Daniel Boudreau Watch: Vol 1

The college paper here, the BGNews seems to be regularly printing columns written by my old Ethnics instructor, Daniel Boudreau. This makes sense, considering that whatever you think about the guy, it's clear he's always got an opinion, usually involving radical politics.

In class, it was rather apparent that even with a subject matter such as "Ethnics" (which roughly translates as "history as seen by the radical left"), he was constantly holding himself back from launching into full radical tirades. To be fair, the class was eminently thought provoking. I must say, I was rather pleased with myself, when discussing the impact of MLK jr. with him, I got him to say "American Imperialist Project". As nutty radical left vocab goes, that's solid gold.

Daniel Boudreau's February 9th column was "War glorification uncalled for". Now, I hate to try to say that Mr. Boudreau in some way represents a whole diverse wing of radical politics, because that's not quite fair, but all too often their writings can be identified rather quickly with two trademarks:

1. The chances that there will be a quotation or anecdote included from a member of the radical pantheon such as Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky are about 92%. (Note that this rule also works for the radical right, though they tend to use the likes of Ayn Rand, the Bible, and Ronald Reagan)
   
2. They have so many things to complain about that the piece turns into a rambling, incoherant mess.

Here, Howard Zinn shows up in the 6th paragraph. More importantly, this piece is a hydra that goes off in so many directions that there's no focus. In one paragraph he's criticising the "deification" of the "Greatest Generation", then he's using Howard Zinn to criticise military harrowism, then he's discussing the death toll in the Second World War, and by the end he's opposing Bush's plans for Social Security.

In February 14th's piece, "Bush out of touch with citizens", Daniel Boudreau returns to discussing Social Security. This piece starts off strong, and does in fact have a pretty solid thesis. That the right is out to squeeze the life out of the middle class is not something I disagree with. However I take issue with the way this is accomplished. Take this, for example:

"Take a moment to let the implications of the president's commentary on Mary Mornin's everyday reality sink in. 'Uniquely American'? 'Fantastic?' This from a child of privilege who was raised in the pampering environs of Washington D.C. and the blue-blood communities of New England (though he does his damnedest to cultivate a good ole Texan boy persona), and who has never truly worked hard for anything in his life, seeing every opportunity come his way due to family connections."

That's pure character assassination. Look, I don't like Bush, and I don't like the right, but these people need to be attacked with the facts. Maybe I'm spoiled with the excellent factually based critiques I've been reading about the Social Security privitization plan (at Matthew Yglasias and elsewhere), and maybe I'm just totally sick of the character assassination I've seen lately (Michael Crichton, Eason Jordon, Ward Churchill, etc), but this shit has to stop.

It should be noted here, though, that as content on the BGNews opinion page goes, I've seen far, far, far worse.

More coverage of Daniel Boudreau's columns will occur as they happen...