via Allahpundit:
Nutroots aghast at possibility that conditions might be improving in Anbar
What’s funny is that I remember Eric Boehlert tut-tutting righty bloggers back at the time of the Jamil Hussein story about not being able to accept the reality in Iraq as reported by the mainstream media. In fact, the opposite has always been true: any good news, however small and no matter what its mainstream media pedigree, is received by the left with hostility and summarily adjudged discredited. That’s especially true in this case because Anbar was written off by military insiders last fall as lost to Al Qaeda, so to see hope revive in an area that was supposed to serve as Exhibit A in the left’s case for withdrawal is an especially bitter pill for them to swallow. For most of America, of course, it’s good news.
Full disclosure: I loathe Joe Klein, for an entirely personal reason. Back in the early Nineties I was editing the College of Staten Island’s student rag, and Klein had finagled himself a speaking gig at the school. If memory serves, he was still at New York Magazine, but was a regular on the local Sunday TV talk shows. I sent a reporter to the gig to cover it, with instructions to score an interview and a list of questions I told her to make sure get asked. (I’m an old school NYC print media junkie, dating back to Sundays when I’d battle my Da for first crack at Jimmy Breslin’s column while he was trying to pawn the comics off on me.) I knew Joe Klein as a blowhard, but wanted to see what his answers would be to some questions quoting shit he’d written… would he stand by stuff where time had proven he was just making shit up?
She approached him prior to his yabbering, and was told, “after the speech and Q&A he’ll be happy to speak with you.” By a PR hack; she wasn’t allowed near Almighty Klein.
There was no Q&A. He finished his prepared text and walked straight to his car and left, the check covering his fee safely tucked in his pocket.
Ipso TC’s Rule of Immediate Decision kicked: Tiny-dicked prick.
He hasn’t disappointed since.
True Religious Fanatics
I’ve had way too many conversations with religious fanatics in my life. It started out as a effort to understand, and ended with the realization that I was dealing with people with an anti-empirical epistemology (a term of philosophy that…