i was a voracious reader of the newsweeklies from the sixties into the early nineties. left 'em for a while and when i picked one up again, the entire middle was a infomercial. checked the competitors and same thing. sadly, that is what they seem to have become. a little propaganda sandwich, with reporting being the (wonder) bread.

...or 4) the margianlized leftist ACLU pointy head civil libertarian.

Publican

All good words of caution. It can be a fine line between tenacity and personal obssession (and all the other excesses you identified)...

GlennGreenwald

Guess I'll wear a huge overcoat and sunglasses and carry a umbrella low down over my face next time I go to the ACLU meeting. Must have been out of town when they became the fringe of the fringe for liberal bloggers.

That's been the point all along (although one doesn't need "legal background" -- just basic reading skills and a molecule of critical thought).

Sure, and I can read the "Iliad" in the original greek if I just spend a little time and use a greek-english dictionary. This is the arrogance and aggravation of the legal system. Trying to decipher three pages of arcane language; defined, redefined, and cross-referenced, takes a legal degree to decipher.

It's no wonder Congresspeople don't read legislation. Considering that the Supreme Court has to explain the considerably shorter and more direct second amendment, saying that this act is easily readable is wrong. Klein's contribution may well be pointing out that no one is sure what the hell it means.

i suppose that is why i should have just said pj's in the first place.

keep up with the words, they bring me joy.

Regarding the slagfest or, did you mean slugfest? [I can barely keep up with the way language morphs on teh intertubes. Anyway, Paul Krugman on that notion:

Early in my tenure at The NYT, I was advised that it’s a bad idea to devote a column to attacking another columnist — not just at The Times, but anywhere. Why? Because it makes you look small — as if you have nothing better to do than snipe at other commentators, rather than trying to deal with real problems.

Of course that didn't stop Krugman from going after David Brooks on Reagan's "southern strategy" at all. Didn't even seem to slow him down. But, it alludes to some explicit rule that make make it difficult for a columnist at Newsweek, or some other outlet, to pick it up.

Now I know why Joe likes Bill so much. It's the smooth lie.

stupidity is a virtue

Who knew?!!

if you were to actually write about the iliad in greek, then yeah best to bone up on the language. if joe klein is too lazy to either do the research or too cheap to pay someone to do it, he should not be writing on the subject.

despite your politics...never mind.

Klein is obviously and deservedly nervous as a whore in church. Of course, he'll receive absolution from the priests at Time Warner, but in the future, he'll have to be considerably more artful when he is channeling Bill O'Reilly.

I don't think he's up to it. Thanks for pointing that out, and have a safe voyage home.

It's fine to move the fault upward from Klein to his editor, but on the planet Earth the publisher/owner controls the communication medium. As Brad DeLong often says, "The Cossacks work for the czar." Time has sometimes been more nearly centrist than now, but at least since Chiang Kai-Shek it has been rich-wing (that's a neologism), and 2007 may not be an extreme. The hiring of Bill Kristol is more than a bottom-line decision.

Sure, and I can read the "Iliad" in the original greek if I just spend a little time and use a greek-english dictionary. This is the arrogance and aggravation of the legal system. Trying to decipher three pages of arcane language; defined, redefined, and cross-referenced, takes a legal degree to decipher.

Let's see,

Military Commissions Act 94pp w/ cross-referencing 4 hours

Detainee Treatment Act 7pp w/ cross-referencing 1 hour

Bush's proposed FISA amendments 66pp w/ cross-referenceing 3 hours

This bill, 3 pp w/ cross-referencing 1 hour.

Granted, I have an advantage over you, I read books that sometimes read at the rate of 3/4 -- 1 pp per day or less, so this doesn't seem too slow.

But keep in mind, shooter, Joe Klein gets paid to read things, or so we're told.

I totally agree with Klein on this one. I finally had to retire from medicine because all of these know-it-all young doctors, with their niggling insistence on "evidence-based medicine", were making life impossible for an old-school fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants doc like me. "Doctor,", I used to say to an uppity med student as the years got on, "I've forgotten more medicine than you'll ever know!". Keep this up, and you're going to run poor old Joe Klein clear out of journalism, and then won't you be sorry that his vague but clear-eyed off-the-cuff judgments are no longer around to keep the nation safe from ... whatever it is the nation needs to be kept safe from. I will tell it to you straight, that while Joe Klein may not have forgotten more journalism than you'll ever know, he sure knows more journalism than you'll ever forget. Or something. Anyway, Joe Klein and I are on the same sheet of music here, if only I could still find the sheet. But our hearts are in the right place! Dammit!

Perhaps we need a place where jaded, cynical, past their prime press employees (I don't want to dampen any aspirations at Berkeley or Berkman by calling them journalists) can go.

I would gladly contribute to the "Obsolete Press Employee" retirement fund as long as there's a clause that ensures that writers like Klein will be retired immediately.

Joe, I shit in your general direction.

-- grcorre

Thanks grcorre, this made my cheeks hurt.

Mice won't eat wonder bread.

Holly and the mention of the 'Atlantic' took me on a boat cruise across the waters Atlantic bumpy sea. Mice have chewed the edges of my paperback copy in the back wood shop. I miss the smell odor of wood shavings. Cherry, cedar, walnut etc.,

Thomas Hardy's book, 'Far from the Madding Crowd' has a short paragraph about often much more can be said with simple silence.

I keep thinking about Silence lately. I'm so tempted to practice quietude. Who doesn't yearn for some peace and quiet.

It's too Hectic!

You know? yes.

Camaraderie. yes.