Bush: Freedom Fighter or Messianic Nut?

That incredibly messy corner of the garage beckons, but at the risk of upsetting my beloved betrothed, just one post ...

Are we to assume that not one "furriner," as the Left glibly denegrates conservatives' view of other residents of this globe, was inspired by the President's rallying cry for freedom on Thursday? Did they all really see the speech as messianic preaching about Christian values and not a call for economic and political freedom?

One would think so, at least if the LATimes had its way.

Under the top-of-page-one headline, "Focus on Iran Causes Unease," the LAT gets right down to business, saying that "some commentators ... expressed unease at the sweeping 'messianic' tone in President Bush's inaugural speech marking the start of his second term."

That quote was good enough to appear in the second paragraph, but it wasn't mentioned again until paragraph 34 of the 40-paragraph story, and only briefly at that:

L'Union newspaper in eastern France said the speech was "messianic," ...

That would be "one commentator," not "some commentators." Pretty thin gruel on which to posit a thesis.

All but a couple of the story's paragraphs are a parade of Bush hatred, the fruit of lazy reporting. One can imagine the Times' London corresondent, John Daniszewski (who has never answered an earlier CSM email questioning his failure to cover the euthanasia controversy in Europe), lounging in the Foreign Correspondents Club bar in London, gleaning his quotes from like-thinking journalists, wrapping it up with a Nexis search or two, and never bothering to go out on the street and talk to real people.

So we get stuff like this:

The U.S. president issued a blood-curdling cry yesterday" warning America's enemies to expect "an untamed fire of freedom," wrote London's Daily Star. It's up to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to use his influence to make sure the U.S. defends freedom "with a cool head," the Star said.

"Super-Zero Mr. Un-Credible Goes on the Warpath," said the irreverent Daily Mirror, a British tabloid, calling the president's speech "bizarre."

"There is a sense of a man who considers the whole world as his own parish," said Italy's left-leaning La Repubblica.

Yes, that is the opinion of some, as the LAT and others gleefully recount with regularity, and we have to deal with it. But throughout Europe, if we are to believe the polls, up to 45 percent of the people liked the speech because they agree with the Bush policy. You'd never know by reading Daniszewski.

And we all know that in Belarus, Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe and other dark corners of the world, millions of hearts were lifted with a hope of freedom. It's a pity that Daniszewski didn't want to get his trousers ruffled by doing some real reporting that would have shown us more than did his sophomoric parroting of like-thinking elite Bush-haters.