A word of advice: If you are building a barn and need a hand, don't ask Jeff Pantages for help.
In a recent commentary in The Anchorage Daily News, the Anchorage investment manager regales us with a story of a reprimand from a previous boss concerning constructive commentary ("Best answer for left-wing naysayers is to ignore them," Jan. 30). The analogy was that building barns is more difficult than tearing them down.
He then proceeds to build a barn made of straw.
Pantages rips columnists Paul Krugman and Helen Thomas as being the most partisan Bush "haters" on earth. He quotes an unnamed liberal blogger who is obviously not a Bush fan and then writes: "A thoughtful commentary wouldn't equate weak job approval numbers with hatred."
A thoughtful commentary also wouldn't equate a Nobel Prize winning economist with hatred. A thoughtful commentary wouldn't equate a woman who has been to more White House press conferences than Pantages has had birthdays with hatred.
"I believe history will judge that, while President Bush had his failures, he was a good and decent man who kept us safe," Pantages writes.
He did? Who was president on 9/11?
A good and decent man? Watch the smear campaign he allowed against John McCain in 2000 and then tell me if the words "good and decent" are applicable.
Pantages is correct when he says TV talk shows "have not helped in elevating our political discourse, having long ago crossed over from legitimate debate to a political food fight." But his lone example is Keith Olberman, former sportscaster and host of a low-rated MSNBC show. No mention of the late Tim Russert or the Sunday morning shows. No mention of Fox News oddly enough. If politics on TV has denigrated into a food fight, it was Fox News that spewed the mashed potatoes; Olberman's show was a reaction. No mention of the most popular media mouth in the nation, who recently stated he hopes President Barack Obama fails as a chief executive. No mention of PBS or CNN.
With Bush gone from the spotlight, Pantages says the "left-wing" media will turn its attention to Sarah Palin. "They mock and ridicule her every mistake," he writes. " There is nothing out of bounds, including the governor's family."
An unknown governor from a remote state who could conceivably become the leader of the free world is off-limits? A governor who promotes abstinence-only sex education then parades her family, including her pregnant teenage daughter and the daughter's boyfriend, across the stage at a nationally televised convention is off-limits? Her family is off-limits? A self-named hockey mom from Wasilla who forms her own political action committee and attends the most exclusive of Washington D.C. soirees is off-limits?
Thoughtful commentary then requires at least a mention of Fox News' highly rated prognosticators Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. They have mocked and ridiculed war veterans and mothers of war dead, working men and women and politicians who don't see the world through their ideological blinders, for more than a decade.
Pantages is simply doing what conservatives do best, protecting their own while blaming others.
Eight years later and more than 4,000 Americans dead in the desert, the bad guy still mocks and threatens, yet Bush has kept us "safe" and columnists like Thomas are to play nice. Eight years later with the economy in the worst shape it's been since John Steinbeck wrote "The Grapes of Wrath," Bush is a "good and decent man" and prize-winning economists are to play nice.
Yes, Mr. Pantages, America is the land of second chances, and George W. Bush had his.
If that was your idea of barn building, I'll store my fodder elsewhere.
Matt Hayes lives in Fairbanks. He can be reached at coscarh@yahoo.com
By MATT HAYES