Poor Paul

Remember that old song by the Coasters entitled “Charlie Brown”? Well it appears that Paul Wolfowitz has pulled some lyrics right from that classic tune. Why is everybody always picking on me? Today the World Bank president is attempting to claim that this whole fiasco is actually a smear campaign started by the World Bank, in an effort to get him to resign.

Now, let me start off by saying, I would have no problem if that were the case. I’ve thought this was about as obvious a show of cronyism as you can get when he was appointed, he proved to be an incompetent deputy secretary of defense, leading a charge to war for inaccurate or flat out bogus claims, and he basically got a promotion.

However what makes this latest claim mystifying is the fact that Wolfowitz apologized for inappropriately giving his girlfriend a huge pay bump three weeks ago. It simply blows my mind that people who are in, or WERE in the Bush Administration think that we as a people are either so dumb, we don’t know how to work a video camera, a tape recorder, or a wordprocessor, or are too lazy to fact check their claims.

What makes me absolutely crazy is that these people, who have been in charge, and had absolute power for so long, they think that any claim they make will simply be accepted at face value. My personal favorite was when Wolfy claimed that when he took steps to get his girlfriend a pay raise, he did so not realizing that it wasn’t ethical, because he was new to the organization. Paul, unless you’re new to the world, not just the World Bank, it should be fairly obvious that using your newfound influence to get your lover a pay raise is a no-no.

But you’re right, the World Bank is picking on you. You’re the innocent bystander who got run over by bunch of meanies. Poor Paul.