John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JILL ABRAMSON IN THE GUARDIAN (AND SURPRISINGLY NOT TAKEN DOWN BY EDITORS)
“Comey's wish for a leaker's 'head on a pike'? Proof he's no better than Trump”
"Our founding freedom”?
"It shows a shared indifference to the first amendment"?
Rather reads as though Ms. Abramson hasn't left behind her American origins, even when addressing British readers.
I also find a touch of, "my, my, how terrible," here that doesn't sit well with this boy who was born, and spent nearly half his life, in America, a boy who takes an interest in important affairs.
These Comey-Trump recorded comments are absolutely no different to many conversations held by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Hillary Clinton ("Can't we just drone him or something?" speaking of the honorable Julian Assange) and others, including, I strongly suspect, Barrack Obama, who is known to have abhorred leaks and embraced secrecy of every kind.
That's the ugly nature of things at the center of a great, throbbing empire. It, as Americans are fond of saying, "comes with the territory." They are also fond of saying, "Shit happens."
I also find in these words an interesting softening, a relative softening, of expressions concerning Donald Trump, certainly compared to past extreme statements in The Guardian. Just comparing Comey and Trump implicitly does this.
AFTERWORD:
Regarding the last point, readers may be interested in:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/what-trump-is-doing-in-jerusalem-and-why-he-is-doing-it/
