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THE CABAL

The Actual "Person of the Year"
Abe Greenwald

by Abe Greenwald, December 20, 2007

1 comments
Time magazine ranked General Petraeus fourth runner up for the publication’s 2007 “Person of The Year”. Given the General’s clear insight into media politics, one suspects he was probably surprised to find out he was being considered at all. Given his humble resolve, it’s almost certain he would have found the ridiculous title an embarrassment. After all, Time has bestowed the honor (that they’re quick to insist isn’t an honor) upon both Adolf Hitler (from the January 1939 edition: “He lifted the nation from post-War defeatism. Under the swastika Germany was unified. His was no ordinary dictatorship, but rather one of great energy and magnificent planning.”) And Joseph Stalin (from the January 1940 edition: “Despite the disastrous purges, despite the low opinion that J. Stalin & Co. held of human life, Soviet Russia had definitely gained some measure of respect for its apparent righteousness in foreign affairs.”)

Looking over those quotes, I think it’s safe to say that while the title isn’t explicitly an honor, the non-honoree is treated with no small measure of reverence. Which we know General Petraeus has yet to command from the MSM.

Given that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was much more Time-friendly, it’s worth reviewing the accomplishments of a man who does deserve an honor that is, in fact, an honor.

By the time David Petraeus took over command of the Iraq War, columnists and politicians had long exhausted the blunder pages of their thesauri. Lawlessness was the order of the day. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was years into their campaign of exploiting Sunni-Shia strife. They’d managed to provoke an apparent state of multiple civil wars, the dousing of which seemed obscenely out of the U.S. military’s reach.

Petraeus knew that what looked like civil war was, in fact, AQI’s cynically devised plan to foment sectarian bloodshed. Al Qaeda car bombings and mosque bombings were carried out in hopes of retaliation that would, of their own momentum, go on to tear the country apart. Instead of taking sides in a fictitious civil war, he employed a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy as unprecedented as it was brave. U.S. soldiers would no longer stay barricaded in heavily fortified bases. Instead they operated out of regional outposts in the heart of hot spots, and shared patrol duties with Iraqis. Additionally, forces leaned on AQI hideouts simultaneously so that insurgents couldn’t simply pack up and check in at the next jihad flophouse. These strategic measures, not the simple up-tick in troops, lay at the heart of the surge. Just as the media (and many lawmakers) failed to grasp that, they now fail to see that Iraqi political progress, found lacking when measured from the top-down, is well underway if measured from the bottom-up. Local leaders, both Sunni and Shia, are renouncing the sectarian violence that once gripped their country. Sunni’s are turning against AQI and Shia against Mahdi Army type militiamen in order to bring stability to Iraq.

Without General Petraeus, we’d be closing this year with a catastrophic defeat of U.S. forces in the heart of Mesopotamia. Instead we’ve driven civil society’s worst enemy from their most strategically valuable arena. The long-term effect of a loss in Iraq would have meant untold damage: to U.S. military prowess, to American soft power, to the cause of liberation in the Muslim world. A few days ago, Andrew Sullivan, still blind to coalition progress in Iraq, wrote that the U.S. needs a “humble foreign policy” going forward. Indeed, we would have one without Davis Petraeus. Instead, we now have this.

Yesterday on the Fox News channel Charles Krauthammer predicted General David Petraeus will someday be elected president of the United States. Hey, it’s not “Person of the Year,” but it doesn’t suck either.


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THE CABAL

Great Moments in Journalism
Daniel Koffler

by Daniel Koffler, November 28, 2007

0 comments

A couple of weeks ago, Joe Klein wrote a column for Time excoriating the Democrats for pushing an amendment to FISA that, according to Klein's understanding, "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court." Klein's conclusion: "In the lethal shorthand of political advertising," the bill "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans."

So, politically unsavvy Democrats hand Republicans another propaganda victory on national security issues, and are unserious about protecting the country to boot. This is a story that mainstream pundits are willing and able to write, by rote, in their sleep, on any occasion in which the parties debate national security. But never mind, it's a great scoop. The only problem with it is that it's unequivocally false. The RESTORE act (as it's being called) simply does not require FISA approval of all targeted calls, as Klein alleges, but only in cases in which Americans are spied upon --- a position Klein ostensibly agrees with. In other words, in order to churn out a lazy, uninformed, prefabricated narrative about Democratic insouciance on national security issues, Klein resorted to using a limpid bit of RNC spin as his central exhibit, without bothering to do an even rudimentary investigation of his own.

Staking out a --- count them --- fifth position on his column's accuracy, Klein finally throws up the white flag, admitting "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right." Which is, naturally, a dilemma that suggests its own solution. If you can't comprehend legislative language, draw valid inferences from it, etc., just don't write about it. It really isn't that difficult.

Meanwhile, nearly two full weeks too late, Time got around to posting a correction to the original article. Here it is:

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't.

No muss, no fuss. Democrats say one thing, Republicans say another, about an actually fairly straightforward empirical proposition that either is, or is not, true. Mind you, Time feels no obligation to tell its readers whether it's true --- how could one even begin to decide such a thing anyway --- as long as it lets them know two contradictory claims about a matter of fact exist. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what responsible journalism is all about.


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DAILY SHVITZ

Remembering Rabbi Sherwin Wine
Avi Kramer

by Avi Kramer, July 23, 2007

1 comments

The founder of Humanistic Judaism, Rabbi Sherwin Wine, 79, died Saturday in a car crash in Morocco.

Rabbi Wine, who spent his life forsaking convention as the leader of a sect of Judaism that saw the religion as a culture instead of a faith, has died. He was 79.

Wine, who founded the first congregation of Humanistic Judaism in suburban Detroit in 1963, was killed Saturday in an automobile accident in Essaouira, Morocco, according to the Web site of the Society for Humanistic Judaism. He and his partner, Richard McMains, were on vacation when another vehicle hit their taxi.

Following a 1965 Time magazine article, Wine’s reform movement gained notoriety. Nonetheless, he was denounced by many Jewish leaders as fomenting another short-lived 60’s craze. The movement's staying power proved otherwise, and Rabbi Wine built Humanistic Judaism from eight Detroit families to a worldwide membership of over 40,000. In 2003, the American Humanist Association selected him Humanist of the Year.

"Rabbi Wine was a visionary who created a Jewish home for so many of us who would have been lost to Judaism," Rabbi Miriam S. Jerris, president of the Association of Humanistic Rabbis, said in a statement. "He taught us that human dignity is the highest moral value. We will live our lives reflecting that value to honor his memory."

