Michael Bérubé on Joe Lieberman’s wacky sense of morality:
But now here comes a profound moral crisis that goes to the heart of American legitimacy, and Senator Palpatine here takes time out to tell us– he “cannot help but say”– that the atrocities at Abu Ghraib are offset by terrible things they’ve done since September 11 (where “they” means “A-rabs in general”).
That’s it for Joe, folks. I propose that the man doesn’t have a shred of “moral” credibility left.
Now, some of you will doubtless say, “Michael, you’re being a bit hasty on this one– surely there will be more moral crises over the next twenty or thirty years, and we should wait to see how Lieberman responds to them, and maybe he’ll do better, and then we should take the average over his entire life.” But some of you would be wrong. Joe doesn’t get any more chances. He’s done. He’s used up his last vial of Joe-mentum. You need never take him seriously again, on any question whatsoever. The next time he gets up and drones on about the soul-corroding aspects of Grand Theft Auto III, you can say, yes, Joe, tell it to the prisoners of Abu Ghraib. Or if you want to get meta-ironic with him, you can say in a lugubrious baritone, with deeply furrowed brow, “Grand Theft Auto III contains deeply disturbing images of violence, yes, but I cannot help but say that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, have never apologized for bringing their disturbing images of violence to our television screens.”