/15/2006

Fremont Stewart: Portrait of a Kook

Ah, the Journal-Gazette. According to the right-wingers I've heard
around here, you're apparently the most liberal thing published in
America since old Tom Paine tried to get people to use some common
sense.
Something troubles me, though - if you're so liberal, why do you
almost constantly publish letters that are anything but liberal, such
as the continually misinformed screeds of Mr. Fremont Stewart ("Iraq
Study Group's findings wrong-headed
", 12/15/2006)?
Mr. Stewart's letter is, to put it bluntly, the worst kind of
fact-free fluff I've had the misfortune of reading in some time. He
declares the Iraq Study Group's findings to be "wrong-headed",
according to the title of his letter, and refers to the ISG as
"liberal". This belief is posited despite the fact that the ISG was a
bipartisan group consisting of an equal number of members from both
sides of the aisle. Mrt. Stewart, like so many other right-wingers,
uses "liberal" as a smear roughly equal to "does not tailor facts to
my beliefs".
Furthermore, Mr. Stewart's letter claims that "The Iraq Study Group
says that giving Iran the green light to build nuclear weapons is a
small price to pay for peace in our time." At no point does it state
this, or anything like this. Mr. Stewart is, to put it simply, lying
to advance his agenda.
Perhaps, if Mr. Stewart has some brilliant plan for how to fix
everything, he could suggest it to the administration - after all, he
does seem to have all the answers. Too bad he didn't actually study
to get them.