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DAILY SHVITZ

Rudy's Abortion Gambit
Michael Weiss

by Michael Weiss, May 18, 2007

0 comments

Mike Kinsley nails it:

[G]iuliani's story line about standing firm would have been more impressive if it hadn't been accompanied by stories--apparently leaked by his staff--about how they came to settle on this strategy and how clever it is. In the first Republican presidential debate, Giuliani tried to project ambivalence (not a bad place to be on abortion), but it came out as indifference (a bad place to be). He said it was O.K. with him if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and O.K. with him if it didn't. So his campaign decided to go with a "standing firm" narrative instead, as if these were racks of suits from which you could choose the one you thought fit the best. If "standing firm" seems like a clever campaign strategy, then it isn't very clever, is it?

When I ran for N.Y. State Assembly, my argument for being pro-choice was that it wasn't just a matter of a woman's right to choose but also one of a doctor's right to choose. Abortion is, after all, a medical procedure, and most medical procedures are not undertaken lightly or without a fair degree of emotional distress on the part of the patient, no less the physician. This is where politics ends and the doctor-patient relationship begins.

Everyone is, or should be, "personally" opposed to abortion; it's bound to upset your weekend plans, no matter how much you may donate to NARAL or Planned Parenthood. The very thought of flushing out a human fetus -- or surgically removing any part of the human body -- makes us queasy. But this visceral, as it were, reaction has no bearing on the medical or moral justifications for the procedure, especially when it is performed in emergent or life-threatening conditions.

A candidate for president has no business legislating what goes on in the OR. The sooner we realize this as a nation, the better.


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Drunken Sailors and Moonbats

A week, a blogroll, and a deadly duel

DIALOGUE: by Nick Gillespie, Tim Cavanaugh, May 17, 2007

To: Tim Cavanaugh
From: Nick Gillespie
Subject: Drunken Sailors and Moonbats

I'd say the only people happier than you and me that this is the end (my only friend, the end) are the last few readers who continue to mistake Jewcy for some sort of philo-Semitic porn site. I emerge from this exchange with you a) sadder than ever that I was ever born; b) even more sadder that you were ever born; and c) curious about when the target demo of this site will get the good news for modern man that they've been ransomed by, as Bob Dylan sung it so sweet and loud and true, "the man who came and died a criminal's death."

The Republican presidential debate was the big news last night—even bigger than the Richard Paul revelations you unearthed—and sadly I was too busy writing to you about blogs to even remember that it was on (full disclosure: I went to a T-ball game last night, then watched the Bulls-Pistons game got in the way, and around 11:30 p.m., there was also a really good Seinfeld on, the one where Elaine eats Mr. Peterman's antique piece of cake from the Edward VIII-Wallace Simpson wedding, so it's not like I wasn't prioritizing).

I give special credit to Glenn Greenwald for keeping his eye on his own white whale (the Bush administration's Lee Marvin-like "Who's Gonna Get Me a Beer?" attitude toward the Constitution, with civil liberties and due process playing the Michele Triola role) and ignoring the debate completely (though I'm a bit concerned that GG hasn't been heard of since 6:16 EST, especially after Mitt Romney's call for "double Guantanamo," whatever the fuck that is). The same goes for Noah Shachtman, who continues to report on the Pentagon's special new zit creams, "teeny tiny drones that can see like bugs, and hear like bats," and a bunch of other crap that is, however important, slightly less interesting than the old Edmund Scientific's catalog used to be. You know what the power of the blogosphere is, Tim? The right to ignore the news. Which, next to the rights to crack cocaine and freedom of/from religion might be the only one that matters.

Having said that, props to Swampland, which actually liveblogged the whole damn thing (though to be sure, only in a post-George Jetson world could watching something on TV be seen as akin to hard work; let's face it, in a world of Payless Shoe Source and footwear composed of all manmade materials, old-style shoe leather reporting is fading faster than Joe Klein's hairline). Not only that, but Time's Ana Marie Cox, late of Suck and Wonkette, actually managed to do something her MSM automaton colleagues consistently fail to do in their posts: inject some modicum of reality and/or attitude:

9:21 PM I have a bulletin for Senator McCain. You lost in 2006 because of the war. No, seriously, you did. Also? Retire the drunken sailor story. It dates you. And, really, you don't need to be dated.

She's right: The war (duh) was the major issue in the midterms. Fox News quoted McCain thus:

"We didn't lose the 2006 election because of the war in Iraq. We lost it because we in the Republican Party came to Washington to change government, and government changed us," McCain said. "We let spending go out of control. We spent money like a drunken sailor. Although I never knew a sailor - drunk or sober - with the imagination of my colleagues."

What, did McCain never hear about the Newport Sex Scandal while at Annapolis?

CNN (yeah yeah I know that they're commies) noted after the midterms that 57 percent of voters disapproved of the war (an equal percentage disapproved of Bush, but it's not clear how you separate the two); I doubt that many folks hated the Medicare prescription drug benefit (though it is loathsome for all sorts of reasons). I actually like the drunken sailor gag, if only because McCain comes from a long line of sea-loving alcoholics (and because I harbor an unseemly Ernest Borgnine/McHale's Navy fixation, which is second only to my Tovah Borgnine fixation). So I figure that McCain has earned the right to use "drunken sailor" until our boys come home from over here, there, and everywhere.

That said, there is something very weird going on in GOP political discourse when Ron Paul, the sole declared antiwar candidate, is hooted and hollered off the stage, even as he is a) the only Republican who is espousing something like traditional GOP foreign police; b) the only candidate vaguely in touch with the American people (latest polls show 55 percent of folks, an all-time high, saying we shouldn't have gone in the first place); and c) the runner-up in Fox News' own text message poll (Dr. No came in second only to Mitt Romney). If I gave a rat's ass about partisan politics, it would all be as frustrating as, well, the print edition of Time giving Ron Paul a C- and gratuitously calling him "Mr. Magoo." Indeed, if I gave a rat's ass about Mr. Magoo, arguably the most celebrated alum this side of Sister Souljah of your and mine alma mater, I'd be even more pissed.

And props to Kausfiles as well. Mickey apparently watched the debate but spared us all the tedium of a blow-by-blow analysis, instead compressing his take into the political equivalent of a haiku:

GOP Debate--kf Lazy Horse Race Blink Take**:

Win: Giuliani, McCain, Huckabee. ... Romney didn't come on strong--"double Guantanamo!"--until too late, therefore he loses relative momentum;

Lose: Paul, Tancredo, Gilmore

Not Much Impact: Hunter, Thompson, Brownback

**--In other words, a "winner" isn't someone whom I liked, but who I thought gained support among Republican primary voters who actually watched the thing. ... 7:37 P.M.

