Eric writes:
>blah blah blah witty blah blah "unconventional" "insight" blah blah blah
>wired blah blah look at us blah blah blah aren't we cute blah blah conde
>naste blah blah blah
After reading Suck's piece I engaged in a little praxis and wrote a letter, feeling the need to write something, anything and they were kind enough to run it and respond.
http://www.suck.com/fish/99/09/28/
Dear Sir,
"(Christopher Hitchens defends Said's saying that he spent the 'formative' part of his youth, however brief, in Palestine as 'a matter for him ... to decide' — curious generosity from a man who's underwritten a substantial part of his bar tab these last few years attacking just such slippery locutions by the POTUS.)"
I wouldn't be tossing around your weird corollary of the "those in glass houses" admonishment if I were you — that is, someone writing for Suck. Plus, I don't think Said's so-called slippery locutions measure up to those of our prayer- breakfast–attending Liar in Chief. (Thirdly, much of Suck reads as if the writers ritualistically head to the corner tavern on pay day. Those in glass houses....)
In a Sept. 27th Nation column discussing Israel's torture ban, Alexander Cockburn writes: "At the Israeli Justice Department the official in charge of matters affecting Palestinians, and thus a man well trained as an apologist for Israeli security forces, was an American émigré called Justus Reid Weiner. Weiner, now a 'scholar in residence' at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, financed by Michael Milken and his family, is the author of a grotesque attack on Edward Said in the latest issue of Commentary. Although The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal gave much space to Weiner's slurs, neither would print Said's rebuttal. The Israeli daily, Ha'Aretz, did so on 8 September. That same day the Palestine Center for Human Rights in Gaza issued a statement on the Supreme Court's ruling, concluding with its 'appreciation of the work of Israeli human rights organizations on this issue.' Would that American Jewish groups could have merited such gratitude. Instead of which we find the Zionist Organization of America waving Weiner's attack and demanding that Said be evicted from his presidency of the Modern Language Association!"
Peter Kilander <peterk at enteract.com>
You're not British, are you? If you were, I'd think you'd see the "bar tab" line is hardly an insult but a compliment. Hitch, I'm sure, could drink any of us under the table and remain twice as clever as any of us were before we started.
As to your first point, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. At Suck, we defend no one's slippery locutions but our own.
Jerzy
[end] Peter K. Has anyone read of anything connecting the timing of Israel's torture ban with the arrest of Pinochet for the crime of torture, etc.?