The Podhoretz Method
“And the Powerline ‘Book of the Year’ award goes to...”
Earlier we cited how Jeffrey Goldberg poked fun at Norman “Please Bomb Iran So I Can Get Blood Flowing to My Loins Again” Podhoretz in his recent (and excellent) article in The Atlantic. Well, now The New York Sun has come to the defense of that doddering old tool by drooling out what has to be the dumbest political cockup unveiled so far this year .... The Podhoretz Method:
Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative sage, will be honored tonight at a dinner in Manhattan, where his “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” will be given the “Book of the Year” award by Powerline.
[...]
[A} kerfuffle has been sputtering on the World Wide Web over a question Mr. Podhoretz asked in respect of the Kurds. Mr. Podhoretz asked the question five years ago at a banquet in New York honoring Robert L. Bartley of the Wall Street Journal, Bernard Lewis of Princeton, and Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. Mr. Goldberg, a marvelous reporter, was being saluted for a dispatch from Kurdistan that had helped light the way for American entry into the Battle of Iraq. Mr. Goldberg had just come in from Northern Iraq and spoke about Kurdistan. In a tour d’horizon of the Middle East in the January/February number of the Atlantic, Mr. Goldberg related that after the event, Mr. Podhoretz asked him, “What’s a Kurd, anyway?” Mr. Podhoretz, in Mr. Goldberg’s account, “seemed authentically bewildered.” As it happens, we were either in the same or a similar conversation with Mr. Podhoretz at the same banquet, and we took him not as being ignorant of the Kurdish question; after all, Commentary during his years as editor in chief contained plenty of references to Kurdistan. We took him to be curious as to how Mr. Goldberg would answer a question of ethnography that has never been resolved.
Basic questions are what one might call the Podhoretz Method, and we predict that generations from now, journalists will study his knack for — his insistence on — pressing the simplest seeming, most basic questions as if each were fresh and open to new implications. The Podhoretz Method is one for our moment, too, what with our country at a crossroads and in the midst of a presidential election that for the first time in decades appears it will involve neither a presidential nor vice presidential incumbent. It may well shape up as a contest between, on the one hand, the Republican who, in Senator McCain, has been most determined to stick with the fight and most outspoken in warning of the consequences of retreat and, on the other hand, a Democratic nominee, in Senators Clinton or Obama, who either regrets going into the Battle of Iraq or opposed it from the start. It is a time when, more than ever, we need sages like Norman Podhoretz to ask basic questions, and deliver basic answers, which no doubt explains why so many — including Secretary of State Kissinger and Mark Steyn — will be crowding into the Four Seasons as Mr. Podhoretz is honored this evening.
Generations from now journalists will appreciate Podhoretz’s ability to ask basic questions and deliver basic answers? That’s really what they think? Could they possibly be that fucking dumb (or be cocky enough to think that we are)?
Let’s test the Podhoretz Method:
Lieutenant Daniel Taylor: Have you found Jesus yet, Gump?
Forrest Gump: I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.
Bubba: Have you ever been on a real shrimp boat?
Forrest Gump: No, but I’ve been on a real big boat.
Jenny Curran: Do you ever dream, Forrest, about who you’re gonna be?
Forrest Gump: Who I’m gonna be?
Jenny Curran: Yeah.
Forrest Gump: Aren’t-aren’t I going to be me?
Who am I kidding? Works for me! Life is like a box of Podhoretz. On to Iran!
Posted by Kevin K. on 02/11/08 at 11:14 AM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Election '08 • Bedwetters • Editorials • Nutters • War In Error • Skull Hampers •
