Kiss that ambassadorship goodbye, Jane Smiley!
"Gary Kamiya writes, 'In a just world, Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Feith and their underlings would be standing before a Senate committee investigating their catastrophic failures, and Packer's book would be Exhibit A.' No. In a just world, these people would be taken out and shot." - Jane SmileySo, would that be farm justice? Cow justice?
There are few things more demoralizing than watching a public intellectual LOSE IT in print. This is the kind of statement that, before I had a blog, I might eventually have forgotten about. Then, years later, the subject of Jane Smiley would come up and I might have to say something like "I know there's some very good reason not to take her seriously, but I can't remember what it is." The blog will help me remember.
Usually it's liberal figures whom I disqualify in this way, because I don't have much respect for the conservative ones to begin with. For example, if Pat Robertson says we should assassinate some world leader . . . well, let's just say that almost anything he says is more amusing to me than shocking. However, when Al Franken went on the "Tonight Show" shortly before the California gubernatorial election and repeated the worst partial quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger about Hitler a full day after the original source, the New York Times, ran a major, well-covered Editor's Note giving the full (benign) quote and its (benign) context, I did put a little mental asterisk next to Al Franken's name. I think I'll remember that one, but for some people the discrediting episode has completely slipped my mind as, indeed, all of their names have at this moment.
posted at 1:01 AM
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