It’s amusing to see America’s best-known pundits adjust course as they grapple with a new reality—namely, the unlikely improvements in Iraq.

The other day, David Brooks laid down the gauntlet, declaring that Bush was not only to be reviled for his stubborn insistence on doing things his way but also admired for that same trait, because it seems to have paid off in Iraq (despite his horrible bumbling).

before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.

In response to Brooks’s challenge, yesterday, Joe Klein declared the surge a success, declared himself wrong for having opposed it, and declared himself a worshipper at the altar of counterinsurgency and “new Jesus” Gen. David Petraeus.

I happily acknowledge that I was wrong about the surge. As regular Swampland readers know, I was, and am, a huge fan of counterinsurgency doctrine, and an admirer of David Petraeus–but I doubted that the General would have the time, troops or a coherent local government–in other words, the metrics required by his own doctrine–to make it work.

He also declared himself one of the (few)”good Jews” (and distanced himself from a vast cabal of evil “Jewish neocons” who pushed Bush into war in Iraq to make the world safe for Israel):

The notion that we could just waltz in and inject democracy into an extremely complicated, devout and ancient culture smacked–still smacks–of neocolonialist legerdemain. The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives–people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary–plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

And to play it safe with the anti-capitalists, he also declared himself a firm “no blood for oil” guy:

And then there is the question–made manifest by the no-bid contracts offered U.S. oil companies by the Iraqis–of two oil executives, Bush and Cheney, securing a new source of business for their Texas buddies.

We’ll see whether these self-declarations help or hurt Klein with the folks he’s trying to impress (his inside-the-Beltway crowd).

Today, Thomas Friedman adds his voice to those who are starting to acknowledge the improvements in the Iraqi landscape. He manages to credit them almost entirely to the Iraqis, giving Bush a scant mention and saying nary a word about Petraeus and the hundreds of thousands of or American troops who have worked to end the conflict[e.a.]:

One of the first things I realized when visiting Iraq after the U.S. invasion was that the very fact that Iraqis did not liberate themselves, but had to be liberated by Americans, was a source of humiliation to them. It’s one reason they never threw flowers. When someone else has to liberate you in your own home, that is humiliating — and humiliation, I believe, is the single-most underestimated force in international relations, especially in the Middle East.

…What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the mainstream Sunni tribes have liberated themselves from the grip of Al Qaeda in their provinces. And the Shiite mainstream — represented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Army — liberated Basra, Amara and Sadr City in Baghdad from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads.

We may one day look back on this as Iraq’s real war of liberation. The one we led five years ago didn’t count.

Like Friedman, I also have thought about the notion of self-liberation. In October 2006, I wrote:

On the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution, during which students, patriots, poets, workers, and intellectuals tried to throw off the totalitarian Russian yoke and died in their thousands as they faced off against Soviet tanks, it’s a question I must ask as a supporter of America’s effort to liberate Iraq from Saddam:

Where are the Iraqi freedom fighters?

Well, those freedom fighters—or something an awful lot like them—have emerged … thanks to the protection, backup, encouragement, teaching, training, and moral support they have received from the American military, and thanks to the great sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of American troops who have given their lives, their limbs, their souls, and their hearts to the effort to help a beaten-down people liberate themselves.

It’s a thankless job, which is something that most people who sign up for the military know in advance: they won’t get glory, because in our culture we don’t glorify war, or even service to our nation. That’s the way it is, and everyone knows it. They sign up and serve anyway, each one for his or her own reasons.

Also, while I think Friedman is grievously callous wrong and ignoble to ignore the contribution of the American military (not to mention the American president) to the recent (fragile) successes in Iraq, he may in fact be right to give the Iraqis the lion’s share of the credit.

The whole idea of the undertaking in Iraq was that the country would eventually serve as a positive role model for what can happen for the Muslim Arabs (and Persians) of the Middle East if they sign on to liberating themselves. It will be a good long while before Iraq is considered any kind of success, but as the successes start to overshadow the images of blood and bombs and fires and panic and rage and unimaginable sorrow, there will be a lot of food for thought among the Muslim Arabs and Persians of the Middle East. Eventually, they’ll see free Iraqis electing representatives to manage the affairs of their state, and they’ll wonder why they allow religious and political tyrants or monarchs rule over every aspect of their lives.

