Favorite Liberal Columnist?

[NATO AIR]

Most of us being conservatives, how do you feel about the liberal crop of columnists? There's only a select few I can stomach reading on a regular basis, simply because so much of their writing since 2001 has been "I hate bush!". A few transcend this, though they all eventually fall into the hate bush trap.
My favorite has to be Nicholas Kristof, of the NYT, who deserves to be writing in National Review or the Wall Street Journal, not the failing NYT, especially with his compelling reporting of genocide in Darfur, human rights in Pakistan, isolation in North Korea and human trafficking throughout SE Asia.
I also appreciate Clarence Page, though his appeal (while dwindling) can always be boosted by reading his column from 2002 dedicated to Daniel Pearl's unborn son, perhaps one of the most well-written columns of the post 9/11 world.

Who is your favorite? (or who do you despise the least?)

 

[Annie]

Most of us being conservatives, how do you feel about the liberal crop of columnists? There's only a select few I can stomach reading on a regular basis, simply because so much of their writing since 2001 has been "I hate bush!". A few transcend this, though they all eventually fall into the hate bush trap.
My favorite has to be Nicholas Kristof, of the NYT, who deserves to be writing in National Review or the Wall Street Journal, not the failing NYT, especially with his compelling reporting of genocide in Darfur, human rights in Pakistan, isolation in North Korea and human trafficking throughout SE Asia.
I also appreciate Clarence Page, though his appeal (while dwindling) can always be boosted by reading his column from 2002 dedicated to Daniel Pearl's unborn son, perhaps one of the most well-written columns of the post 9/11 world.

Who is your favorite? (or who do you despise the least?)

I can go along with Clarance Page, not Kristof-though he has written some things I can tolerate, in most he's looney left. In the past I've like Georgie Ann Geyer, but she's lost me since 9/11.

 

[NATO AIR]

I can go along with Clarance Page, not Kristof-though he has written some things I can tolerate, in most he's looney left. In the past I've like Georgie Ann Geyer, but she's lost me since 9/11.

I can think of liberal columnists who are more looney than Kristof, but I'll admit when he starts talking domestic politics I start tuning out.

Nat Hentoff wouldn't be considered a liberal would he?

 

[Annie]

I can think of liberal columnists who are more looney than Kristof, but I'll admit when he starts talking domestic politics I start tuning out.

Nat Hentoff wouldn't be considered a liberal would he?

I had to go read some of Hentoff's works to get a reminder. He strikes me as left on some and middle of the road on others. Probably Libertarian.

 

[NATO AIR]

I had to go read some of Hentoff's works to get a reminder. He strikes me as left on some and middle of the road on others. Probably Libertarian.

What I figured as well. I enjoy how he is not selective in his outrage, he'll put Bush, Fidel, the mullahs, North Korea, Sudan and Dean all on blast at once.

 

[Annie]

Here's another lefty blogger, though when it comes to war he's probably right of me:

http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/18804/

Brave new worlds

Recall Austin Bay, from “Nervous in Baghdad”:

When will the media figure this out: Al Qaeda and its cohorts are strategic information powers and little else. “The terrorists have yet to win an engagement above the platoon level,” Gen. Abizaid said as we flew from Qatar to Iraq. I mean, a C-17 is loud, but the man said it with exacting clarity. Terrorist bombs are made for TV, and terrorist beheadings are made for the Internet. Here’s a radical thought, politically incorrect, incorrect in terms of TV ratings but still strategically correct and correct in terms of defending liberal values: Winning the global war against Islamist terror ultimately means curbing the terrorists’ strategic combat power, and that means ending the media magnification of their bombs.

Then cut to Pandagon’s Jesse Taylor, who spends the morning criticizing Thomas Sowell for arguing that the mainstream media (and, I’d add, many leftwing websites) are trying to recreate the media milieu of the Vietnam war, where in Sowell’s words “American victories on the battlefield were turned into defeat on the home front by the filtering and spin of the media.” Writes Taylor:

Thomas Sowell is pissed because the fact that Iraq is a giant mess tends to overshadow the fact that people are wallowing around in it, trying to make it not a mess. The prevailing narrative that met the commencement of this war was one of overwhelming ease and success, that we liberated more people faster than anyone in history. The past two years were simply unthinkable and even borderline treasonous to predict, the fevered dreams of leftist America-haters who secretly hoped that we’d fail and flounder in the Middle East as a black eye on our reputation to the world.

Except that the last two years did happen. We are failing in Iraq, and it’s not a failure predicated on the enemy existing, it’s a failure predicated on our complete lack of understand of the enemy and continual effort to reinvigorate support for the war by pretending that our failures don’t exist.

And on what does Jesse Taylor base his understanding of the enemy? On what does he base his characterization of the Iraq war as a “failure”? Why, the very news reports (or, in Bay’s formulation, the terrorist’s “strategic information powers") that Sowell, Bay, the President, the Pentagon, and the military leadership in country keep insisting do not reflect the facts on the ground. As has been the case over and over with small-scale terrorist insurgencies, the leadership of those terror groups count on the adversarial nature of our mainstream media—and on its market-driven tendency to play-up the horrific and the sensational—to weaken our political will. And it does so further by playing on the vanity of those for whom the greatest virtue is dissent, especially when that dissent has been reduced to nothing more than a structural imperative—a political impulse driven by partisan politics and a desire for control.

Concludes Taylor:

What Sowell and his ilk would have you believe is that in Iraq, the American presence is an unimpeachably positive force that is doing nothing but bringing peace and liberty to the Iraqi people, while simultaneously our presence is being met by a force whose presence we bear no responsibility for. Our actions have consequences, but only good ones. Invasion provokes resistance because the resisters are bad people, but their badness saves us from ever having to consider whether or not opposition is having the desired effect. We’re winning simply by showing up, and anyone who ruins the illusion is likely racist, communist, and perhaps a pedophile, if you’re lucky.

Well, no, not exactly. What they are are useful idiots, sanctimonious dupes who allow made-for-media terrorist slaughters to dictate to them the nodal points and the central motifs of the Iraqi narrative—then turn around and cite that very narrative as unimpeachable proof of US failure. And they do this because they believe dogged skepticism is de facto proof of their determined “realism”—of a willingness to bravely and soberly assess the facts.

Only, when you begin from bad facts, or facts taken out of context—and then refuse to allow correctives into the narrative you’ve spun from those facts—you end up espousing the kind of dubious, faux-sober analysis Taylor offers up.

Or, to put it more plainly: garbage in, garbage out.

 

[NATO AIR]

good reading... what a mess is being made between the administration's stubborn tactics and the media's war on the war.

 

[Annie]

good reading... what a mess is being made between the administration's stubborn tactics and the media's war on the war.

No joke. Which brings to mind Christopher Hitchens, another lefty I like regarding the war...

 

[NATO AIR]

No joke. Which brings to mind Christopher Hitchens, another lefty I like regarding the war...

Yeah, Hitchens is a hell of a writer, especially in the post 9/11 world. If more leftists were like him, this country and many others would be far better off.