I'm jealous of the West Coast time differential. It not only makes it easier to watch Monday Night Football all the way to the end of the game, but you can watch presidential debates and then go out and drink for another six or seven hours.

Michelle Malkin liveblogged too, so more power (or maybe just Red Bull) to her, too (and the brave freedom fighters at Hot Air) even if she beat Ron Paul like he was Jose Padilla in (fully constitutional!) federal custody:

1003pm. Ron Paul buys the moonbat, blame-America line as the cause of global jihad. Goler: Are you suggesting that we invited the 9/11 attacks, sir?

That's not what Paul said, but never mind; you'd have to be a...a...a wingut or something to think that U.S. foreign policy ever has anything to do with how foreigners view the American government or people. I think it's just great that somebody actually uses the term moonbat without irony. It's like Gatsby calling people "old sport": funny and sad all at the same time. All that's missing is the swimming pool.

But here's the exit question, Tim (and I really hope never to speak to you again): Has political discourse become so Manichean that everything is black/white, right/left, up/down, stuffing/potatoes, is-Razzles-a-candy-or-a-gum? Whatever happened to the traditional America, where politics were tough but fair, and nobody hated each other or lied about each other's records or anything like that?

This is what your blogosphere has reduced us to: more voices and more choices. Worse still, it's more difficult than ever to avoid people yapping and offering up their opinions. Here's hoping that we can return to the mores of a more civilized era, when political rivals shot each other to death in Weehawken or likened each other to long-armed apes and then, at the end of the day, got together in the White House to booze it up on the taxpayers' dime.

To: Nick Gillespie
From: Tim Cavanaugh
Subject: Next Time, Let's You and I Pay To Do This

It's all about Glenn Greenwald, isn't it? While we lay waste our talents getting and spending on the Republican debate, only Dubba-G keeps fighting the good fight, devoting lengthy, sub-referenced, abundantly codiciled blog posts that capture the nation-sweeping excitement of the Comey testimony. He takes a slap at "the truly odious Joe Klein," and who can't feel the Greenwaldian tension? Beats there a heart so cold it doesn't thrill to the excitement of full-bore Klein hatred?

But wait: Here's Joe Klein himself, also hot on the trail of the Comey. And his fellow Swampland critter Karen Tumulty right there with him. So if they're all writing about the same dull topic, and also writing about each other, why does Jewcy need a couple of paunchy, self-pitying goys to do its blog snark about them? Why can't we just get down with the hot new "bag" of outsourcing journalism, and farm all this work out to some Anglophilic grad student in Bangalore?

I'll tell you why, Nick. Because in my day we didn't need all these "facts" and "figures" to clutter up our crystalline prose. By God, we got the news through sheer horse sense! We're not just a couple of wet-behind-the-ears linkalists, dammit! We're riding the high country of real reporting, and J. Jonah Jameson and Perry White and Tony Vincenzo are beet-red with aggravation at our high-spirited hijinks. And just to show you how hard it can be out there, try and read these sentences from our assigned beats this week, without putting your head into that set of shark's teeth I've got hanging on my rec-room wall.

Michelle Malkin:

The Hot Air team has broken out the popcorn.

Kausfiles:

(Yes, I'm extrapolating here from Pear's role in the 1995-6 welfare debates.)

Glenn Greenwald:

It is because the Beltway class is as corrupt and barren of integrity and judgment as they are.

Danger Room:

So Horiuchi is building a circuit that he hopes that can emulate how "interaural level differences" are processed "in the bat brainstem and midbrain."

Swampland:

Almost-candidate Chuck Hagel discusses "America's Role In The World" at the Center for National Policy in Washington.

ZZZZ! Wha—uh? Please don't cut my dick off, Mr. Hitler!

I think every one of those gems could be turned into a catchphrase every bit as good as "In the absence of weights, I am employing isometrics" or "I don't understand your hostility towards me" or "Bitch set me up."

Am I at 500 words yet?

Why aren't any of our targets writing about the Wolfowitz endgame? (Can somebody just shoot me now that I'm writing about the Wolfowitz endgame?) What about Prince Harry's royal draft dodge? Why are the media elites ignoring the story of the lamb panda? Who dares to speak for the surgical sponge left in Judge G. Blair Harry? How long can we continue to ignore the link between the sixth grade teacher attack prank and the eighth grade substitute teacher gay sex money shot? All I can say is, "What happens in Ms. Buford's class stays in Ms. Buford's class."

Yes, Nick, this crazy, mixed-up hill-of-beans world is too much for the citizen journalists who have made this week so regrettable for both of us. In this maelstrom of decay, you can trust Michelle Malkin, and it's on the shoulders of the diminutive firecracker that we must at last bestow the mantle of our blogger of the week, because she's the one who came up with this: "Forget about the candidates and the questions and the campaign. Call the wah-mbulance: Journalists are whining about the food and restrooms."

Which sucks, actually. So no, the blogger of the week is Mickey Kaus, because he compared either me or you to either Jimmy Stewart or the Duke. So he wins it.

But then again, where else but in Noah Shachtman's Boom Boom Room can we be reminded of the timeless lesson that you really can cook yourself to death in a tanning booth, just as you can die if your underwear's too tight or have your head eaten by a spider-infested bouffant? He calls it the Danger Palace, but he's making the world a safer place.

Then again, how can we not give the Palm to Karen Tumulty, who not only shares a name with New Brunswick, N.J.'s first and shittiest restaurant but wins all our hearts with a self-effacing "Just found the link. Blogging 101." And what of Glenn Greenwald, locked in an eternal struggle against his bizarro-universe counterpart Green Glennwald, a.k.a. John-Alberto Gonzales-Ashcroft?

And have we no sense of decency, at long last, if we don't join in the general disapprobation of John McCain's drunken sailor joke—perhaps the only thing on which all this week's bloggers agree?

Yes, Nick, they're all winners. To us, they're all our sons, and I guess they are, I guess they are! Everybody's a winner in what will undoubtedly be our last hurrah as the world's oldest boy band. And we're winners too! We are, we are! So why do I feel so bad?


Previous Movable Snipes:

Jonathan Ames and Amanda Marcotte
[Jewlicious, The News Blog, Gothamist, The Revealer, Maud Newton]

John Derbyshire and Daphne Merkin
[James Wolcott, Reason's Hit & Run, Design Observer, Kesher Talk, Matt Yglesias]

Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel
[, , , , ]

Spencer Ackerman and Melissa Lafsky
[Captain’s Quarters, Feministing, TNR's The Spine, Jossip, Wonkette]


more »

Leave Jerry Falwell to Heaven: I Mourn for Richard Paul!

