There’s a lot to dislike in today’s Washington Post. The usually reliable Richard A. Clarke slides way off the rails with one of those “this didn’t happen but it could have” imaginative reconstructions of what Osama et al. might be talking about these days, what they might be talking about, that is, if Muslim terrorists talked like a cross between the King James Bible and Mr. Spock and spent all their time telling each other things they already know—“Our attack on Mumbai was a brilliant success, and the foolish Americans are playing right into our hands, yada, yada, yada.”
Back in the days of the Cold War, right-wingers loved to imagine the conversations of the “Masters of the Kremlin,” who were always chuckling with glee over the antics of their ham-handed opponents. Somehow, I thought Richard Clarke would have the intellectual honesty to present his views and arguments in a straight-forward manner. Well, I was wrong.
A few pages deeper the “Week In Review,” George Will is on a rampage about “reactionary liberals” intent on reviving the “fairness doctrine” as a way of sabotaging right-wing radio. George devotes his entire column to exposing this foul plot, without identifying one actual person who is a part of it. That’s because, as Marin Cogan explained in this witty article for the New Republic, there aren’t any. Even funnier than Cogan’s article is the fact that George Will now does his “research” by listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Saving the worst for last, the Post’s Style section devotes all of its pages to worshipful coverage of the Kennedy Center Honors, trophies handed out each year to senior citizens in the arts who are at least thirty years past their creative peak. As Jack Shafer pointed out in this hilarious article for Slate, no one in this or any other universe gives a good goddamn about the Kennedy Center Honors except the Kennedy Center and the Wash Post Style section. But it’s the holidays and it fills up space, so who’s complaining?
