The Ivies took a pounding, and New York Representative Elise Stefanik received a publicity boost more valuable than gold, and it couldn’t have come to a less deserving person.1 The supposedly brilliant scholars heading Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and M.I.T. came across as scripted robots, not responding actively to Stefanik’s leading questions—that “intifada”, which…
Tag: Henry Kissinger
My Henry Kissinger Story
Whenever someone seriously important dies, there is a rush by everyone with even the slightest connection to the deceased to file a “My [Insert VIP Name Here] story”. I usually get a hearty snicker, or even a sneer, out of these, because the hapless hanger-on/spiritual remora involved almost invariably inflates an utterly trivial encounter into…
Yo, New York Times! Want to know who started the War in Iraq? Look in the goddamn mirror!
20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?, rumbles “Interpreter” (that’s what they call him) Max Fisher, subjecting us to a shitload of obscurantist chin-stroking before reaching an all too convenient non-answer/confession of ignorance, topping off this banal exercise in disingenuosity with this laughable quote as a closer: “I will…
Henry Kissinger’s World Order—the silk stocking full of shit at 90
Henry’s actually 91 rather than 90, but I doubt if he’ll miss the extra birthday. And, in any event, I always choose euphony over accuracy when given the choice. Since we’re talking accuracy, Napoleon was in fact talking about, and to, Talleyrand when he delivered the memorable insult given above, while Henry’s fave rave was…
The Revolting Realists
Last week the New York Times ran an article with the headline “Some G.O.P. Foreign Policy Experts Are Tepid on Romney,” pointing out that aging stalwarts Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Colin Powell have not been falling all over themselves to endorse the Mitt-Man. And Kissinger himself, always the voice of calculation if not reason,…
Kissinger on China: A bad man on a fraudulent road gets to the right destination
Being a continuation of Monday’s rant, “Taking Kissinger seriously—an infantile disease” A couple of days ago I was riffing on Aaron Friedberg’s review of Henry Kissinger’s latest authorial offense, On China. Despite being crammed with all manner of Kissingerian offensiveness, about which I’ve expatiated at length in the past, Henry’s conclusion—that there’s no reason for…
Taking Kissinger seriously—an infantile disease
Over at the New Republic, Aaron Friedberg, author of A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, has a nice essay taking off of Henry Kissinger’s latest and greatest, On China, which I previously subjected to bitter and protracted ridicule here. Since Mr. Friedman knows quite a bit about China,…
Antonin Scalia: ~peyote = foreskins forever?
Over at the Daily Beast, Adam Winkler has a nice column slicing and dicing, as it were, the prospects of the prospective San Francisco ban of involuntary circumcisions, should the city pass the ban and should the constitutionality of the ban end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Strikingly, the proposed ban contains no exceptions…
Henry Kissinger: An unnecessary evil
Henry Kissinger has added yet another sin to his already grievous record, in the form of a fat tome, ponderously titled On China.* Because there is no way that I’m going to put another penny in Dr. K’s pocket, I’ll quote extensively from Michiko Kakutani’s review in the Times. Kakutani calls the book” fascinating, shrewd…
Moral Obtusities in Collision
That smacking sound you may have heard this morning was the thick head of John R. “Funny Moustache” Bolton crashing into the combined thick heads of Henry “Moral Bankruptcy” Kissinger and George “I thought he knew better” Shultz. A couple of weeks back Henry and George combined for a stunning exercise in moral evasion in…