Posted 9:54 AM by Gene

I've figured what it is about Attorney General Effete Q. Snob that inspires an almost visceral reaction in me:

1. He looks like the proverbial egghead in the worst sense, a man who's spent all his life in the hallowed hermetically-sealed halls of academe -- and you know he knows he's an egghead, and likes it. The only thing missing is a bow tie -- and probably somebody in His Omnipotence's squad told him not to wear one.

2. He suggests the type who would do the sorts of things he derides in his political opponents, but when you remind him of that he gets very self-righteously angry and denies it, albeit in the cool, collected manner that makes you think you're speaking with an android.

3. He seems extraordinarily legalistic, a man who could tie up the whole government because he found one misspelling in a document that disagreed with him.

4. We further suspect he could argue with somebody for thirty-six hours over the rights of vagrants to piddle anywhere, or the rights of graffiti "artists", or the rights of drug users, or the rights of...militants -- and he is so brilliant and so stubborn because of that brilliance he wouldn't move an inch.

5. We suspect yet further he's the sort who'd tell the victim of a terrorist attack, "I'm sorry ma'am, but the law clearly says...." In short, he is not a people person, but he needn't be, as an acolyte of The Lord.

Say what you will of Ed Meese or John Ashcroft, for all the screaming they inspired in the left they were blunderbusses who ultimately couldn't be taken seriously. Effete is better than that. Happily he will make a genius-IQ mistake of some kind before he can do real damage. That is little consolation.