A week, a blogroll, and a deadly duel

DIALOGUE: by Nick Gillespie, Tim Cavanaugh, May 16, 2007

To: Nick Gillespie
From: Tim Cavanaugh
Subject: Leave Jerry Falwell to Heaven: I Mourn for Richard Paul!

Libertarian Long-Shot: Congressman Ron PaulMickey Kaus' permalink-challenged blog starts us off with an unpleasant reminder that the Republican presidential candidates are still debating. I've been enjoying the massive candidate turnout and the consequent range of views in these debates, which the Republicans especially need. So I'm sorry I missed this fantastic Washington Post editorial making the case that the real problem is too many choices in these debates. Because if there's one thing the glorious history of the Soviet Union taught us, it's that societies always do better when their choices are limited to only those few that are accepted by legitimate authorities.

The best part of the WaPo piece is that it singles out Ron Paul as an extraneous candidate, while (just to show that the Post's ed board can let its hair down too!) waggishly suggesting viewers should vote off a candidate at the end of every debate. Which of course would leave the field with...Ron Paul, the only candidate who can credibly argue that he gained after the first debate. Mark my words: Paul will be the Jerry Brown/Alan Keyes/Howard Dean figure in this race: He'll gain and gain and build up excitement until the actual votes come in, and he'll be the last non-winner standing. Meanwhile I look forward to more detail on Mike Huckabee's views on evolution, Sam Brownback's rejection of the heliocentric system of planets, and whether Tom Tancredo believes in angels (or at least in angels trying to enter the U.S.A. legally).

The Un-Jerry: Actor Richard PaulThe Un-Jerry: Actor Richard PaulBut alas, as noted in Swampland, there's another angel in Heaven tonight. I suppose I should join the speculation on what the political spin will be about Jerry Falwell's death, but there's obviously a more pressing question: Who will be the first editorial cartoonist to work the infamous picture of Jerry on the Heritage Island waterslide into a cartoon of him watersliding his way...into Heaven? And a more important question: Where will Richard Paul find acting work now? And the most important question of all: Why didn't I know that Richard Paul died nine years ago?

Leave Jerry Falwell to Heaven: I mourn for Richard Paul!

And yet who mourns for Glenn Greenwald, who brings home the gold with the day's most exciting clause: "Eric Alterman, who notes that he plays poker with Edsall..."? This is in the context of some pretty heavy-duty sleuthing (about a matter that, in true blog style, is left pretty much unexplained and uncontextualized), which notes that this Edsall fellow (I think he invented a car or something) "has an 'unusual tic' where he makes 'ironic' statements so seriously that people frequently misunderstand his meaning." Holy Moses, do I know how that feels! Greenwald calls us all into the drawing room to offer his solution to the mystery:

"I've become convinced, more or less, that Edsall made that comment sarcastically, not seriously."

There are only two words you can say to a conclusion like that: In-deed!

Michelle Malkin, who only makes unironic statements but makes them very seriously, helps out on the Falwell beat, providing a roundup of reactions from believers and non-believers, the most credible of which is this from Marc Ambinder: "In recent years, the media overstated Falwell's power considerably..."

The cheerleadin', tramoline-jumpin', blonde-preferrin' firecracker also scores a little hit against ABC over its trumped-up Jose-Padilla-al-Qaeda-job-application scoop. I'm not optimistic about the MSM's ability to adapt to the challenge from new media (partly because, as you noted yesterday, big media outlets continue to turn double-digit profits, so the threat is pretty exaggerated), but you'd think that by this point big news outfits would have dropped the preening, secrets-of-the-temple vocabulary of statements like "obtained by ABC News' Law & Justice Unit" and "The document's authenticity was confirmed to ABC News' Law & Justice Unit." These days I'm often distressed by attacks on the MSM (usually in a "you don't know the half of it" way), but this really is just ABC bragging about the size of its Unit. Point: Malkin!

Oh and don't forget to check out the job application: Would you hire him? Even after the bad experience of hiring me?

I'm declaring Noah Shachtman's Danger Room the winner for the second day in a row, but only because—unless I missed something—he's the only one of our subjects who has acknowledged that we're checking him out. He also speculates that we may be actual members of the tribe rather than just rootless cosmopolitans, but I have already made clear that I'll need to be further along in my political career before I discover the inevitable Jewish ancestor; it's all part of my plan to become the first black president.

Shachtman does an interesting dissection of a David Sanger Iran's-nukes-are-just-around-the-corner story. These deconstructions are basically like Vorticist exercises where you never get to the bottom: I couldn't tell you what exactly Judith Miller got wrong in her reporting, and I suspect not many other people could either. The only thing that lingers in my mind is the way every one of these panics comes with a new set of terminology—centrifuges, yellowcake, fuel rods, etc.—that you have to affect some instant expertise about.

Shachtman also comes up with a description that reproduces the whole blogs-vs-MSM tension of our painful exercise this week:

While the U.S. military battles itself over what to do about YouTube and blogs, Al-Qaeda has embraced digital media with both arms -- and is releasing propaganda videos online at a record rate.

Since my Jewish cred has already been called into question, I might as well go all out and say I think the story of David and Goliath is dumb because it presupposes that Goliath is a) not the talking dog the Lutheran Church says he is; and b) destined to fail. It's true al Qaeda is lighter and more adaptable than the U.S. military, the bloggers are lighter and more adaptable than CBS, YouTube is lighter and more adaptable than Sony, and so on; but at some point you have to say, Where's the (kosher! kosher!) beef? Size still matters. You can get pretty rich betting on the ability of big, dumb second-wave institutions to endure long after their feisty and maneuverable challengers have run out of gas or been assimilated. Resistance is futile--but then so is pretty much everything.

To: Tim Cavanaugh
From: Nick Gillespie
Subject: Mickey Kaus Thinks Mitchum is a Deodorant

It's late as I'm writing this—just five minutes before thermonuclear disaster, if the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists can be trusted (earlier this year, the retro group arbitrarily pushed their clock ahead two minutes but are still demanding $3 off their Domino's cheesy bread—a meal deal is a deal, even if it's being delivered by a bunch of irradiated zombies)—so forgive me the scream of consciousness prose style. Not only is it late in the day, but I actually put something back on the grocery store shelf today because it contained trans fat. Which means it's late in my life, though unfortunately not late enough to prevent me from having to file. I'm not fully convinced that trans fat even exists. I mean, how the hell did we go from not giving a shit about trans fat to locking down old-school Crisco like it was heroin (which really isn't so bad)? The trans fat hysteria strikes me as a tad too similar to the Great Chlamydia Scare of 1988 (or maybe it was just my great chlamydia scare of 1988): a never-before-heard-of sexually transmitted disease that is almost always asymptomatic? What will those antibiotic pushers think of next? How naive do they think we are?

