The Apparatchik

In The Atlantic, Christopher Hitchens reviews Sidney Blumenthal's memoir of the Clinton years. I know what you're expecting, and you're partly right -- but just partly. This is an intelligent treatment of a much larger subject, summed up in two sentences midway through the review: "There's no real trick to thinking like an apparatchik. You just keep two sets of ethical books."

Comments

[alkali]

Hitchens' criticisms would be more well-taken if he didn't falsely smear Paul Begala in the opening paragraphs of his attack.

(See here for more information, but suffice it to say that Hitchens plainly didn't read the articles in question: the November 13, 2000 Begala piece he attacks wasn't a response to David Brooks' December 2001 article, for obvious reasons having to do with the nature of the space-time continuum, but to an MSNBC commentary by former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle. Barnicle contended that the states that voted for Gore were hotbeds of immorality whereas the states that voted for Bush were filled with decent and upstanding people. Begala responded that one could make similarly arbitrary charges about the states voted for Bush, and listed a few examples, but stated, "My point is that Middle America is a far more complicated place than even a gifted commentator like Mike Barnicle gives us credit for." If that last sentence is omitted, of course, the point of Begala's reply is completely lost, and it just sounds irrational.)

[Jesse Walker]

Ailes' tone is obnoxious, but he has a point. Hitchens got one of his facts wrong, probably because he was relying on Michael Kelly's account of what Begala wrote rather than reading the actual Begala article.