A friend twitters: "Christ, more baseball poets on NPR. I AM SORRY YOUR DAD NEVER SAID "I LOVE YOU". Now get off my radio."
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Your friend is a twit.
Baseball, NPR and poetry all suck, alone or in combination.
But not as hard as a person who has to instant message such pissant thoughts. And listens to NPR in the first place.
If my kid were the kind of creep who grows up to write poetry about baseball, I'd never say I loved him either.
I understand (all too well) the urge of males in less strenuous professions to try to scrounge up some masculinity wherever they can, but... sports? Poetry about sports? Can't they just fart a lot and change their own oil?
Cartalk is wonderful. Radiolab is genius. Krulwich on science is a great program. NPR has its downsides, but as Air America doesn't broadcast around here, its the best radio I can get.
Fascinating. I had a calzone for lunch. Thought you should know.
When are you going to start examining the thoughts of people who got the Iraq War right? Can we expect some interviews or guest blogs sometime soon? After all, that was something "we" should certainly do.
Isn't "get off my radio" a lot like "shut up," which Megan banned yesterday. Please enlighten me anony_mouse_.
I'm amazed at the swelling ranks of the "I was right about the Iraq War" folk. I could swear just the other day I saw the majority of that group over in the "this war is just flatly wrong, regardless of whether it can or will work" camp.
Then along comes the campaign season and suddenly people are magically disappearing from the "Ha ha!" group and appearing in the, "Well, my large intellect immediately grasped well prior to the war all aspects of the trouble we faced, there is nothing currently known today that I did not foresee, and it was for exactly those reasons that I opposed this war in the first place group.
But I was right. Should I apologize for being more savvy than you?
I foresaw Iraq becoming more religious and moving closer to Iran. I foresaw us being in Iraq for a decade or more. I foresaw the bonfire of Democracy that was supposed to burn through the Middle East fizzling out immediately.
I'm sure it makes you feel better to write off people like me but what can I say? Sorry for making you look bad.
I love the Iraq War supporters who now petulantly can't admit that other people vastly outperformed them.
Three points:
One, someone here uses Twitter? Isn't text messaging annoying enough?
Two, I am conservative, but listen to NPR. If you discount the fact there will be a slant on some news stories, the production values are excellent; the human interest pieces, music coverage, and interviews are pretty good; and they have fairly entertaining talk shows (like Car Talk) that are pleasant to listen to while doing other things. Same with PBS.
Three, it is far too early to know who was right in Iraq. I mean seriously... if we pull out (or stay) and ultimately Iraq pulls itself together in two, five or ten years, then what? That would actually be success. Even if they choose to be a theocracy, for the Iraqi people, if they choose that, it is success. Either we want people to be free, or we don't.
Then too, imagine this. You are a fan of a basketball team. They are generally one of the most talented teams around. But then the coach decides to deviate from the standard playbook and run some odd "no defense" game plan. The team, fully talented and beating anyone, loses when following the coaches "brilliant" scheme. As the fan, you don't blame the team. You don't say the game should not have been played. You say, "Who hired this awful coach, replace him".
With Iraq, a number of mistakes in management were made, some quite obvious:
Allowing early looting
Firing the military establishment and the operational experts of the country.
Excluding the State Dept. from extensive planning.
Not killing Sadr on day one.
Not going in with enough troops to lock down
borders.
Not preserving institutions (see looting).
So it's more than just saying, "I was right, you were wrong." Life is more complicated than that. Is Medicare wrong because it's in trouble? How about Social Security? Or NCLB? All these things are generally good ideas, now badly executed.
While I agree you're an extraordinarily talented writer, addressing you as "Christ" seems to be a bit over the top.