Today on the Dish, Andrew struggled to come to terms with his support for the Iraq War, distinguished between Syria under Assad and Iraq under Us control criticized our marginalizing sectarianism in Iraq before the war, and waited for the NYT to come clean on their own role in the march to war. He viewed Obama’s Israel visit through the prism of Washington’s Farewell Address and could find no middle ground on Israeli settlements. Elsewhere, he called out closeted gays for their dereliction of duty and gave readers one more shot at picking Ask Me Anything questions.
In political punditry, Mark Kleiman removed the cultural divide from the marijuana debate while the NYPD wasted time on small-scale arrests. Seth Masket characterized party platforms as capable of evolution but not revolution, Ralph Reed separated doctrine from politics, and the White House threw out a red herring drone policy. A reader provided the mitigating context for Elizabeth Warren’s Moore Award Nomination as we weighed Rand Paul’s upside and updated nuclear policy for the post-Cold War era. In our continuing look back at the Iraq War, Karrar Habeeb chose not to memorialize the beginning of the failed Iraq War, while Richard Perle refused to look back and David Rieff rebuked those stuck in the neocon mindset. Overseas, Obama spread on the charm in Israel and Cyprus rejected the EU’s bailout deal.
In assorted coverage, opinion dominated the cable airwaves while CNN missed the point on the Steubenville rapists. Readers added some thoughts on fracking’s impact, Schneier pivoted from security to resilience. The Simpsons integrated itself into the fabric of our society, Reddit dumbed down complicated issues on YouTube, and Maureen O’Connor committed Netflix infidelity.
We polled readers on adopting a spouse’s last name as women bore the lion’s share of responsibility for messy houses, and Rajiv Srinivasan argued that veterans have it better now than ever before. Maurice Sendak penned his last book for lifelong fans, but David Cameron’s plagiarizing subterfuge was old news. We dug up the first Hathos Alert from the archives and backed our way through the MHB, an Angela Merkel effigy burned in the FOTD, and fog shrouded Santa Monica from view in the VFYW.
– D.A.
(Photo by Marc Israel Sellem-Pool/Getty Images)
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