[Mb-civic] Claws And Effect - Jim Hoagland - Washington Post

William Swiggard swiggard at comcast.net
Wed Jul 20 04:24:59 PDT 2005


Claws And Effect

By Jim Hoagland
Wednesday, July 20, 2005; Page A23

PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. -- This is crab country. Put a chicken neck on a 
string, toss it into the saltwater creek off Inlet Point and get your 
net ready. Or put out a dead fish as bait and bring in a squirming 
basket of crabs clawing and wounding each other with a destructive 
energy that spares not even themselves.

This beach town serves as a good place, then, to observe at a distance 
the Washington scrum of politicians, journalists, zealot prosecutors and 
lecturing moralists of all stripes going at each other over the vital 
questions of whether Karl Rove or former ambassador Joseph Wilson is the 
greater liar and threat to the republic, and exactly how "confidential" 
other journalists' "confidential" sources should be.

<>The French, naturally enough, have a term for a mass of nasty people 
doing endlessly nasty things to each other in a no-exit environment. And 
un panier de crabes -- a basket of crabs -- is what the 
politico-journalistic village of Washington resembles in this unhinged 
summer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/19/AR2005071901555.html 

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