[updated (twice) with some missing links]

As the writer of a blog called Infotainment Rules I’m in no position to criticize lowbrow culture—indeed, I defend it as the right of the people to choose their own entertainment (though I believe there’s a lot of room for improvement in the realm of pop culture, including its ability to inform while it entertains), and note that the long history of “lowbrow” entertainment (i.e., that which is created for the masses) includes many cultural products that evolved, over time, to become the highest-of-the-highbrow culture.

But new media emperor Nick Denton carries things a little too far when he defends a nasty gossip-and-vengeance campaign he has been running on Gawker ever since his nasty but addictive website was eviscerated in New York magazine and in n+1 in the fall of 2007 (the latter evisceration carried out after a long Gawker campaign against n+1 and its most prominent and vocal defender, co-founder and co-editor Keith Gessen).

Word of the end of Gawker (by the New York Times here and by me here) turns out to have been premature. Its nasty crab antics continue unabated.

Before its prematurely announced demise, in April 2007, Emily Gould (then a Gawker writer and at the time a good [read: viciously-anti-celebrity and anti-elitist] ideological fit with Choire Sicha and head honcho Denton) went on Larry King Live (hosted by Jimmy Kimmel that night) to defend the “Gawker Stalker” feature (which encourages people to write in with their celebrity sightings) as “citizen journalism”; she stated that celebrities were rich enough to defend themselves against unwanted scrutiny, and in any case, she suggested, they had invited exactly such scrutiny because they had wanted to be famous and become celebrities).

Gould was very young (25 or so), and she has since recanted (sorta; she hasn’t really been deprogrammed. Now that she herself has become a target of the crab antics she herself once practiced at Gawker, she seems to regret her participation but doesn’t ever apologize; indeed, some in the media accused her of continuing to malign people in order to build herself up. Others tried to explain to long-suffering “women writers” why Emily Gould (the wrong person, and role model) became famous while they continued to suffer in unpublished silence and while they witnessed the reputation of “bloggers”—all of them—being tarnished by this little exhibitionist.

So, no: Gould didn’t apologize. Instead, she tried to move on. She decided, it seems, to embrace her past as just that—the past—as she notes in this article recently published in the NYT Magazine. My take? She’s still waaaay too into herself. But she’s a good writer (no small thing, since writing is her career), and even something of a literary heroine to some of the commenters on her blog).***

[T]he piece reminded me of much of the “new journalism” of the 1960’s. One of the principal sources of that kind of writing was Esquire magazine, which in those days was the most exciting and interesting magazine in the world, unlike the superficial and irrelevant waste of paper it has since become. The modus operandi of the editor, Harold Hayes, as he himself described it, was to contract the best writers in the country and let them write about anything they wanted. The result was a vibrant voice that no publication has achieved since.

For years I’ve yearned for some contemporary equivalent — a source of insightful, perceptive writing illuminating the times we live in. Your NYT piece is precisely that. And I love it. At nearly 69, I’ve felt tremendously deprived not to be able to enter the world your generation lives in via the observations and insights of one of its members. (That was what the “new journalism” and especially the Esquire of the 1960s and very early ’70s provided for my generation. Your piece, for instance, reminds me a little of James Baldwin’s account of his relationship with Norman Mailer, “The Black Boy Looks At The White Boy.” Much of the best of that Esquire can be found in the wonderful, voluminous collection the magazine put out at the end of the ’60s, Smiling Through The Apocalypse.) I’m so grateful to have discovered a writer who again unlocks my mind and opens my eyes and takes me into the world she inhabits.

And, most interesting from my point of view, Gould has developed her own internet ethics:

If you wouldn’t associate your real name with a comment or you wouldn’t express those same ideas in person, given the opportunity, chances are you’re a cowardly asshole who should keep his or her thoughts to him or herself.

So that’s a good bit of the backstory, if you’re still following along. (It’s trying, I know.)

Now, some months later, Nick Denton defends his relentless and personal attacks on Gould—(a 26-year-old freelance writer now formerly of Gawker) and on her personal life, which includes Gessen, whom she once attacked from her Gawker perch).

