Kevin Drum is alarmed:
Posted by DeLong at June 17, 2004 04:44 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postThe Washington Monthly: LA TIMES EDITORIAL PAGE....I missed this op-ed by David Klinghoffer in the LA Times this morning, but Matt Yglesias is right: it is the most abjectly puerile thing I've read on a major editorial page in a long time. Did they really publish a guy who claims, "There is a secular creation account — evolution through random mutation and natural selection, a just-so story increasingly challenged by scientists"?
So, we have both Barone and Klinghoffer in the Times today peddling junior high school essays as adult opinion. And I'd like to note that today is June 17th, the third day of Michael Kinsley's reign as editorial and opinion editor. I'm going to be as charitable as possible and assume that he's clearing out the slush pile while still trying to get his arms around things, because the only other interpretation is that he actually thought these were both worthwhile contributions to the public discourse.
And I really, really don't want to believe that.
Check these quotes:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/6/17/185436/985
Also:
From "The President of Good and Evil."
"The possibility that Bush did not really understand everything he was saying may provide an explanation of the utterly bizarre account of the reasons for attacking Iraq that he gave to reporters three months after the war ended. Speaking in the White House's Oval Office, in the presence of the UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, Bush said, of Saddam Hussein, 'we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power....' Anyone who can, in all seriousness and sobriety, offer such a totally fictitious account of events of global significance that took place only three months earlier, and in which he has been the central figure, can hardly have had a firm grasp of the situation that he was supposedly directing. Perhaps Bush was not sober, or had ingested mind-altering substances, or was having a psychotic episode. None of these explanations is at all likely, but in the absence of some such explanation, Bush's astonishing statement makes it seem possible that on Iraq, he really was someone's puppet."
p. 223
You should know that the Klinghoffer column also plays up the controversy over the removal of a tiny cross from the official seal of L.A. county, after the ACLU threatened to sue the county supervisors.
My favorite quote:
Posted by: Lee A. on June 17, 2004 05:02 PMMy favorite quote:
"What we are observing here is not what it may appear to be — a struggle of religion against no religion. It is instead a battle pitting one religion, broadly speaking, against another. On one side we have, primarily, the biblical faith of Jews and Christians. On the other side, secularism. If you object that secularism has no deity, remember that other recognized faiths, for example Zen Buddhism, likewise lack a belief in God."
Posted by: Lee A. on June 17, 2004 05:03 PMDrum, quoting: "'a just-so story increasingly challenged by scientists'?
So, we have both Barone and Klinghoffer in the Times today peddling junior high school essays as adult opinion."
That's all Drum has to say about it? That it's puerile and adolescent, i.e., _just ain't so_? Hasn't he just made the original author's point?
I'm not registered with the LAT, and haven't read the original article; and I'm not even (for the moment) challenging Drum's own very-apparent POV on the issue. I'm just taking note of the irony here.
Posted by: William in Beijing on June 17, 2004 05:14 PMI like this one:
" Like Christianity and Judaism, secularism promises eternal life — well, long life, which is the central point of the most common strain of secular faith and which explains the pop-cultural focus on moral commandments having to do with physical health"
I have to read my health club prospectus again, I must have overlooked the part about eternal life....
Ah yes - if only Brad DeLong could be both editor of the LA Times and President of the United States, all would be well again.
Posted by: Larry Jones on June 17, 2004 06:13 PMIsn't Micheal Kinsley the genius who decided to publish Mickey Kaus at Slate? I think people overestimate him as an editor.
Posted by: Kuas on June 17, 2004 06:15 PMWe can't have a "better" press corps anymore because we have inherited a bunch of star-fuckers posing as journalists.
http://isyourchildrenlearning.blogspot.com/2004/06/why-does-george-w-bush-hate-america.html
The great logic of Klinghoffer's column reminds me of an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, where Calvin says something like: "Math is not a science. It's a religion. Here is a bunch of numbers, and by some magic they become another bunch of numbers. You either believe it, or you don't. As a math atheist, I demand being freed of this". And Hobbes replies: "In public school, no less. Call a lawyer"
Posted by: Anatol on June 17, 2004 09:55 PMLysenkoism: alive and well in the USA
Posted by: bakho on June 17, 2004 10:18 PMI saw the aforementioned abominations of tortured rationality, and I couldn't believe my eyes. WTF? Luckily Kevin Drum explained it for me.
Michael Kinsley had better get his shit straightened out real soon, or there will be hell to pay. The LA Times opinion page was a relative bastion of light in a sea of Friedmanesque toadies sucking up to the administration party line. All we need is for the LAT to become another Safire-shill. Boy, wouldn't that be original. A major US daily with an opinion page that proseletizes whatever the current right wing screed of the day is. How novel! It'd be just like every other stupid daily out there.
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