[lbo-talk] Wolcott rips Dinesh D'Souza a new one

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Wed Oct 11 11:48:50 PDT 2006


On 10/11/06, Colin Brace <cb at lim.nl> wrote:
> http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/10/ratfink_to_rele.php
>
> Ratfink Writes New Book
> Posted by James Wolcott
> <clip>
> As when yesterday I received the galley of Dinesh D'Souza's new book
> from Doubleday, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its
> Responsibility for 9/11, to be published in January 2007.
> <clip>
>
>
> "In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the outset.
> The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11."

O.K. I admit it. It was me. I am responsible! I created the Vietnam Syndrome and my Uncle Luigi and his blues singer gal friend Bertha were responsible for the sexual revolution. It was me all along. When "Bonnie and Clyde" and "I am Curious Yellow" came to the movie theaters I was there to cheer. When the Ramones, were discordantly playing their three chords at CBGBs, I was head baning up front. When "The Anvil" and "Plato's Retreat" were the places to be I was there. It was all my fault. First came Jazz and then came Rock and Roll and that inevitably led to the planes crashing in the towers. First came the end of prohibition and then came heroin. That's why they hate us. And it was all my fault. I swear.

Hey folks, this is so empowering that I think we shouldn't condemn the book, we should promote it. It will all make us feel that we really matter. It is better than listening to Yoshie telling us the 3/4 truth that we don't matter a damn bit. Don't you think Yoshie that such a course can help us to maintain a few more self-deceptions about ourselves?

And apologies to Lenny Bruce, who could really do this shtick.


> <clip>
>
> "I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the
> media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector [profiteers are always
> patriots, of course], and the universities are the primary cause of
> the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic
> world."
>
> <clip>
>
> "Thus without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened."
> <clip>
>
> "I realize that this is a strong charge," D'Souza writes, "one that no
> one has made before."
> <clip>
> At the end of the book he rises on his hind legs to confront the enemy
> within and name those doing America dirt and making life easier for Al
> Qaeda. He breaks the enemy within down into categories. The
> Congressional Left. The Intellectual Left. The Hollywood Left. The
> Activist Left. The Cultural Left. The Foreign Policy Left. And so on.
>
> He puts Gore Vidal in the Foreign Policy Left. Doesn't
> Vidal--novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, TV
> performer--more properly belong in the Cultural Left? And what is Joe
> Conason, whose work is 99% pure political, doing in the Cultural Left
> with Eve Ensler and Tony Kushner?
>
> Moreover, how can George Galloway, Robert Fisk, and Arundhati Roy be
> considered the "enemy at home" when they don't even live in this
> country? To D'Souza, being dead (Edward Said) or politically defunct
> (Cynthia McKinney, defeated in her reelection bid, is nonetheless
> listed in the Congressional Left alongside such Bolsheviks as Ed
> Markey and Patty Murray)* is no disqualification for treasonhood.

Doug's not here! If D'Souza forgot to mention Doug, I think everyone on this list should write him a protest letter. <clip>
>
> John Murtha--<clip> "Hey, this man served his country!
> Don't question his loyalty, even when he makes the same arguments as
> Noam Chomsky and Osama bin Laden."
>
> The call-to-arms conclusion of D'Souza's book:
>
> "There is no way to restore the culture without winning the war on
> terror. Conversely, the only way to win the war on terror is to win
> the culture war. Thus we arrive at a sobering truth. In order to crush
> the Islamic radicals abroad, we must defeat the enemy at home."
>
> We're not the enemy, and if you engage us as the enemy, all you'll be
> doing is starting yet another war you can't win.

But all my life I wanted to be the enemy!



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