Readers of this blog, few though they may be, may recall my intermittent yet persistent nattering of Wash Post columnist Anne Applebaum, provoked by her endless efforts to talk the United States into another Cold War, a conflict necessary, so Ann believes, if the U.S. is to avoid the ugly fate of becoming another Europe, wallowing in what George Orwell used to call “sluttish antinomianism” when he was feeling pissy.
I may as well have been flaying a Brontosaurus, of course, so puny were my efforts, but I needn’t have bothered: Anne has now self-destructed in a manner so extraordinary, and so complete, that even now I can scarcely believe it.
When the Swiss police busted child-molester/rapist Roman Polanski, Anne absurdly announced herself outraged. Why in God’s name she felt she had to opine on this issue will forever escape me, but she did, speaking any amount of nonsense, and “misspeaking” a little as well—claiming, among other things, that Roman didn’t know the girl was 13 (which explains everything, of course) even though Roman told the court that he did know she was 13—and also “forgetting” to mention that her husband Radoslaw Sikorski is a minister with the Polish government, who just happened to file an appeal with the U.S. government to let Polanski walk.
Naturally, Anne got a little blowback on her blog for these statements, which she very unwisely responded to, digging herself in even deeper. Anne’s folly is ably dissected here in its entirety by Christopher Orr at the New Republic. Reading what Orr has written, one can only exclaim “Why, Anne, why? How could you be so stupid?”