Denton asserts (in not so many words) that his vicious attempted takedowns of a new “media elite” are the essence of journalism: the public’s right to know [e.a.]:

• Nick Denton at 01:20 PM on 06/05/08

  Connectedness Index: 1764

  @Choire: The entangling of literary, journalistic and romantic relationships is a topic worthy of Gawker. You can’t understand how the media works unless you know who dated whom. Every job, every magazine commission, every anonymous quote, every resentment-they can only be fully understood if you know that X went to school with Y who introduced them to Z who commissioned X to write that magazine piece which turned into a book contract lined up by Y’s former lover. When you and I chat over lunch, that’s how we talk. Why should all this information be reserved for the private conversations of media insiders? That’s why Gawker exists: to put all of that invaluable social information out on the web and make the media machine a little less monolithic and intimidating than it can so often seem.

Now: I have written before about gossip as the ultimate weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

Here:

[[See Joshua Gamson’s book Claims to Fame and this post about Angelina Jolie, and this one, if you want to understand where I’m coming from with my celebrity obsession. It’s the scholarly approach, ha ha. And see how Gawker calls out Glenn Greenwald for getting on his high horse about The Politico. And see why gossip is good for us. Also: read Scorpion Tongues, by Gail Collins, former editorial-page editor of the New York Times, on how gossip has always been a weapon of the powerless against the privileged. And watch this space to see if I get it together to write up a more graceful version of my neat little theory about why infotainment rules.]]

And here:

[G]ossip has traditionally been a weapon of the powerless against the powerful [which is one reason I do not criticize infotainment–i.e., institutionalized gossip–but rather accept it; in the media age, gossip may be even a more potent weapon than ever against the powerful] , as Gail Collins wrote in her entertaining and informative book Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics [e.a.]:

For much of human history, [gossip] was one of the few weapons available to the powerless: servants who spread stories about their masters, peasants who irreverently speculated about the most private aspects of life in the manor. … In American history, gossip has sometimes been a reaction against heavily marketed politicians who voters might suspect were being thrust upon them against their will.

But minor media and literary celebrities like Emily Gould and Keith Gessen do not exactly pose the same threat to the people (who do indeed have a right to know) as do “heavily marketed politicians” (who may eventually assume positions from which they can perpetrate much harm on the electorate, and the country). So: invective about such minor celebrities under the guise of “media gossip”—even if it’s confined to the minuscule world of people who wish they too could be similarly celebrated—is hardly in service of the right of the people to know.

It’s “only”gossip—hurtful to those gossiped about and delightful to those who love gossip. The perfect gossip item, as Denton was quoted by the NYT as saying, is:

something triggered by a quote at a party, or an incident, or a story somewhere else and serves to expose hypocrisy, or turn conventional wisdom on its head.

New-media “gossip” is (formerly private but amusing and Schadenfreude-laced) dinner-party conversation released into the bloodstream of the internet, where it lives forever, as David Frum noted four years ago for New York magazine:

Frum was merely working with the rumors [about John Kerry] that everyone else was spreading around. That’s how opinion culture has evolved, and it’s been enabled by the Internet. Who cares if you’re wrong? As it happens, Frum says he does.

“I regret it,” he says now. “I read it in the paper, I heard it gossiped about, but I didn’t do anything like reporting. I joked about it on the Internet in a way I would at dinner. Then I learned the Net is like print, not like dinner.”

The “Net is like print, not like dinner [conversation].” Those sound like immortal words, right? Four years later, tell them to Mayhill Fowler, or to Arianna Huffington, both of whom have had an impact on the political campaigns of presidential hopefuls with their passing on of “dinner party” gossip.

For his part—and damn the consequences—Gessen is fighting back. He’s not fighting the gossip, mind you; he seems inured to that. He’s fighting for his literary reputation, and against ad-hominem invective (masquerading as literary criticism) written by cretins:

Nick Denton, you fucking ninny: Everyone went to the same six schools. Everyone has dated everyone. Now what? What have you got now? Because once we grant you that, you actually have to start making aesthetic and moral distinctions between actual written texts. And you don’t know how to do that anymore. Because you’re a pissy little gossip. Your brain was once trained to think and write, and you’ve gone and turned it to mush. You don’t even put commas in the right places, much less think straight.

