Critisism of George Will

Once in a while I read George Will's column in Newsweek. I generally find him annoying. Aside from the fact that most conservatives often annoy me he additionally has the habit of using, in my opinion, too many big words. For example, from a recent column: heepism, (heepism is a made up word) cognitive dissonance, histrionic humility, flamboyant empathy, apocryphal, Metternichian guile, architectural determinism. Now I'm not an ignoramus and for the record I do know some of the terms, in fact I particularly like the term cognitive dissonance. And I also don't believe writers should dumb down for their audience but how many readers of Will's Newsweek column are familiar with these terms? I'm not sure why it bugs me but it does. Will is a conservative who's using some rather erudite language here. Who's he writing for? The one Republican I know happens to like Will's column so I asked him if he understood the terms. He said no. Bottom line, I think Will is trying make conservatives sound smart when they're not. He uses a lot of big words to make his readers, who really don't know what the hell he's talking about, think he must be real smart and therefore knows what he's talking about. Call me crazy.

In this week's column Will says the current economic climate isn't so bad. Oil prices are way down for example and Christmas sales are expected to be slightly higher than last year. And if housing prices are down that's okay because they were too high anyway. This all may be true but what he conveniently neglects to mention is the gigantic 700 Billion government bailout which was done so in fact there wouldn't be an economic meltdown. How can you talk about the economy without mentioning this giant bailout? Omitting this topic pretty much negates the whole of the rest of his argument in my opinion. And what's with the pot shot at FDR which I've noticed Republicans have been doing a lot lately. Are they trying to deflect attention from those saying the current economic crisis is due to the Republicans constant push for deregulation?

If any fans of George Will read this I invite them to defend him here if they think I'm wrong.