It doesn’t help that Mark Steyn’s column hasn’t appeared in months.
And I’m not just talking about the latest (Dec 6) issue’s “Why is polygamy a crime?” piece by none other than Andrew Coyne — who ascribes the quotation “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” to Mencken, when it should be Emerson.
No, I mean that I flipped through the magazine today and within one minute, tripped over not only Coyne’s misquotation, but the following:
Andrew Potter writes:
“In Kandahar, NATO forces have been destoying homes ‘to make them safe.’ Sound familiar?” adding “… the insane talk of destroying a village in order to save it — it sounds like the Vietman-ification of a war that…”
Potter is referring to a famous Vietnam era quote, which — liberals are always so saddened to learn — nobody ever really said.
And actually, I can imagine any number of circumstances in which destroying a village (which is a fancy name for a bunch of old houses) would save the people who once lived there and the men from other countries called to fight in the area. If, as Potter writes, there are/were “thousands of homes and farm buildings that have been booby-trapped,” what other solution is there but to destroy them? They were marked for destruction one way or another anyhow. The people are the village, not the buildings.
And then we come to Brian Bethune, who informs us (in the manner of far too many journalists this month) that the release of The Kennedy Detail sees “the surviving agents — speaking openly for the first time…”
Now, I know that’s what it says on the dust jacket and probably in the press kit, but no.
A guilt-ridden Clint Hill (whose hair was still black at the time) gave an unforgettable interview to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes in the 1970s. Simply typing “Clint Hill” into YouTube brings up interviews with other agents on the detail. And, to be completely pendantic about it, they were all interviewed for the Warren Report.
Today, most book publishing bumpf of this kind can be smacked down with a quick Google. But I didn’t go to Upper Canada College or get born with a famous last name, so I’m not the one writing for Maclean’s.
Jeepers, I’m afraid of what I might “learn” during my next trip to the bathroom…