And Choire—I like you, I think you’re a good guy, you have a good written style—and yet I’m afraid the same goes for you. Choire, the trouble is not that Gawker makes insinuations. The trouble is that Gawker doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Just like you, when you write about books you haven’t read [he's referring to this "review" ---ed.]

Interesting times indeed.

update: Bloggers attack Gessen in ad hominem rants.

Choire Sicha pounds him, too, in a Radar posted tagged “catfights.” 

———————–

*** And she has performed a public service for readers of the New York Times like my elderly mother, who keep hearing about blogs and blogging. In her immortal words: “I don’t understand why anyone would publish their private thoughts like that, and I don’t know who cares about this silly girl’s story. But now I finally understand what this blogging is all about!”)

Obama supporters didn’t have an easy time of it on the tube this Sunday morning. From Chris Matthews to George Stephanopoulos (no links to transcripts available yet for those two) to Howard Kurtz, every host made it plain that the former messiah is now deep in the muck.

At Contentions, Jennifer Rubin also mentions more of the displeased—the NYT’s Bob Herbert and MoDo and, most tellingly, Howard Dean.

These bear the tell-tale signs of scorned lovers’ rants. Their once beloved candidate is now reviled, mocked and tossed overboard while they prepare for the possible return of their “ex” with all the unpleasantness that entails. And who is joining them?

Well, none other than Howard Dean, who until recently seemed to pursue strategies designed to either end the race early (Obama liked that) or to encourage delegates to respect the pledged delegate count (Obama really liked that). Yet Friday, for the first time, Dean uttered this: “I think the race is going to come down to the perception in the last six or eight races of who the best opponent for McCain will be. I do not think in the long run it will come down to the popular vote or anything else.”

The bottom line in all this backing-and-forthing among pundits about whether they’re for Obama or for Clinton [e.a.]?

[I]t may be that these people have something in common: none of them really wants to be on the wrong side when the Democratic race ends.

In other words: pundits are just like the politicians they cover—first of all, they’re political animals and they operate in their own self-interest.

But you knew that … right?

Michelle Obama strikes again:

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

(via Glenn Reynolds, who refers to this as “Obamanomics.”)

At the Corner,Liberal Fascism author Jonah Goldberg, whose book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than ten weeks, gives a lively account of the ups and downs [e.a.]:

The most plausible explanation [for the books slide from the top 10] is the same one that explained why I leaped onto the Times list my first week out of the box. After all I opened at #10 even though I had a small first printing and it was hard to find the book in many stores. No one — except the Times itself — really understands how their formula works. But it definitely measures demand, perhaps not as much as sales, but enough to launch a book to the list if the demand is intense. In other words, the rate of sales — and presales — at all levels of the market (stores, clubs, wholesale etc.) are part of the formula. This week a whole slew of new books with big promotion budgets came online and the cross platform demand apparently shoved LF downward.

That’s an interesting perspective on the factors involved in achieving bestsellerdom on the New York Times lists, a mysterious process that was also mined last October by the NYT’s public editor, Clark Hoyt.

Goldberg also talks about how it feels to have written this book:

Obviously, I’d like to stay on the list as long as possible. …And it annoys all the right people the longer I’m on it, of course. … Three months on the NYT list — and hitting #1 — plus a dozen printings is far better than I dared hope. And yet I still hope the book does even better and has a wider following.

Son, you hit the lottery. STFU.

There’s another scourge even worse than racism afflicting America, ABC News reports:

Study: ‘Weight-ism’ More Widespread Than Racism

It’s illegal to discriminate against someone because of race or gender, but our culture condones a bias against people who are overweight.

There are no federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of weight, and only Michigan has such a law, according to a new study from Yale University.

As a result, the researchers contend, weight discrimination is spiraling upward, and that’s a dangerous trend that could add fuel to the obesity epidemic.

Since Barack Obama has appointed himself Understander-and-Sermonizer-in-Chief***, I expect from him a groundbreaking Lincolnesque speech about “fat-ism” any day now.

