BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Tuesday, May 11, 2004
THE ROYAL "WE." David Brooks
is no more responsible for the quagmire in Iraq than Andrew Sullivan
is. Still, it's interesting to see how the New York Times
columnist takes (that is, doesn't take) responsibility for his
failure to think things through as opposed to the blogger/essayist's
squarely wrestling with his conscience.
Sullivan's lamentations,
which I flagged yesterday, were filled with the first person
singular. By contrast, here is an emblematic passage from Brooks's
column
this morning:
We were so sure we were
using our might for noble purposes, we assumed that sooner or
later, everybody else would see that as well. Far from being
blinded by greed, we were blinded by idealism.
...
We didn't understand the tragic
irony that our power is also our weakness. As long as we seemed so
mighty, others, even those we were aiming to assist, were bound to
revolt.
As Tonto explained to the Lone
Ranger, "Who's 'we,' Kemosabe?"
DRIVING US AWAY. You could
look it up (I don't feel like it), but Media Log has predicted on at
least several occasions that this July's Democratic National
Convention will be a five-alarm disaster for anyone who lives in,
works in, or even thinks about Boston.
Yet now that Anthony Flint is
reporting
in today's Boston Globe that operations to shut down I-93 each
day will begin as early as 4 p.m., I'm ready to make a
counterintuitive prediction. I now think everyone has been so
thoroughly freaked out by months of apocalyptic scenarios (can I take
just a little bit of credit?) that everyone is going to take the week
off and the locals are going to barricade themselves inside their
homes.
Media Log's newest prediction: this
is going to be the easiest week for driving around the city since
just after the invention of the automobile.
posted at 7:30 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
