I've actually come to enjoy reading it this summer. Its contents are much more diverse than they once were, its foreign coverage seems much improved … but then I read a Palin-style op-ed like this one and wonder what on earth possessed them to run it. Tom Ricks has an explanation:
Having toiled at the low pay but high morale WSJ for 17 years in my well-spent youth, I can say that the view we held on the news-gathering side of the organization was that the newspaper's business formula was brilliant — the news side told American business what it needed to hear, while the edit page told American business what it wanted to hear.
More excerpts courtesy of Raw Story (Update: Full GQ article here). Bombshell:
“I’m trying to remember if I’ve met [Sarah Palin] before. I’m sure I must have.” [Bush's] eyes twinkled, then he asked, “What is she, the governor of Guam?”
Everyone in the room seemed to look at him in horror, their mouths agape. When Ed told him that conservatives were greeting the choice enthusiastically, he replied, “Look, I’m a team player, I’m on board.” He thought about it for a minute. “She’s interesting,” he said again. “You know, just wait a few days until the bloom is off the rose.” Then he made a very smart assessment.
“This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,” he said. “She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.” It was a rare dose of reality in a White House that liked to believe every decision was great, every Republican was a genius, and McCain was the hope of the world because, well, because he chose to be a member of our party.
When the history of the Bush administration is written, Bush may emerge as the sanest of them all. Remember his alleged first reaction to the WMD data: "This all we got?" Or his alleged response to torture: "Do these harsh interrogations actually work?" It doesn't spare him responsibility, but at least he was smart enough to realize the Palin train-wreck in advance.
Overall, this tape struck me as something significant. Al-Qaeda has been on the retreat for some time. Its response thus far to the Obama administration has been confused and distorted. Ayman al-Zawahiri has floundered with several clumsy efforts to challenge Obama's credibility or to mock his outreach. But bin Laden's intervention here seems far more skillful and likely to resonate with mainstream Arab publics. It suggests that he at least has learned from the organization's recent struggles and is getting back to the basics in AQ Central's "mainstream Muslim" strategy of highlighting political grievances rather than ideological purity and putting the spotlight back on unpopular American policies.
As Max Blumenthal takes an AK47 to some minnows in a barrel, Rick Hertzberg takes on last weekend’s activists:
The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful — they all routinely liken the President and the “Democrat Party” to murderous totalitarians — but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism — the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed the foul nonsense.
Dreher’s analysis from last week was also dead on:
Despite what Sam Tanenhaus says, conservatism is not dead. Rather, it’s undead. The conservative movement is herking and jerking like a zombie, dedicated to little more than frenetic gestures execrating Obama, and to regaining power. To what end? Given that they’re birthing a conservative party whose instincts are dictated by loudmouths, reactionaries and crackpots, and overseen by cynics, it’s dispiriting to contemplate.
Where can those who wish to think and debate clearly about a serious politics of the right go? The degenerate form of populism now dominant on the right loves to praise “freedom” – but it has no use for freedom of thought, or thinking much at all. In turn, increasing numbers of thoughtful conservatives have no use for it.
This is a truly weird story. One of the top honchos at Human Rights Watch, which has, of course, been critical of some Israeli policies and actions, collects Nazi war memorabilia in his spare time. Netanyahu believes it proves that Human Rights Watch is a neo-Nazi front; Garlasco insists it's just a hobby. But a 400 page book? Oy. Context:
Mr. Garlasco, who worked at the Pentagon helping to target bombs in the second Persian Gulf war, has since traveled the world for Human Rights Watch, investigating and writing reports of the alleged use of white phosphorus munitions in Gaza, cluster munitions in Russia and Georgia, and other military practices in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
HRW is right to investigate, and to suspend Garlasco pending a full inquiry into his motives for this odd past-time. People's hobbies should not usually be relevant to their jobs – except when your job is, in part, public communication. One more thing: a blog broke this news – again.
The Dish 