While George Will has written some compelling commentary that I have enjoyed over the years, his recent signing-on to the resistance movement is disappointing.
George Will, the uppity erudite columnist who seems to revel in writing over the heads of most readers who subscribe to the newspapers publishing his column, surpassed his usual effort to send them to Google for meanings.
In a recent column devoted to an attack on Vice President Mike Pence, who he refers to as “America’s most repulsive public figure,” he used the words – oleaginous, toadyism, obsequiousness and lickspittle – in the lead paragraph.
George Will (FoxNews.com)
Will has often been called a “silver-tongued devil.” Not so. I’m sure his close friends have convinced themselves that he is eloquent and convincing, but he misses with the quality of expressing himself clearly and effectively when it comes to the average reader. Perhaps it is his Princeton and Oxford education.
The fact that Pence frequently states that he is “humbled” to serve in the Trump administration gets under Will’s skin. As does Pence’s religious beliefs. An atheist, Will wrote, “Pence, one of the evangelicals’ favorite pin-ups, genuflects at various alters, as the mobocratic spirit and vicious portion require.” Trump’s position on religious freedom must have freaked Will out.
“Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying,” he concludes.
Unlike Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist and TV commentator who continued to speak in opposition to Trump, Will left the Republican Party when Donald Trump was elected, and left television, where he frequently offered his commentary on Fox Special Report.
Here’s that vocabulary busting lead paragraph from Wills column that I spoke of earlier:
“Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump know, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.”
It has been some 40 years since Will won a Pulitzer for his commentary. I doubt this attack on our vice president will earn him another, but after noting the most recent winners, I cannot be sure.
May God bless the United States of America.
