Making Wolfowitz whole
David Brooks, I predict, is not long for the op-ed page of The New York Times. His column today, by first appearance, is an appreciation of Paul Wolfowitz, who needs no rehabilitation but certainly needs to be made whole for all the grief flung at him over Iraq. But the other side of Brooks' column, its not so sub-text, is a violent horsewhip laid across the back of other Times' writers, as well as Times' editors and, finally, Times' readers. I do not believe that you can horsewhip the intellectual vanity of the entire Times' universe and remain within its gates. Brooks' appreciation of Wolfowitz will wound that vanity, but listen to these lines:
It is an overwhelming probability that the greatest howlings will come directly from the Times' readers, who are so strung out on the Times' product, that this horsewhipping by Brooks will wake them into hysteria. I do not believe that he can survive there and that he will be politely encouraged to find his way elsewhere. Brooks might as well have dredged the corpse of Joe McCarthy from the bottom of the Times' river and told Times' readers that he was not the horrible demon whose mere invocation arouses the moral indignation of Timsesaholics with religious certainty.
Brooks' column is largely about Wolfowitz's faith in people to seek freedom. Well, Brooks is very likely to learn about the faith of the people who read the newspaper he writes for.
Let us look again at the man who's been vilified by Michael Moore and the rest of the infantile left, who's been condescended to by the people who consider themselves foreign policy grown-ups, and who has become the focus of much anti-Semitism in the world today - the center of a zillion Zionist conspiracy theories, and a hundred zillion clever-Jew-behind-the-scenes calumnies.The clauses "the rest of the infantile left," and "condescended to by the people who consider themselves foreign policy grown-ups," and "those foreign policy blowhards who think the world is run by chessmasters sitting around at summits," well, they pretty much describe the Times' universe from A to Z, with no one left out. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Editorial Page Editor Gail Collins are not left out, star columnists Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman are not left out, and if they are not left out, then no denizen of the Times' fortress commune is left out.
....
Wolfowitz doesn't talk like those foreign policy blowhards who think the world is run by chessmasters sitting around at summits. He talks about national poets, national cultures and the power of people to bring sweeping change. His faith in people probably led to some of the mistakes in Iraq. But with change burbling in Beirut, with many young people proudly hoisting the Lebanese flag (in a country that was once a symbol of tribal factionalism), it's time to take a look at this guy again.
It is an overwhelming probability that the greatest howlings will come directly from the Times' readers, who are so strung out on the Times' product, that this horsewhipping by Brooks will wake them into hysteria. I do not believe that he can survive there and that he will be politely encouraged to find his way elsewhere. Brooks might as well have dredged the corpse of Joe McCarthy from the bottom of the Times' river and told Times' readers that he was not the horrible demon whose mere invocation arouses the moral indignation of Timsesaholics with religious certainty.
Brooks' column is largely about Wolfowitz's faith in people to seek freedom. Well, Brooks is very likely to learn about the faith of the people who read the newspaper he writes for.
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