Which is another way of saying that, like you, "Rudy" Ruettiger, and Vince Foster, I miss the '90s. The 1990s, the 1890s, the 1790s--it doesn't really matter, because anyway you slice it, they all go down in history as pre-Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory and Good Times Novelty Blogge, so they all go down a little more smoothly than the current era. (By the way, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that he boosted the title How Would a Patriot Act? from Timothy McVeigh.)

Do you still remember the '90s, Tim? A time when you, like Emilio Estevez, could dream that your best work was still ahead of you? Or maybe just that your worst work was behind you? I don't know when the '90s started exactly—probably some time after Time's Karen Tumulty reported on George H.W. Bush buying those tube socks at J.C. Penney—but I know they ended definitively when Newt Gingrich took Wendy the Snapple Lady as his fifth wife.

At least you're getting paid to read this crap and those blogs—from what I understand, the patrons of Jewcy are paying for this, although as part of their membership fee they also get one birthday call a year from a Z-list celebrity who happens to be a member of the Chosen People. Really, is there any better way to celebrate than by having Corey Feldman call you for bail money even before the check from your grandmother clears? I for one was appalled that the FCC in its recent report on "Violent Television Programming and Its Impact on Children," singled out the post-Feldman Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as small-screen terrrorists, capable of giving kids nightmares.

You had probably passed out by the time Mickey Kaus did link to our exchange (it was already after noon), putting him in second place after Noah Shachtman in terms of noting what the goyim over at Jewcy are up to:

"Vigorous Sucky writing with Gillespie and Cavanaugh. (They know they're being vigorous. It's like watching the creaking John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart pretend they are young cowboys in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Still good!) ... 2:08 P.M.

I don't know what's more disturbing: that Mickey wrote about Chrysler after we mocked him on that score yesterday or that he doesn't really know his Western movie history. Liberty Valance came out in 1962, when Wayne was only 55 years old and still a decade and a girdle away from dancing with Bea Arthur on Maude and almost 15 years away from starring with Stewart in The Shootist, when the two guys were almost as old as Mickey is now. I'm not saying Mickey is a wuss—indeed, I don't even know what that term really means—but he probably thinks Mitchum is a deodorant.

In any case, I think I've cracked the Kaus code, which is somewhat less-interesting than the Da Vinci Code or even Morse Code: Mickey only allows himself to think and write in phrases that could legally appear on vanity license plates.

I agree with you that the biggest—and most ignored story—of yesterday was the realization that Rev. Jerry Falwell lookalike actor Richard Paul had been dead for close to a decade (a close runner-up: that "Eric Alterman...plays poker with Edsall.") The former Carter Country star had quite possibly the most fully achieved dewlap in Hollywood this side of post-Shining Time Station Alec Baldwin. I had spent the better part of the past decade petitioning Falwell to do a one-man show about Paul (no relation to the great and good Ron Paul, though perhaps Richard is in a slightly better position to grab the GOP nomination for 2008). Alas, I realized too late that petitioning the Virgin Mary to intercede probably wasn't going to work on a Baptist.

The question that Michelle Malkin dodges on her blog isn't why Falwell died yesterday but why did it take him so long? I knew he was a goner once he blew the whistle on the Murderer from Hope in 1994's The Clinton Chronicles (god, one more reason to miss that decade). As I recall, Falwell wandered through that shockumentary like Raymond Burr waddling through Godzilla: 1985 or Gene Kelly rollerskating while reciting Coleridge in Xanadu: The Rev. possessed complete control over his instrument as he revealed how the bodies were piling up at the Mena airstrip like so many kilos of Latin American coke. (Side note in the style of Kaus: Are there any people more odious than those who insist on being prefixed by the honorific "Reverend"? Maybe those who dub themselves "Ambassador"? Are you listening Sharpton? Keyes? Yglesias?) And by the way, why is Miss Firecracker referring to Abdullah al-Muhajir by his American name, Jose Padilla? I give Malkin a week before she's signing off with "Allahu Akbar!" and doing her cheers in a burka.

Game, set, match, Brother Tim; we lost the battle with radical Islam the minute we started wearing helmets when we rode our bikes. Do you think Bin Laden wore a helmet in the caves of Tora Bora? Richard Paul's death likely signalled the start of The Rapture (when's the last time you saw a "If the Rapture Comes, This Car Will Be Driverless" bumper sticker?). The alleged dirty bombers have won, the clock is ticking ever closer to midnight, and here's hoping those Atomic Scientists—and the rest of us—even get a chance to try Domino's new foldable pizza (finally, a chain pizza you can fold!) before Xenu, or whoever Muslims pray to, returns...

Continue reading... "Drunken Sailors and Moonbats"

Previous Movable Snipes:

Jonathan Ames and Amanda Marcotte
[Jewlicious, The News Blog, Gothamist, The Revealer, Maud Newton]

John Derbyshire and Daphne Merkin
[James Wolcott, Reason's Hit & Run, Design Observer, Kesher Talk, Matt Yglesias]

Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel
[, , , , ]

Spencer Ackerman and Melissa Lafsky
[Captain’s Quarters, Feministing, TNR's The Spine, Jossip, Wonkette]


more »

Return of the Sucksters!

A week, a blogroll, and a deadly duel

DIALOGUE: by Nick Gillespie, Tim Cavanaugh, May 15, 2007

Long before there was Gawker, but a little after there was Wired, there was Suck. A smirking, ironic underground in the dotcom dystopia of the fin de siecle, Suck was an online politics and pop culture magazine read by those of us already too far into our teens to be billionaires, but too damned young to go back to print. Every day saw a short, witty essay published in a “snaking” column of text that never exceeded 200 pixels in width, and bylined by a too-clever-by-half pseudonym like Polly Esther or CGI Joe. And Terry Colon's accompanying art (see above and to the right) was simply the shrewdest thing in pastels.

You wanted a net mogul’s ego punctured, a politico’s horizon darkened, or a celebrity’s lipstick smeared – you knew where to point your browser between ’96 and ’01. (After the industry it took the piss out of became incontinent on Wall Street, Suck was bought out by Feed magazine, then fell into a state of permanent suspended animation. A little bit of Cisco Systems employee died in us all that day.)

