So here we are on the Bandwagon watch.
Updated March 22: David Frum suggests adding this article to the "Bush was right" scrapbook (and he was soooo talking about me .... um was that out loud ... anyways)
Corriere Della Sera, Paolo Franchi
Der Speigel, Claus Christian Malzahn
Chicago Sun-Times, Mark Brown
Christain Science Monitor, Daniel Schorr
New Mexico Governor Richarson
Slate, Fred Kaplan (who goes only half-way)
Jon Stewart (well, as far as he could go) and again here (Hat-tip Free Advice)
Toronto Star, Gwynn Dyer
Macleans, Peter Mansbridge
The Independent, Rupert Cornwell
But of course Mark Steyn has the definitive word on bandwagon jumping.
Come on, lads. You don’t want to be the last to leap aboard the bandwagon. The New York Times are running front page stories with headlines like “Unexpected Whiff Of Freedom Proves Bracing For The Middle East”. Daniel Schorr, the dean of conventional wisdom at National Public Radio, was for once almost ahead of the game, concluding his most recent editorial with a strange combination of words that had never before passed his lips in that particular order: “Bush may have had it right.”
Did he simply muff the reading? Did he mean to say: “Bush may have had it - right?” But apparently not. Ever since, the same form of words has mysteriously flowered from Toronto to London to Sydney. It’s the catchphrase du jour - like “Show me the money” or “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.” Now it’s “Could Bush be right?” Even America’s media naysayers have suddenly noticed that they can hardly hear their own generic boilerplate about what a Vietnam quagmire the new Iraq is over the sound of raven-tressed Beirut hotties noisily demanding Lebanon’s freedom in the streets of Beirut.
But the real reason to read this article is this:
...Last week’s Arabic News reported that Colonel Gaddafy has “underscored the need to launch full freedom in Libya”. And to show he’s serious he’s introduced yet another spelling of his name: as the headline put it, “Qathafi Wants Freedom To Prosper In Libya”. Qathafi: that’s a new one on me. I’ve seen him spelled Khadafi, Qaddafi, Gadhafi, Qudhafi, Kadafi, Gheddafi, Kaddafi, Qadhdhafi and a couple dozen others, but clearly this latest one is an indication that, like Mubarak in Egypt, he’s under pressure to move to a multi-candidate electoral system and is planning to run as all of them: Gadafi (Sclerotic Dictatorship Party), Qadafi (Sword Of The Infidel Slayer-Liberal Democratic Alliance), Gaddhafi (New Sclerotic Dictatorship Party), Khaddaffy (Khonservative Phartty)…
Brilliant!
