Today is Mea Culpa day at the Literature R Us corral, when I pause to stop making vicious fun of people I generally don’t like, like Eugene “Jan. 6? Wasn’t that a Tuesday?” Volokh and Ross “Yeah, I think it was a Tuesday” Douthat because, well, because they impressed me. I’ll talk about Gene first, for being not only honest but noble, in a piece he called “The Massacre in Israel and the War in Gaza Have Led to a Misguided Clampdown on Free Expression”, taking his title, and his content, from an “excellent” piece by Jacob Mchangama, Free Speech Defenders Must Be Consistent, which indeed they must be. If only we had more principled defenders of the First Amendment like Professors Volokh and Mchangama!
My laurels for Ross aren’t so glossy, praising him not for nobility so much as honesty, intelligence, and even-handedness (and for not blaming 9/11 on Bill Clinton’s cowardice, which was “refreshing”) in a piece he called The Israel-Hamas War Will Reshape Western Politics. If only Ross wrote this honestly all the time!
Okay, well, that’s enough of that. No more Mr. Nice Guy! For awhile, at least.
Afterwords
“Mea Culpa” really isn’t le mot juste, since I’m not confessing anything. But saying something nice about Ross especially was almost as painful as confessing an actual sin—a venial one, anyway—so, close enough for a blog.
