<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Slate Fray writer on Kelly</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <BLOCKQUOTE> Subject:    Michael Kelly, "witness" From:    Arjay Date:    Apr 5 2003 1:05AM Shafer quotes Margaret Talbot: "He had more business being there than a lot of people because he was for the war and was passionate about it. He wanted to see the second act. He needed to be a witness." That's a charm school take on the desire to see one's ideology stitched into the world with bullets. Such was Kelly's indifference to the suffering caused by his pro-war "passion" -- not merely as apologist for imperial power, but as goad of its worst deeds -- that it should not now be sanitized by empty drama metaphors or the rat-a-tat avowal of "Husband. Father. Journalist." Please. Are we all Fox reporters now? Not only is that approach cloyingly sentimental; it shortchanges the irony at the center of this death, an irony that can be said to have been earned. He wanted war. Others got it. But then, while on his sightseeing tour, so did he. His end has emerged as if from a Sassoon poem. </BLOCKQUOTE> </BODY> </HTML>