Accidentally discovered compassionately tutoring minority kids, Larry Wilkerson (splendid in maroon suspenders) poses for the admiring camera of the Washington Post.

The occasion was a lengthy exercise in puffery establishing (Colin Powell’s former State Department chief of staff) retired Colonel Larry Wilkerson as a great man, after which the hero climbs down from his monument, and goes to work bashing the Bush Administration.

One former commander is quoted saying of Wilkerson:

He is the most principled individual I have ever met and ever worked with. He is a remarkable guy with essentially no ego.

No ego? It must have been somebody else who “offered tart and colorful opinions” on adversaries within the administration, and said Powell was tired “mentally and physically,” in a May 2004 GQ interview which went all sorts of places Secretary of State Powell was unwilling to go, and which left egg all over his boss’s face.

Does someone with no ego boast openly to the Washington Post of his Vietnam combat service nearly forty years ago, and indulge in (what even the Post refers to as) a “predictable aside on hawks like Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz:”

“None of these guys ever heard a bullet go by their ears in combat.”

Do individuals with no ego commonly describe the President of the United States as “inept” and “unsophisticated?”

What we really find here is a preening snob whingeing bitterly about the unworthiness of his former superiors. And it’s always touching to observe the sterling character of those members of the liberal establishment who alert the media whenever they perform a charitable act.

All the admiring verbiage in the Post concerning Wilkerson’s alleged restraint since leaving the administration is more than a little disingenuous. Wilkerson has been on the war-path against the Bush Administration for months, making a wide round of public appearances and doing press interviews in which he has leveled any number of sensational and highly partisan charges.

Previously discussed Guardian interview.

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Hat tip to Reid Detchon (on my College Class email list).