Monday, May 16, 2005

Quick Shots: Why Not Send Frank Rich to Newsweek?

Or at the very least, send 'em all to a bar together to drown their sorrows. Turning to Rich first, the wonderfully named I Disagree with Maureen Dowd takes advantage of MoDo's sabbatical and absolutely demolishes Rich's latest train wreck of a column. A sample:
...I've known, over the course of my life, a number of individuals for whom nearly every occurrence is "just like" this or that film, television program or cartoon. These sorts become unbearable when one realizes that the only referential lens available to them is popular culture, particularly American popular culture of the last 40 years. They then become an utter bore; most things, I've found, are really not "just like" a film, television program or cartoon. But Frank Rich is just this kind of bore.

By way of elucidating the nature of his "wider war," Chef Rich prepares a preposterous stew. He liberally mixes fact and fiction: Details from the obscure 1962 melodrama "Advise and Consent," Tony Kushner's early '90s drama "Angels in America," David K. Johnson's 2004 cold war history "The Lavender Scare," and a few incendiary, carefully picked Page Six items are hastily thrown together. Voila! It's an instant "war on gay people." In his 1500-word jiffy of an essay these ingredients are agglomerated, then cooked, resulting in an emetic, name-calling melange.
As they say in the trades, read the whole thing...

Meanwhile, the fallout from the Newsweek-Koran disaster is spreading. The Instapundit has a rundown under his alter ego, and Michelle Malkin has tons of stuff; just keep scrolling...

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