History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx
This morning, on Fox News Sunday, during the course of discussion by the panel about the recent Congressional debates over Vietnam, er Iraq, Chris Wallace played a clip of John Murtha opining that once American troops are out of Iraq, peace will descend upon that Nation and al Qaeda will disappear. The following exchange took place:
Britt Hume: That sound bite suggests that he is long past his days when he had the foggiest awareness of whats going on in the world.
Juan Williams: But he's Chairman of the Appropriations Committee and will have a lot to say.
Britt Hume: And a lot of it will be "dotty"!
Juan Williams: Well, we're in a Democratic process and not everybody is as smart as you are, but you know what? He's going to have a voe, a voi, a vote and a voice and a lot of people identify with what he's saying.
Perhaps Juan Williams was unconsciously channeling former Senator Roman Hruska during the debate over Richard Nixon's nomination of G. Harrold Carswell of Florida to the Supreme Court. Upon being informed that Carswell was a "mediocre" Court of Appeals judge on the Fifth Circuit and had been reversed an outrageous 58 percent of the time during his years in his prior position as a federal district court judge, Hruska made his famous comment:
“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers,” Hruska told reporters outside the Senate chamber. “They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there.”
Since Carswell was defeated, perhaps in the current setting, we need to amend Marx's comment:
History repeats itself, first as farce, second as tragedy.
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