“He’s not a public intellectual—he’s a fucking wind sock. And he knows it.”
Beware the Man has a nice summary of a Joe Klein takedown.
There is some missing setup before you try to follow the thread:
Joe Klein is a “liberal” political columnist for TIME magazine who is famous for having anonymously written Primary Colors about the Clinton administration. He’s definitely an “insider” political jounalist—the sort created by and ended by Bob Woodwards career. The last eight years Klein has been dutifully cheerleading the Iraq War and the illegal wiretaps, and his columns are most notable through the hefty use of false equivalence: “Sure the Right Wing of the Republican Party is crazy, but no crazier then the Lefties in the Democratic Party.” The last fact has earned him the derogatory nickname: Joke Line.
Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional and civil rights lawyer who entered the scene as a writer because of his unapologetic attacks on those people rationalizing the constitutional abuses of the Bush Administration. He is known for his rabid (and long-winded) style that includes heavy citation—a style that has earned him the derogatory nickname: Glennzilla.
I don’t know who Aimai is other than a commenter on a blog I read, a well informed citizen, and an attendant of beach parties at the Vineyard. Apparently she’s also the granddaughter of I.F. “Izzy” Stone which makes part the exchange really offensive and funny.
(BTW, read the comments of Klein’s article, they’re hilarious:
The reading today is from the Book of Klein, chapter 73, beginning at the 13th verse:
And there were those who muttered against Klein, for there was discontent in the Land of Bafflegab, and the Centrists were discomforted. And there arose a mighty man of valor, that was named Greenwald. And around him were acolytes, many and pathetic, and they did say many unkind things, even unto publishing alarmingly accurate reports of things said at picnics, which did mightily enrage Klein, so that the blood rushed to his head and the steam out of his ears. And Klein took up his word-processor to smite them. Vast was the word-processor, of sounding brass and luminous silicon, and the length of it was seven bull-sh*ts, and the width of it was three. And the prophet Hoekstra blessed Klein and anointed him with his own manly juicings, and Klein went forth to battle. And as he issued from the Gate of Broder, through which a camel may not fit, the face of Klein was terrible, and his chariots numberless as the secret WMD sites of Iraq. And Klein came down unto the Plain of Fisa, and confronted Greenwald, who was a stripling youth, armed only with a sling…..