Ever since I met Jamie I've been amazed and amused, but mostly fascinated, by just how successful he is at pissing off Liberals--especially Liberals of our generation. He pissed me off when I first met him. I think it has something to do with his obdurate (and almost inhuman) rejection of sanctimoniousness and sentimentality. Sanctimoniousness as it applies to his writing on Africa, where he builds from familiar Liberal values to less familiar conclusions, and conspicuously refuses to shed even a figurative tear along the way. Sentimentality as it applies to his advocating for gay rights, where his arguments, while clearly connected to his personal life, are admirably un-personal. I wonder if he'll go the way of A. Sullivan as he gets older. I also hope he has the balls to ditch M. Peretz, if only because, justified or not, it gives a lot of people reason to take him a little less seriously, I think.

You mean Yglesias actually has an UNTIDY BEARD?

As for Kirchick, my respect for him would be a wee bit higher if he didn't enthusasically defend our conduct in Gitmo (in which respect one can only HOPE he eventually "goes the way of Sullivan"):

http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=93943
http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=102533

No, an unsightly one. Anyway, I have my own expressed differences with Jamie on the U.S. administration of Guantanamo Bay, but I don't see how this makes his excellent reportage on Zimbabwe any less excellent, or how it exculpates Yglesias from mischaracterizing Jamie's focus on Africa in order to score a cheap shot against conservatives worried about Darfur.

I'm sorry, I have no desire to piss on Kirchick here, but while he may eschew sentimentality, he is one of the most sanctimonious writers I have ever read. Every post of his on the Plank (or on Sullivan's blog) is dripping with high-toned condescension for those who don't share his views. His writing knows one tone: withering contempt for people who have the temerity to disagree with him.

How dare Jamie question Yglesias' motives! Doesn't he know Matt took a course once with Stepen Peter Rosen at HARVARD, as he's pointed out to us many a times, appparently to establish his pseudo-foreign policy credentials and to prove that he's not inherently hostile to everything involving the military. Doesn't Jamie KNOW this?

While we're on the subject of cheap shots, it's also appropriate to note his habit of excoriating those (reluctantly) opposed to military action in Darfur on practical grounds, without ever trying to answer the tiny question of where the hell we're going to get the troops. Pull them out of Iraq? Afghanistan? Institute a draft? Ignore the fact that there's an excellent chance we'll need a sudden wad of troops on short notice in the near future to deal with sudden nuclear-weapon-related crises in Iran, Pakistan, and/or North Korea?

It has become common "wisdom" among the left-wing blogosphere that neocons (and their neoliberal fellow travellers) don't "really" care about humanitarian causes, but rather are looking for excuses for the unilateral imposition of U.S. military force.  Yglesias' is simply dressing this tired trope up in better packaging - and in the process giving the TNR-hating segment of his readership some red meat.  If he had taken the neocon/neoliberal concern over Darfur as genuine he could have addressed the substance of Kirchik's piece or made an observation about the problems of an all or nothing approach to intervention in Darfur.  (However, buried is Yglesias' post is  a genuine critique of the hawkish Wilsonian preference to combat personified human evil rather than address less sexy humanitarian issues of AIDS and potable water.)

However, Kirchik shouldn't get off the hook.  His "Obama Doctrine" column was a polemic based on a willful misreading of Obama's actual statements on genocide and American intervention.  As Hilzoy pointed out, it was based far more on the AP's inaccurate heading "summarizing" Obama's comments.  Kirchik admits as much in his response to Hilzoy - he intended to provoke rather than genuinely probe Obama's unclear position on these issues.  In doing so, he was feeding into the conservative noise machine - which likes to toss Darfur in as a seasoning for its argument that any withdrawal from Iraq is precluded by the specter of genocide.  Using Darfur to deliver a cheap shot is just as wrong-headed when Kirchik is on the dishing end as it was when he was on the receiving end. 

Um, "facial vegetation"? This word choice is really sleazy and distracts from the rest of your post.

No, the word choice is really funny...