THIS SCABROUS WORLD

THIS SCABROUS WORLD. I read David Brooks' take on Bush commuting Scooter Libby's sentence and learned a new word: scabrous. It can mean rough, difficult to handle or salacious. It can even mean "covered with scales." Brooks uses it in the opening paragraph of his piece:

In retrospect, Plamegate was a farce in five acts. The first four were scabrous, disgraceful and absurd. Justice only reared its head at the end.The drama opened, as these dark comedies are wont to do, with a strutting little peacock who went by the unimaginative name of Joe Wilson.Mr. Wilson claimed that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to investigate Iraqi purchases in Niger, though that seems not to have been the case. He claimed his trip proved Iraq had made no such attempts, though his own report said nothing of the kind.In short order, Wilson established himself as the charming P.T. Barnum of the National Security set, an inveterate huckster who could be counted on to wrap every actual fact in six layers of embellishment. His small part in the larger fiasco of the Iraq war would not have registered a micron of attention had the villain of the epic — the vice president — not exercised his unfailing talent for vindictive self-destruction.

Ouch. A strutting little peacock of a man? And the charming P.T. Barnum of the National Security set? I thought it was us bloggers who were rude. Brooks has decided to write a colorful column indeed, almost as nicely crayoned as the one in which he called liberal bloggers rabid venomous lambs with fangs. According to Brooks, Joe Wilson is "absurd" and the Vanity Fair picture of him and his wife, Valerie Plame "creepy." And he knows, really knows, that all the outrage about the Plamegate is manufactured:

His decision to commute Libby's sentence but not erase his conviction was exactly right. It punishes him for his perjury, but not for the phantasmagorical political farce that grew to surround him. It takes away his career, but not his family.Of course, the howlers howl. That is their assigned posture in this drama. They entered howling, they will leave howling and the only thing you can count on is their anger has been cynically manufactured from start to finish.

Wow. Still, the column is a pretty easy way to find out what many Republicans think of the so-called Plamegate, the major point being that for them it was much ado about nothing. And it is only at the end that justice rears its head. In the shape of the head of George Bush, I guess.

-- J. Goodrich