Is The Times Capable of Embarrassment?(Welcome Conservative Grapevine readers!)
They decided to hire Sarah Vowell to stand in for Maureen Dowd. She's contributed 3-4 of the most incomprehensible columns I (or
Bulldog Pundit) have ever seen. But today she's
just a little too clever:
We celebrate the Minutemen of 1775. And I'm not saying we shouldn't. I do love a good "Listen, my children, and you shall hear" legend. In fact, my mushy nationalistic heart skipped a beat when an old Minuteman statue, caked in alien goop, made a cameo in Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds."
All I'm saying is that there is an inherent pitfall in revering the volunteer militiamen of Lexington and Concord, our beloved raggedy, gun-toting amateurs who defied the powers-that-were. As when today's raggedy, gun-toting amateurs defy the powers-that-be in their honor and someone gets hurt. Timothy McVeigh, for example.
Ten years ago, he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City - on April 19. 
Get it? The heroes at Lexington and Concord were the equivalent of Timothy McVeigh. I suspect there will be an uproar over that one.
From there she deftly segues into discussing a film about a band called "The Minutemen". From which comes this poignant moment:
The best part of the film, and the most heartbreaking, is when Watt walks around the park where he met Boon, a childhood friend who died in a car accident in 1985. "I was quite smitten with him," Watt remembers. "He was playing army and he fell out of a tree on me."
As he stares at the very tree, it occurs to me that playing army when you're 13 is fine. Grown men playing army on the Mexican border? No, thanks. Uh, you know, playing army when you're 13 is not quite so fine, Sarah. It's pretty weird, actually.
And I'll freely admit that immigration is not my hot button. But I see nothing wrong with what the modern Minutemen did at the Arizona border, despite the obvious horror with which the MSM greeted them.
