Not having read American Taliban – and not particularly being interested in reading American Taliban, either – I don’t particularly plan to care overmuch about the blipping thing. But after flipping through these self-congratulatory missives on how the book sucks just as badly as they think that Liberal Fascism did, I have to say: Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, and the rest of them seem rather blatantly upset that Markos Moulitsas can get books published and they can’t. Couple that with an existing desire to malign Jonah Goldberg’s (quite good) book – and if you wonder whether Jonah got under the Left’s skin with his insights, read their complaints and wonder no further – and you end up with this kind of petulant whining.
I’d be sympathetic, except that it’s Moulitsas, which means that this is totally deserved from a karmic perspective.
Moe Lane
PS: My colleague Dan McLaughlin wrote a very good article on this subject here.
UPDATE: I see that Jonah’s noticed this backward recognition, too.
My take on both ‘American Taliban’ and the reaction to it and the entire Left’s outrage at Goldberg and ‘Liberal Fascism’ is a case of methinks they do protest too much. Goldberg, a meticulous researcher and gifted thinker, went out of his way (some say excessively so) to avoid making the kinds of charges that Mikos spews with impunity. And they called Newt a ‘bomb thrower’?
The fact is that Goldberg was spot on and THEY KNOW IT. They recognize themselves on the pages of ‘Liberal Fascism’ and feel compelled to not only obscure the message but kill the messenger as well and any who might dare take up that banner and carry it forward.