There may be a glitch, though. One of the “understanders” about fat-ism explains the tragic conditions that prevail to make the overweight feel persecuted [e.a.]:

“We send a message to citizens in our culture that this is something that is tolerated,” she said. “We live in a culture where we obviously place a premium on fitness, and fitness has come to symbolize very important values in our culture, like hard work and discipline and ambition. Unfortunately, if a person is not thin, or is overweight or obese, then they must lack self-discipline, have poor willpower, etc., and as a result they get blamed and stigmatized.”

Senator Obama may not be able to weigh in effectively on this topic. He considers certain foods too “decadent“:

At the chocolate factory, he went into the kitchen, where five white-haired women in plastic hairnets spun chocolate into a variety of shapes. He picked out a few candies for his daughters, handing them for safekeeping to aide Reggie Love.

Watching the process, he said: “Can I ask you the truth, though? Do you actually eat the chocolate or do you get sick of it?”

The workers giggled. “We make it; of course we eat it,” said Jean Hockbenerocht.

Later, at the diner, Obama was plied with a chocolate cake. “Oh man, that’s too decadent for me,” he demurred. A woman then offered him a Styrofoam container, which he opened, finding a burger, cheese fries and onion rings. Obama shrugged, took a ring, and tossed the container back.

Is Barack Obama a secret stigmatizer of fat people?

———–
*** Here’s what he told the ladies of The View:

The candidate explained, “Part of what my role in my politics is to get people who don’t normally listen to each other to talk to each other, who [say] crazy things, who are offended by each other, for me to understand them and to maybe help them understand each other.”

ABC reports on a new initiative by MoveOn that offers Obama-lovers an opportunity to become famous for 15 seconds:

MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Barack Obama for president, is encouraging citizens to develop 30-second pro-Obama television ads which will be judged by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Oliver Stone, multiple Grammy-winner John Legend and others.

The ad contest, which organizers are calling “Obama in 30 Seconds,” provides the opportunity for Obama supporters to creatively show what inspires them about the Senator’s candidacy. Contestants will be allowed to submit their ads between March 27th and April 1st.

That’s the part that appeals to contestants self-interest. Here’s the part that solidifies the interests of the sponsors [e.a.]:

“After eight years of President Bush campaigning on fear and war, people are feeling hopeful again. They’re eager to talk about what inspires them about our country — and Senator Obama leading it,” said Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn.

Yes indeed. All ambitious young people will soon be very eager to prove their loyalty to the Liberal Guilt party.

In case you’re wondering, contest winners will be announced at a most convenient moment:

The winning ad, and ad-maker, will be announced on April 17th–just before Pennsylvania’s April 22nd primary.

MoveOn will then spend an undisclosed amount of money to air the ad on “national television.”

Everyone wants to get in on the action in the new arena of Political Entertainment.

Peter Brown, writing at Real Clear Politics, fills in some details of an emerging picture:

Any realistic scenario in which Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wins the Democratic presidential nomination assumes that the party bosses will have both the will and the power to stop Sen. Barack Obama’s nomination.

But there is one good reason why they might not try, even if she is able to string together a series of primary and caucus victories: Call it liberal guilt, or call it fear of reprisal from the party’s powerful black base.

He also clarifies the sharp leftward turn of the Democrats:

The once moderate-conservative wing of the party has virtually disappeared, with millions following Ronald Reagan to the Republican Party or, these days, given the disillusionment with President Bush, calling themselves independents.

Today’s Democratic leaders are the reformers who seized control of the party decades ago — and their ideological children. … [I]f too young to have been part of the civil rights movement, [they] embrace it as one of the Democratic Party’s crowning achievements. They see enhancing the rights and opportunities of minority Americans as an integral part of their role in government, even though only Lyndon Johnson in 1964, among Democratic presidential candidates since Franklin Roosevelt, has carried the majority of white voters.

Being part of an effort to deny Obama, who has a white mother and an African father, the nomination makes them very uneasy, especially when to do so they will have to overrule the verdict of the primaries and caucuses.

Remember, these superdelegates are elected officials and members of the Democratic National Committee — people invested in their own political future and that of the Democratic Party.

The threat of a revolt among African-Americans, not to mention among young voters of all races, if Obama is denied the nomination by the superdelegates might be enough to discourage even those who see Clinton as the better general election candidate.

