Matthew Yglesias's Weekend Update on TAPPED:
Posted by DeLong at November 25, 2003 02:33 PM | TrackBackTAPPED: November 2003 Archives: WEEKEND UPDATE. Distracted from the important stuff by Michael Jackson? Here's what you missed:
The Columnists
The Op-Ed You Actually Need To Read
- David Brooks. Marriage is even better than Internet dating -- we should let gay people do it, too.
- Nicholas Kristof. I like free trade, but these intellectual property rules are killing people.
- Maureen Dowd. Why compare the situation in Iraq to Algeria when I could compare it to a movie about Algeria?
- Thomas Friedman. The real problem with terrorism is that it's inconvenient for Marshall Scholars.
- Jim Hoagland. The time has come to ignore the fact that the president doesn't have an actual democracy-promotion policy and to blame Joschka Fischer for Arab authoritarianism instead.
- George Will. I'm pretending to say good things about Dick Gephardt, but really I'm condemning him and all other Democrats.
The Shows
- Max Holland in The Washington Post says Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories were part of a KGB plot.
- Fox News Sunday. Fair and balanced panel condemns the Medicare bill, while Bill Kristol offers a half-hearted defense ("this is what it means to be a governing majority").
- Meet The Press. Tom Daschle pretends the energy bill isn't all that bad.
- Face The Nation. Wesley Clark and Bob Schieffer debate the same old inconsistencies.
In the OpEd we "actually need to read", recommended by Matthew Yglesias, the following:
"If and when the archives of the Communist Party's 'sword and shield' are fully opened, the KGB's indispensable role in propagating the lie of CIA involvement will take its place among other triumphs of Russian deception, such as the infamous Czarist forgery 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'"
This is a remarkable statement, something like saying that if the archives of the United States are ever opened, the essential racism of the US Government will join that of the Confederacy in world history. Or maybe they will show nothing of the sort.
The rest of the article was similarly poorly-reasoned, with the author alleging that several clumsy attempts at propaganda by the KGB, planted in left-wing newspapers, are responsible for the fact that a large number of Americans think that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The fact that a House Select Committee also concluded that there was probably a conspiracy to kill Kennedy is never mentioned.
This was an Op-Ed I didn't need to read.
Posted by: Charles on November 25, 2003 09:04 PMI generally reject conspiracy theories, but the JFK assassination might be an exception. The Warren Commission theory of the assassination strongly depends on the proposition that only three bullets were fired. A recent paper by EB Thompson purports to correct the report by the National Academy of Sciences which itself corrects the 1978 report by House Select Committee on Assassinations. The Thompson analysis reverses the result of NAS, meaning there is a very high probability that more than 3 bullets were fired based on acoustic evidence. But one must first work through Thompson’s convoluted statistical reasoning. If he is right, then there is grave doubt as to the Warren Commission’s theory. In any case Holland’s article is extremely superficial. But that’s what I would expect from Nation Magazine guys who as bad or worse than their counter parties at National Review.
Posted by: A. Zarkov on November 26, 2003 02:21 AMI agree, this was an Op-Ed I didn't need to read. Magic bullets anyone?
Posted by: Kosh on November 26, 2003 11:46 AM