The site's motto – “A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun” – may have been a paean to know-it-all Gen X cynicism, but make no mistake: the accomplishment was lasting and profound. Suck made the adolescent internet turn its head and cough.

So for this installment of Movable Snipe – “A blogroll, a week, and a deadly duel” – we’re proud to reunite two former Sucksters, Nick Gillespie (Mr. Mxyzptlk) and Tim Cavanaugh (BarTel D'Arcy).

Nick is the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, which would have been Adam Smith’s favorite subscription if he were a member of Joy Division.

Tim, who’s now the web editor of the Los Angeles Times opinion page, actually invented Reason’s popular blog Hit & Run, a name he conveniently stole from a popular proto-blog feature at Suck. (Plagiarism’s the new scoop; remind me to forward you the Slate article.)

Their quarry for the next three days:

Swampland: Time’s collective corporate journalism blog, which I’ve found is best experienced as a drinking game. Every time Joe Klein reluctantly tugs his forelock before the almighty netroots, do a shot. Every time Wonkette emerita (and fellow Suck alumna) Ana Marie Cox wishes she could still make her mortgage payments on ass-fucking jokes, do two.

Unclaimed Territory: All right, I picked this one out of pure sadism. Lefty civil liberties lawyer Glenn Greenwald blogs at Salon, once the bete noir of the Sucksters. I don’t know if your browser does this, but that “smug cloud” from South Park always appears as pop-up in Firefox whenever I click on this blog.

Kausfiles: Will Slate’s in-house blogger finally have done with this whole charade and confess his Victor Mature-like man-love for Andrew Sullivan? More importantly, is Mickey furry enough to make it work?

Danger Room: Wired’s new defense and technology blog, marshaled by Jewcy friend Noah Shachtman. Noah recently broke the story about the Pentagon’s proposed kibosh on military blogs. We like him.

Michelle Malkin: Everyone’s favorite, internment camp-championing, link-happy vixen. Better looking than Ann Coulter, and Charlie’s favorite Angel (she’s good with knives).

–Michael Weiss

To: Tim Cavanaugh
From: Nick Gillespie
Subject: Elementary, My Dear Cavanaugh

So, Tim, we meet again, like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarity at Reichenbach Falls. Or maybe Sandler & Young at the Foxwoods Casino, together again for the last time. Is it too early in the week to start snorting Adderall? Or sticking needles in my eyes? Or how about in your eyes? In a land of blogs, the blind man may be king.

West Coast Shill: Tim Cavanaugh has become what he used to passive-aggressively deploreWest Coast Shill: Tim Cavanaugh has become what he used to passive-aggressively deploreBefore we get on to discussing a bunch of blogs that I literally need to be paid to read—life being too short on such pursuits even if we live to be 200—I want to underscore how sick and tired I am of being paired professionally with you, first at Suck, then at Reason, and then occasionally at your current perch, where you shill for big media and corporate interests. Suddenly I know how Eydie Gorme must have felt all those years, carrying a real sack of rotten potatoes around on the stage and trying to keep the smile going. You know better than anyone how lucky you were that the Los Angeles Times hired you just minutes before I was going to shitcan you at Reason for conduct unbecoming a libertarian (really, Tim, how can you not agree that Mother, Jugs & Speed makes a great case for privatizing emergency medical services?). But I do owe you for a remarkable piece of advice—"Never pass up an opportunity to have sex on TV with Gore Vidal"—that I look forward to using at some point in the future, preferably after the Rapture has begun. (Are we even allowed to make Rapture jokes at Jewcy? Writing for this site, I haven't felt this Catholic since Mark Foley stopped IM'ing me).

So I went over to Kausfiles as directed, for about the first time in about a decade (slight exaggeration) and was immediately discombobulated by the newest item, "To Wuss or Not To Wuss," in which Mickey Kaus rats out Andrew Sullivan as a hypocrite about using the term "wussy." Everything really did change on 9/11, Tim, and the stakes have never been higher. Mickey—who I know a bit and with whom, at least up until now, I have always been on very friendly and flattering terms, except for the time I likened Bloggingheads TV to a lost act from Waiting for Godot—always seems to narrating a soap opera whose storyline is absolutely impenetrable, like Dark Shadows without the implied vampire sex (and hence much less interesting). It seems that Sully got mad at Mickey for defending Ann Coulter for saying John Edwards is light in the loafers. And then Old Duke, the trusty dog, came barking like mad from the old coal mine on the edge of town, where Jimmy and Mike were trapped while playing hide-and-seek, blah, blah, blah. There's so much blogrolling going on at Kausfiles, you can't read the damn thing without getting splinters in your teeth (and while we're at it: Thanks, Mickey, for linking for a column about speeding-crazed and accident-prone politicians by Reason's own Radley Balko).

Whenever I read Kausfiles—and knowing that Kaus writes mostly from bee-yoo-tee-ful Southern California—I'm always reminded of those stories about German intellectuals hanging out in Santa Monica during the Holocaust. Despite the sunshine and the beach, Adorno, Mann, et al., just couldn't get the horror in Europe out of their minds. With Mickey, it's like the opposite. You can imagine him in a death camp somewhere, practically on his way to the showers, and he'd still be fervently debating some technical point about capital gains, or welfare reform, or the new grill on a Chrysler LeBaron: "Matthew Yglesias is trying to sucker me into blogging about a 'variety of education-related topics.'"

Conservative Watch-Babe: Michelle MalkinConservative Watch-Babe: Michelle MalkinSpeaking of horrifying scenes of human carnage, let's truck on over to Michelle Malkin's blog. You know, nobody uses the terms "wingnut" and "moonbat" better than our finest diagnostician of Bush Derangement Syndrome (who once, long ago in a distant galaxy, wrote a great story for Reason about racial dynamics in the war on drugs). Really, she can sniff out BDS from farther away than Bill Frist could read Terri Schiavo's aura. But the fact is that Malkin's blog today is a snooze, with items about stuff like "John Doe legislation" that will protect folks who turn in suspicious-looking Arabs who turn out to be innocent. "Watch this bill closely," muses Malkin. "Keep an eye on who supports and who opposes it. This will tell you much." You can get that sort of vitriol from a Magic 8-Ball, Tiresias!

It's tough to believe that Malkin hasn't peaked after her riveting turn a couple of weeks ago as a cheerleader belting out "The Defeatocrats' Cheer" in living video. I haven't felt that sorry for someone in a cheerleading outfit—or been that sick to my stomach—since "Hey Mickey" went out of heavy rotation on MTV in 1982. Seriously, fuck the surge in Iraq: Just drop Malkin and Toni Basil on the Sunni Triangle and watch the fight go out of those insurgents faster than John Kerry got out of Vietnam.

