My my my. Apparently, it really IS possible to push the National Review too far. Whoda thunk? (She even pushed the Washington Times too far. Who knew you could go too far to the right for BOTH of those publications!)
Mind, the National Review, if this Post article is reasonably complete, pointedly does not say they disagree with her columns, that they think she was wrong. They just don't want to be associated with the mess it created. (And, to be sure, her response WAS immature. Girly boys, indeed.) You can't find a word about this on their website, despite the fact that it was updated yesterday. They simply removed the link to her directory from their front page. The column that provoked such ire is still on the website if you know where to look -- you just follow the pattern from the other columnists, and there it is.
However, I would like to know: exactly how is it even possible to misconstrue "we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"? Where is even the slightest bit of ambiguity in that sentence? For some reason, these days, pundits and commentators are awfully fond of saying something and then when people blow up at them, instead of saying, "Yeah, I said it, I meant it, and if you don't like it, them's the breaks," suddenly the world is misconstruing remarkably bald statements. Coulter didn't call for invasions, murders and forced conversions. Falwell didn't blame everyone he doesn't like for causing the attack. Andrew Sullivan didn't call Sontag and Moore and other liberals "fifth columnists". (And yet somehow he's instituted the "Sontag Award" for people who say things he virulently disagrees with. How reasoned of him. How mature. But I digress.) Bill Maher didn't mean to call people who fire cruise missiles "cowards". You wonder just how many more people will say that they didn't say what everyone thinks they said and if they did say what people say they said, they didn't mean it to be interpreted the way they said it. (Confusing, isn't it?)
A side note: the Review is now teeing off on a multicultural curriculum. Apparently, studying something in addition to the usual dead white guys made it possible for the terrorists to attack because it meant that we no longer understood our own culture ... You know, I just want to know what they're on, because, frankly, that's got to be some damn good drugs there, you know what I'm saying? It's made their logic circuits just completely cut loose.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!