Zoya K. and Paul Begala

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/11/21/democrats_pray_for_newt.html

Paul Begala: "Republicans, apparently, will date anyone before they'll marry Mitt. Remember their brief fling with Donald Trump? Then, after he decided not to throw his hair into the ring, they fell for Michele Bachmann, the Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya of the far right. Then it was Rick Perry -- the guy who claims he jogs with a loaded gun (without a safety) tucked into his shorts. And now that they've tired of Herman Cain's, umm, hands-on style of leadership, it's Newt's turn."

I am pretty sure    if anyone had read the   quote above he/she   hadn't noticed anything unusual.   Ok, Mr. Begala used some   funny name, maybe   a   Russian saint or someone to metaphorically   address the far right obsession with Michelle Bachmann, so what? He   is an educated guy, most likely heard something.

For the record: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya   was an 18-years' old   Russian woman who voluntarily joined the Red Army in 1941 to fight with Germans. She   was assigned to   a special   ops group and was captured   during the mission in the Petrishevo village, not far from Moscow. After grotesque tortures which included flogging   and making cuts in her breasts she was publicly hanged   in front of   women and children of that village. It was done not by SS but by a regular Vermacht    regiment.   Due to that atrocity    Stalin issued a special order to not to consider the soldiers of that regiment as POWs.   Now you know. I hope Mr.   Begala knows too.

The reader can judge for himself/ herself   if any reasonable   writer would associate the name of the hero of the most horrible war with the half-human personality of   Michelle Bachmann. I understand that   to Mr. Begala all of that means most likely nothing: he wanted to refer to the obsession with the name, the   hysteria of the far right and   he had no other example than Zoya.   I guess he was just lazy and vane.   The Devil finds   work for idle hands.

Smirking is common among the US MSM folks. Still, I am wondering why   Mr. Begala   had chosen   a Russian character. Why   didn't he   use   Joan D'Arc, Sofia Sholl, or   Anne Frank? After all,   you can say that   those names    are not only widely known but also   were  the  subjects of quite a hysterical approach for a long period of time.   Mr. Begala bypassed them. He   picked up   a person   not well-known in the West.   That way   he avoided    possible complications with someone here and   could consider himself safe in   smirking. Who cares about an   obscure   Russian girl?

I care. I can't say that I care for Mr. Begala   but I do care for the memory of those who died in   real battles   so that Mr. Begala and people like him could live free   and   smirk as much as   they want. Now in Russia there is a plenty of those who would smirk   at anything and   smear anyone; maybe Mr. Begala got his info from them.   They say that those sacrifices were not needed, that it was all in vain, that   Stalin   and Hitler were the same, etc. etc.   That's not surprising: good people can only   sacrifice   themselves; they cannot defend   their memory They rely on us. I hereby protect  Zoya's honor. It is my honor too.

So here I stand and here I say: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, her brother Alexander   who also perished in the war and millions of other young Russian boys and girls were much better as persons   than Mr. Begala. They were much better as persons than me   and certainly much better than any of our   current GOP candidates.   Mr. Begala   should   be ashamed of himself that in this country, under the   rule of his party the   people who   run for President are anything but human. Mr. Begala, if he only cared for anything should not smirk but weep.   He should    weep deeply   and shout to the best of his lungs   about the danger to America. Instead he smirks and smears the   hero of another nation, the one which saved his nation among others from the most horrible evil imagined.

There are people   in   history whose lives, no matter how short,    shine like  stars   and show the way   for generations yet to come. There are also people whose lives, no matter how long,   stink   like  piles of trash. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya   belong to the former. As for the latter ones- we can see them all around.

Mr. Begala did not  have to go to Russia to find a character  similar to Michelle Bachmann.  There are such in the American  history.  The closest  which comes to mind is Mercy Lewis, one of the notorious  hysterical girls-accusers at the Salem Witches' Trial. Here we have  all the qualities: malice, ignorance and  immaturity, so  easily found in our dear Michelle B. I guess Mr. Begala did not even contemplate any such comparison. Ironically, Mercy Lewis was also about 17 years' old. As I said,  the Devil find work for idle hands.