Does anyone use italics in the blogosphere better than Glenn Greenwald? I don't think so, Tim, and I'm willing go to the mat on this. This guy gets it, you understand? In fact, sometimes he gets it with italics and bold. Just take a look at the long, indented paragraphs that run through his blog like, I don't know, stink on rice (where is that Adderall?). Greenwald is the author of The New York Times bestseller How Would a Patriot Act? (yeah, I stopped reading too after "Times bestseller") and the surefire forthcoming smash, Tragic Legacy, which will also savage George W. Bush. Finally, someone willing to take on an all-powerful president with approval ratings in the low 30s!

I like the fact that Greenwald attacks Fred Thompson, who really ought to be the next Breath Assure pitchman once his presidential bid goes South (which ought to happen as soon as the Tennessean enters the race). Greenwald also attacks a bunch of "real journalists" (e.g. Joe Klein, Jonathan Alter, and John Yoo—yes, that John Yoo) who attack bloggers. More power to him, and to me. Though not to you, Tim, as part of the corporate media. Beyond the italics, though, the most striking thing about Greenwald's Salon blog is that you don't have to sit through the 20-second ad to read the content. Which really had become the best part of Salon, don't you agree?

Sifting Through Pointless Campaign Marginalia So You Don't Have To: Time's Jay CarneyThat stink filling the room isn't simply my own decaying prose, Tim—I'm about to head over to Time mag's Swampland, "a blog about politics in the nation's capital." Only a gigantic journalistic behemoth such as Mr. Luce's mag could marshal the resources required to deliver Jay Carney's laser-like insight into a new 5-minute "testimonial" video by Bill Clinton about his better half that's posted at Hillary's official website. "The question, of course" writes Carney, "Is the video effective? Or does it backfire? Will Bill's fluid and persuasive delivery remind people that Hillary's not nearly so good a politician as her husband? Or will having the ultimate political salesman making the pitch on her behalf be a net benefit? Having watched it a few times, it feels to me like a net plus for Hillary. But I could be wrong."

Goddamnit, Tim, why can't you and I write prose like this? Does this guy eat dilithium crystals for breakfast?

Seriously, journalists everywhere—and especially at your misbegotten rag, which can only do 20 percent ROI, so it's understandable why your billionaire owner has to start cutting the fat—are always bitching about how penny-pinchers are shutting down foreign bureaus. Read a couple of items into Swampland—"That's Hagelian!" reads one groaner by Joe Klein—and you'll be complaining that Time hasn't shut down enough of its domestic bureaus yet.

Wired's Danger Room is a better big-media blog (based on two five-minute reads today). It's written by Noah Shachtman and it covers "what's next in national security." I'm not sure I care all that much about the general topic but, oddly enough, the blog has a more interesting range than most of the others we've been told to read over the next couple of days. Certainly the graphics and headlines are fun and the content is informative, if only because it actually aggregates news rather than simple bloviation.

Who wouldn't find a post about government researchers working to help dogs track down terrorists based on their body odor? But maybe that just appeals to me because of the years I spent working with you.

–Nick

From: Tim Cavanaugh
To: Nick Gillespie
Subject: Reality is a Crutch for People Who Can't Handle Drugs

Nick, I thought I was taking the Art Garfunkel part in this particular reunion, but it's clear now that I had the wrong twosome: I'm obviously the Simon figure while your cavalcade of hilarity is every bit as boffo and painful to watch as the deathless physical comedy of Chevy Chase in the "Call Me Al" video. Here's hoping we can extend the suffering of the readers for some time before they figure out they've been had.

Taking your blog picks in reverse order (my efforts to find a squeegee man to fill in on this assignment having fallen through), I'd have to concur on Wired's Danger Room, which is as much a future-of-policing blog as a future-of-national-security blog. Crammed in with all the reporting on fighter drones and hand phasers and plasma UFOs there's this tidbit about a cop so wimpy he panicked and called 911 after feeding his wife some pot brownies. This is exactly the sort of "bad trip" or "bummer" we were warned about by luminaries ranging from Sonny Bono to Bro and Dude; and it's proof, as if we needed any more, that reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle drugs. The good news is that when the boys in blue are on the verge of going into a hallucinatory mind-spiral from being "baked" on the "chronic," they'll be able to knock themselves into a coma with new sonic blasters. Or they could just open up a sonic riot-control barrage on a bunch of demonstrators waving U.S. flags.

Blog!: Yep, we've got oneBlog!: Yep, we've got oneThe best I can say of Time Mag's Swampland is here's the link – and when will our do-nothing Congress outlaw the tired use of "swamp" imagery for everything related to D.C.? It's like the old law that everything about the Middle East has to be called "On shifting sands" or "Lines in the sand" or "House of Saud built on sand" or "Like sands through an hourglass." MSM blogs are, I think, going to end up among such curiosities of history as the Monkees or the rappin' Selective Service ads from the eighties. Blogging while holding to the standards of a family publication is like taking a shower with a raincoat on. You've got two competing value propositions: the broadcast model of thrice-edited, quadruply-censored content fit for millions of viewers and the unbuttoned, sisters-doin'-it-for-themselves, narrowcast quality of the blogs. The two may just be an impossible fit, and barring a timely pot-brownie infusion from some panicky cop, I don't see any way for a big-magazine blog to be ba-a-ad (you know the kids today say "bad" when they mean "good") in a way that will ever catch fire. The tell here is probably that the most-emailed story currently on the site is "Oral Sex Can Add to HPV Cancer Risk." How can Karen Tumulty can compete with that? Then again, maybe we've just caught Swampland on an off day; Lord knows the very name "Joe Klein" usually inspires me to the highest flights of sleep.

Truly Glenn Greenwald has gone an italic too far. Italicizing blockquoted text is like taking a shower with a raincoat on while wearing a belt and suspenders: Just do one or the other. Or else, go the whole nine yards and italicize, blockquote, boldface, underline and just to be one the safe side put everything into MS Word "Symbol" font. This passage from Greenwald, for example:

Αφτερ αλλ, τηε ονλψ τηινγ Λιββψ διδ ωασ χομμιτ περϕυρψ, οβστρυχτ ϕυστιχε ανδ μακε φαλσε στατεμεντσ το τηε ΦΒΙ ανδ τηε Γρανδ ϑυρψ.

This is a classic example of why straightup Reps-and-Dems pitches go past me: It's not that I think Scooter Libby should get pardoned; I just can't get exercised by the idea that the rule of law will collapse in ruins if that happens. I do like that Greenwald caricature, which I hope brought lunch money to some art student on the boardwalk.