You don’t hear this kind of controversial analysis on television, and it goes much further than Geraldine Ferraro went.

Will Olbermann demand that Brown renounce his opinion, too?

Where will the demand for renunciation stop?

Apparently, there’s been quite a reaction to the announcement that Bill Kristol will have one of the most coveted bully pulpits in America: a column in the New York Times. I first wrote about this a couple of days ago and then went out of town.

Now the Times has been confronted. Editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal finds it easy to defend his hire:

Rosenthal told Politico shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views.”

“The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”

Kristol himself is one gleeful culture warrior:

“I was flattered watching blogosphere heads explode,” Kristol told Politico. “It was kind of amusing.”

She’s not in the blogosphere, but could Kristol have meant Katha Pollitt?

Just shoot me. First, it was Sam Tanenhaus, conservative editor of the New York Times Book Review being put in charge of the News of the Week in Review section. That means one conservative will determine how politics,culture and ideas are covered in TWO of the most important sections of the supposedly liberal newspaper of record. Now, says the Huffington Post, the Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will be writing a weekly op-ed column. That’s Bill Kristol ,Fox commentator , editor of the the Murdochian agitprop factory Weekly Standard, George W. Bush’s propagandist in chief, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, relentless promoter of the war in Iraq , ideological bully and thug.

Kristol responded directly to that attack (via Exurban League, where you can check out his Thug 4 Life pic too):

Give a holla to my neocons in the Bay,
I’m livin’ in DC still clutchin’ on my AK.
Tell ‘em,
“Thug for life,
High till’ i die”
When ‘em stupid Nation witches ask why!

Among other spicy events to look forward to, election 2008 is about to get a little more interesting (Kristol has a one-year contract).

Bottom line, says The Politico, this is a smart business decision for the New York Times:

Despised or not, Kristol is bound to create controversy (read: Web page views). It’s no surprise that during this overheated election season Newsweek and other such magazines are bringing in political lighting rods like Karl Rove and Markos Moulitsas.

In the new media world of the early 21st century, apparently it’s no longer enough to merely attract attention. You want (or need) to attract lightning to get noticed.

Here’s Sally Jenkins, who understands not just the concept of freedom of speech but its great benefits and advantages—namely, that speech leads to dialogue, which often leads to improvement and progress (a lesson that seems to have been lost on that great constitutional scholar Barack Obama):

It serves no purpose to call for Imus’s job; that’s mere harsh vengeance and we’ve had enough undue harshness. If you shut down Imus’s show, silence him, the conversation ends there. What’s needed in the Rutgers-Imus affair, and on the subjects of racism and sexism in general, is not silence but talk, lots of it …

The Scarlet Knights … have a chance to get something more meaningful from him: a full-fledged conversion.

Jenkins really drills down to our everyday reality [e.a.]:

But regardless of what anyone thinks of Imus, you don’t cure prejudice by curbing speech. Clearly, as a society we’ve made the uneasy decision that censorship is more dangerous than sensitivity, otherwise Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh wouldn’t get work. Words are hurtful, but for the most part they’re inactive. Censorship is an action. As columnist John Leo succinctly put it, “No insults means no free speech.”

And, most painfully and honestly, Jenkins describes the cost of this incident for the young Rutgers players [e.a.]:

You can argue about whether Imus “scarred me for life,” as Ajavon maintains, but he left a mark. The Rutgers kids assumed that the winner’s circle was colorless and genderless, and Imus disabused them, abruptly, of that notion with one harsh sentence. He cost them that ideal. To a certain extent, he hardened their hearts …

Yes indeed.

Here are a few other athletes whose ideals have been lost, and who have had their hearts hardened.

Seligmann said he wondered how other innocent suspects, who did not have well-to-do-parents to hire high-priced lawyers, could prove their innocence while pursued by an aggressive prosecutor. “This entire experience has opened my eyes up to a tragic world of injustice I never knew existed,” he said.

I think about this a lot—how brutal our culture has become, how thick a hide we all have to have. And also about how the culture of political correctness is a big lie that leaves people unprepared to contend with reality—to the detriment of the very people that political correctness claims to “protect.”

As I keep saying: the world is upside down.

And here’s the latest: Imus struck back at Al Sharpton today. And he says he has apologized enough.