The standards keep dropping...
...even, apparently, in the New York Times. William Safire deserves a steel-toed boot in the ass for his column(subscription; go here if not registered) today. "Now pessimists are trying desperately to call off the [Iraqi] election...lest they lose that vote, too." You could, with sound logic, go either way on the elections' prospects—just don't listen to anyone who uses Safire's gloating-heavy approach: "So far, voters who support implanting freedom in the Middle East have won three in a row...." Voters don't win shit. Election victories are not cosmic moral victories, and anyone who says otherwise is full of crap.
How sad that the Times would allow a columnist to take this simple rhetorical approach, which is basically "Let's not be pussies—let's hurtle into the future like an all-male herd of bison with uncontrollable erections!" Safire also repeatedly invokes those all-too-overcharged terms "spin" and "democracy." I know Safire can do better, and the Times should be asking for better.
It is good of him to point out some important misinformation regarding the election. It is wrong of him to think revealing this misinformation absolves him and logically absolves his particular point of view.
Good reading on the topic of new democracies: Jack Snyder's From Voting to Violence (Norton, 2000).
How sad that the Times would allow a columnist to take this simple rhetorical approach, which is basically "Let's not be pussies—let's hurtle into the future like an all-male herd of bison with uncontrollable erections!" Safire also repeatedly invokes those all-too-overcharged terms "spin" and "democracy." I know Safire can do better, and the Times should be asking for better.
It is good of him to point out some important misinformation regarding the election. It is wrong of him to think revealing this misinformation absolves him and logically absolves his particular point of view.
Good reading on the topic of new democracies: Jack Snyder's From Voting to Violence (Norton, 2000).
posted by Scott at 4:55 PM
1 Comments:
Scott, j'adore ton blog! I found it in your away message and now intend to read regularly. I decided to leave a comment on this particular entry because I just wrote about ol' Safire himself -- and how he's sold out, and used to have principle. Three cheers for the Blogosphere.
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