Which brings me to Michelle Malkin's blog, which bears the elliptical epigraph (blurb? dedication? copyright info?) "Firecracker." With a tag like that, cheerleading is, as you've noted, inevitable. For my money, it's Malkin's three-inch vertical jump that really makes the Defeatocrat video a human tragedy, but as always, my heart is torn. Malkin, like many obsessives, is actually pretty useful when she's on about her favorite topic: Islamist crazies of various sorts. I was reading her blog with interest last week after the Fort Dix Six mini-story. As a matter of personal history, Malkin and I both bear the shame of South Jersey upbringings, but she attended Holy Spirit High School while I went to seed at Atlantic City High. So she was well placed to cover last week's vaguely planned terror attack on that undead military base, while I could only look on longingly, reminded again that if my parents hadn't been so stingy with the tuition dollars she might be Michelle Cavanaugh right now, and on date night I'd be allowed to wear the cheerleader outfit. But I digress. No-one dast blame the only person left who considers the Aqua Teen Hunger Force twosome a threat to society.

Of such roads untaken are our lives made, Nick. On second thought, it seems you and I are neither Sandler and Young nor Simon and Chase, but rather Rocky Sullivan and Father Jerry—one fast enough to escape into a life of piety, the other condemned to the penal system, but both, ultimately, institutionalized. If only I hadn't taken that pot brownie before the SATs; if only you had just said no to the brown acid they were passing around at the Us Festival, then neither of us would have to be reading Kausfiles at this unhappy hour. As always, I can't actually understand what Mickey Kaus is writing about, but I'm sure it must be incisive. It's interesting to see him scrambling in the following passage:

Sullivan responds by re-dragging out his charge that I have a "long record of homophobia" because I wrote a piece 24 years ago defending a famous/infamous sign at an L.A. bar called Barney's Beanery--a piece I almost immediately rethought and regretted, and that Sullivan surely knows I publicly repudiated years ago, the issue having surfaced in a recent blog back-and-forth. Like I said, "any weapon to hand." Also, intellectual dishonesty.** ...

I've never seen Kaus fazed into unironic umbrage like this. Well actually I saw him pretty fazed just a couple weeks ago at a bookstore, but that's because I was accompanied by my two-year-old kid and Kaus was clearly horrified at the idea of being in an enclosed space with a germ-ridden human child. But I'm suspicious of one detail in that 24-year-old story--the reference to Mickey "moping in my beer." It's my understanding that Mickey is strictly a near-beer guy. Does he have some boozing, hell-raising past that never gets discussed? Pass the pot brownies and let me think about it...

– Tim

Continue reading... "Leave Jerry Falwell to Heaven: I Mourn for Richard Paul!"

Previous Movable Snipes:

Jonathan Ames and Amanda Marcotte
[Jewlicious, The News Blog, Gothamist, The Revealer, Maud Newton]

John Derbyshire and Daphne Merkin
[James Wolcott, Reason's Hit & Run, Design Observer, Kesher Talk, Matt Yglesias]

Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel
[, , , , ]

Spencer Ackerman and Melissa Lafsky
[Captain’s Quarters, Feministing, TNR's The Spine, Jossip, Wonkette]


more »

DAILY SHVITZ

Maidel Dishes About YOU!

by BG, December 20, 2006

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When Time Magazine announced their "Person of The Year" this past week, no one was too surprised that "you" or rather "we," the bloggers/content sharers, were named the recipient of the prestigious honor. Given the overwhelming success of user-generated content on sites like YouTube and their liquid worth, I get it. Still it felt like a let down. After all, last year's award went to Bill & Melinda Gates and Bono. Couldn't they have sought another good samaritan or better yet, some awful tryant, like Kim Jong II? Did we have to get all hokey?

My ambivalent attitude explains why I can appreciate The Jewish Advocate's Maidel and her response to this year's award.

Disclaimer: Try and block out the "like"(s). They seem to be a feminine default for irony in blogs these days. No one sent me the memo yet.

Yeah! I’m, like, so excited. Aren’t you? Thanks to TIME Magazine’s cop-out, I’m its person of the year.
When I got the phone call, I was like, “Huh? I’m the mover and shaker that did a little something, something to change the world?”
And they were like, “yeah. You surfed the Web so you changed the dynamic of the way people think about the world.”
I was, like, wow that’s so super amazing.
But then they told me that I share the honor with six billion other humans on this planet. And then I was like, “This is such a bummer.”

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DAILY SHVITZ

Ian McEwan Not a Plagiarist
Michael Weiss

by Michael Weiss, November 29, 2006

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The Pardoner's Tale: Don't call him plagiaristThe Pardoner's Tale: Don't call him plagiaristAnd even if he were, so what? Somehow I get the feeling that McEwan could have lifted whole chapters out of an obscure 70's memoir and still be considered the most graceful English prose stylist wielding a pen today. Nor would this have diminished in the least his talent for character invention and plot progression and imagery. Lev Grossman in Time scuppers the latest "plagiarism" imbroglio surrounding the Booker winner, and good for Grossman. Here's one bruited similarity between McEwan's novel Atonement and Lucilla Andrews' Florence Nightingale-ish remembrance, No Time For Romance:

Our 'nursing' seldom involved more than dabbing gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on cuts and scratches, lead lotion on bruises and sprains." Compare that to McEwan (this is on p. 260): "In the way of medical treatments, she had already dabbed gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on a cut, and painted lead lotion on a bruise."

Let's see now. Aside from the verb "to dab," the only thing even vaguely eyebrow-raising here is the sequence of ailments and palliatives. "Gentian violet" may have been just the thing for ringworm in World War II. And by what other name was "aquaflavine emulsion" or "lead lotion" categorized in nursing stations?

Try this: "He applied rubbing alcohol to the forehead gash, set the leg with a splint, and wrapped the arm in an Ace bandage." How else would you describe those three actions which could easily be performed after a bad bike accident?

McEwan's contemporary Martin Amis once copped to purloining "nimbus cloud" (or some such construction to describe a character's hairdo) straight from Dickens for his debut novel The Rachel Papers, itself a major paragraph-lender to Jacob Epstein's own debut Wild Oats, which appeared eight years later.

Forget the inherent tribute or rationalized artistry behind plagiarism. It's a force of literary nature and it can't be stopped. (Martin Luther King took his almost his entire doctoral thesis, verbatim, from another source. And where hasn't the phrase "handful of dust" -- Donne, Eliot, Orwell, Waugh, to name just four -- been through and around the canon?)

We should learn to distinguish the non-examples from grand larceny.


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