June 30, 2003
Yes, This Is Art
Busy, Busy, Busy
has turned the "Shorter Columnist [Name]" format into a true art form:
- Shorter Eugene Volokh: Cheney’s Supposed Lie: Cheney didn't lie about the Iraqi nuclear threat but merely misspoke, his subsequent failure to correct the public's already false beliefs - which his misstatement reinforced - notwithstanding.
- Shorter Charles Krauthammer: No 'Roe' Replay On Affirmative Action: The Supreme Court's affirmative action decision is socially ruinous, a legal travesty, and a good thing as it circumvents a potential Roe-style political backlash against my side.
- Shorter Fred Kaplan: Was Bush Lying About WMD?: Don Rumsfeld probably bent the truth because he lacked enough actual evidence to justify a war that he deeply and viscerally desired, but in doing so he was sincerely deluded rather than duplicitous.
- Shorter George Will: Lap Dancing On the Constitution: By my logic, private consensual sex is indistinguishable from public sex acts, commercial sex transactions or marriage contracts, so if one is constitutionally protected then all must be outside the purview of the state.
- Shorter Colin Powell: Freeing a Nation From a Tyrant's Grip: Look! Over there! In Zimbabwe there is a problem that requires urgent attention.
- Shorter George Will: The Bush Doctrine At Risk: The administration is well advised to at least produce a remotely plausible explanation of the missing casus belli for our recent war, as even I am having trouble dancing around the obvious problem here.
- Shorter Kenneth M. Pollack: Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find Them: The administration clearly exaggerated the Iraqi WMD threat, but only in terms of imminence and magnitude.
- Shorter George Will: Liberal Conundrum: Democrats self-immolate by elevating principle over expediency, an affliction from which Republicans are immune.
Posted by DeLong at June 30, 2003 05:24 PM
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Yes, this is art -- but of necessity it's a popular art form.
The main way I get over information overload is by skipping to the next article as soon as I'm sure I can summarize a whole thing in one sentence. This is helped by the pyramid form of journalism, but it doesn't necesarily mean just saying "Uh-hunh, the headline was right."
Often it means quickly concluding that the headline was grossly padded with fluff.
That's funny, I would have summarized the Kenneth Pollack article as "We know Saddam has the bombs -after all, we have the receipts!"
I took the Pollack article (NYT 6/20) to say, "Oh Sh*t! I wrote a whole freaking book on this stuff, I better start the equivocation fast, before I am revealed as a hack."
Actually his article says that it never was the actual existence of WMD that justified intervention, but Saddam's intentions to have them someday, combined with his bad bad character.
Whatever. I didn't think it was possible to trust politicians or our media less, but now I do. Is this called growing up?
Shorter Brad DeLong: A British journalist thinks Bush is leading the US to economic disaster. He must be an authority.