The Times outdid itself yesterday, running a viciously anti-American op-ed by one Regis Debray. It contained every supercilious canard about American crudeness, religiosity, lack of sophistication that the old Marxist European left has now learned to deploy. The slurs were as sickening as they were shallow. But that’s not news. What’s news is that Debray was absurdly identified by the Times as “a former adviser to President Francois Mitterrand of France, editor of Cahiers de Mediologie and the author of the forthcoming ‘The God That Prevailed.'”. I say absurdly because Debray is far better known as an old communist, a supporter of political violence, an unabashed admirer of Fidel Castro, and a guerrilla fighter alongside Che Guevara. His hatred of the United States even led him to defend Milosevic and Serbian genocide in the late 1990s. He’s a Pinter with blood on his hands. Isn’t this relevant information? Did the Times know this and decide to ignore it? Or were they simply clueless and eager to run any specious anti-American doggerel they could get their hands on?
UPDATE: Lileks fisks Debray!
A TRAFFIC SOLUTION: Early reports suggest that London’s new approach to solving traffic jams is a huge success. The British capital recently set up monitors at all the entrance routes into central London. If you want to get into the hub at peak hours, you have to pay a fee. If you haven’t paid the fee, you pay a fine. Cameras record number plates. If you live in the central district, you get 90 percent of the fees reimbursed. The result? A return in central London to the traffic levels of the 1950s. One thing you can always depend on in Britain: everyone is cheap. But what interest me more as a matter of media coverage is that all the praise for this initiative has gone (and rightly so) to Mayor “Red” Ken. But his solution is anything but red. It’s pure market economics to achieve a good environmental result. It’s Friedmanism for a traditionally liberal cause.
The Dish 