Every once in awhile a bully and a tyrant decides after decades of abusing people to voluntarily give up power.
Yes, Bob Herbert is finally leaving the Jayson Blair Times.
While Herbert never killed anybody like Khadafi did, his verbal bomb-throwing poisoned the well of discourse for an entire generation. The New York Times became the Jayson Blair Times by allowing ideological bigotry to trump anything remotely resembling hard news backed up by facts. Hatred of conservative Republicans was the only requirement for having a column.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has seen his circulation collapse as normal Americans everywhere grow weary of Maureen Dowd’s hysteria and Bob Herbert’s diatribes about evil conservative cracker honky whitey.
So as Barack Obama tries to wage a kinetic conflict with one hand tied behind American military backs to remove Khadafi, Americans of all stripes can be thankful that at least Herbert was unwilling to obtain weapons in keeping with his anti-gun views.
Just to be clear, Bob Herbert is nowhere near as bad as Khadafi. Herbert is however worse than most people.
So what do we do with people like Khadaf and Herbert now? What would be an appropriate way for these men to spend their final years in exile?
The solution is obvious. Send them both to Detroit.
If the ACLU tries to prevent this under the Eight Amendment clause about cruel and unusual punishment, then judges should force ACLU lawyers to live in Detroit as well.
Khadafi is a genocidal maniac who should be shot in the town square. Forcing him to live in a Detroit housing project is the next best thing. He could be dead in a week. Forget Guantanamo Bay. That would be too high class for him. If he has to live in a prison where there is no hope for improvement, Detroit will fit the bill.
There is no evidence that Herbert has broken any laws other than the laws of civility and decency, but if district attorneys prosecuted those crimes there would be few liberals in existence anywhere.
Herbert should be forced to live in Detroit because his entire life has been devoted to blaming everybody else for leaving the inner cities. Does anybody think Herbert lived in an inner city while working at the Jayson Blair Times? I suspect he lived in one of the better New York neighborhoods. It is time for this limousine liberal to be among the down-trodden he has championed for so long.
Detroit has long been the butt of jokes, but this time it is different. The census numbers have come out, and Detroit has truly hit rock bottom in a way that the local junkies could feel proud.
It was one thing when whites fled the city. The Herberts of the world could cry racism. Now it seems that blacks, particularly educated successful blacks, have fled as well. For all the phony racial myths, most crime against blacks is committed by blacks. So those who can afford to live better are fleeing to the South of all places.
How could this be? Aren’t Southerners racist white rednecks?
Apparently not. Apparently living in peace away from drugs and gunfire is not a black or white value, but a good human being value. Bad human beings of all stripes have wrecked cities with help from liberal enablers.
One can debate whether the pen is mightier than the sword, but while Khadafi was exploiting his people through violence, Herbert was using his written column to make excuses. He dismissed radical violence and supported failed liberal policies that exacerbated the decline of a once proud city that gave the world Motown and the Big Three automakers.
The days when the Four Tops or the Temptations can croon on the street corner are gone. Now Eminem sings, accompanied by guns and bodyguards. Michael Moore waxes slovenly from his safe haven in his wealthy enclave where he can toss his leftovers out of his house for the poor to sift through.
This is Detroit. The city now has less than 750,000 people, rendering it ineligible for much federal and state aid. This means it cannot even declare itself a disaster area. When the most optimistic aspect of an entire region is the Detroit Lions, it is time to give up.
(Ironically the perennial losers ended the season with four straight wins and looked optimistically to the next season only to find out the season may be canceled.)
The 2011 riots in Libya are every bit as out of control as the Detroit riots of the 1960s. Poverty did not cause the lawlessness. Lawlessness led to the poverty. Civil rights include the right to vote, not burn down businesses. Shockingly enough, businesses responded to the terrorism inflicted upon them by leaving to states where burning down businesses was considered a negative occurrence.
The low water mark may have been Kwame Kilpatrick, who made Marion Barry look useful. From the 1960s to Mr. Kilpatrick, the left spread misery. When asked about their failures, they blamed Ronald Reagan.
Given that the Governor of Michigan will probably not try to sell Detroit on Ebay or perhaps donate it to Canada for a tax deduction, there are only two viable solutions for this failed city.
The few remaining people can show the courage of Afghanis and Iraqis. They can risk being shot to death to make it to the polls and elect better leaders. Those leaders can engage in the tough love necessary to take back Detroit from the stranglehold of liberal poison.
The second option is to just declare the city uninhabitable and relocate the entire populace to Wisconsin or Illinois. Like Alcatraz, Detroit can become one big prison. The world’s most hardened terrorists can be joined by the liberal media bigots who verbally brutalized the conservatives actually trying to kill those terrorists.
Force Khadafi and Herbert to live in Detroit with no guns, pens, or keyboards. Neither man should be allowed to videotape any more screeds.
Khadafi, Herbert, and Detroit liberal politicians have spread misery for decades to people they were supposed to care about. They should be forced to live in the same squalid conditions so that future individuals do not become corrupted by absolute power.
It is too late to save Detroit, but Tripoli and Manhattan are already on the verge of making a comeback.
To Khadafi and Herbert, goodbye and good riddance.
eric