Another big-deal author pontificates on the Suppression of Dissent in Fascist Amerikkka™. John Le Carré has never been one of my favorite authors, even during my spy-novel-and mystery-reading phase (I preferred Helen MacInnes or Mary Stewart). I found his novels to be too full of that moaning, oh-the-weigh-of-the-world angst that guarantees a writer a seat on the Forever Beloved Among Critics train. There was even a television series featuring his Smiley character starring Alec Guinness that I, a Star Wars nut (Obi Wan!), found unwatchable. I already had plenty of real-life access to endless scenes of glum people in darkened rooms smoking incessantly and talking past each other.
Anyway, I'm not going to "fisk" the whole article, because it's all the same nonsense: dissent is being suppressed, Bush is a tyrant as bad if not worse than Saddam Hussein, it's all about the Ooiillll™, and so on. Tiresome, really. Don't these people have any original ideas?
(Via Dailypundit, as well as concerned reader Robert Penfield, who needs to get a blog! Dude, Blogspot is free, if slow.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at January 15, 2003 10:51 AMY A W N . . . . Another peace monkey, yammering away in the trees. Tough to get in my afternoon nap with all that squealing . . . Where's my rifle?
Posted by: Chip Haynes at January 15, 2003 at 11:14 AMActually, when they do have original ideas it's even worse. Fortunately, they haven't had any in several decades.
Posted by: David Jaroslav at January 15, 2003 at 11:19 AMBush IS a tyrant. He makes people take off their shoes in airports. The horror. The horror.
All Hussein does is murder his own people with chemical weapons, invade other countries, support terrorism on a global scale, and develop weapons of mass destruction for future use on American and European cities.
I could go on trying to be witty, but let me just say that for suggesting that Bush II is going after Hussein because Hussein took a potshot at Bush I, Le Carre deserves a really sharp kick in the nuts.
What liberals do not understand is that we NEED a country to blame this stuff on, because otherwise, we have no one to retaliate against when the inevitable nuke goes off in Times Square. Iraq will do nicely, even if we can't show that bin Laden is solely an Iraqi product.
Posted by: Steve H. at January 15, 2003 at 11:44 AMHe sounds very much like the Philbyesque traitor
Haydon, rationalizing his betrayal. "Americans are
incapable of Revolution, England is a puppet of the US" Which brings me to serious point. LeCarre
then, mocked the Cold War's very purpose, after only a decade, whereas at the very outset of this
very hot war, with the pretenders to the Caliphate, too many of 'the respectable journalists' seem to sympathize with the enemy. It
is not out of the realm of possibility to see a
story, such as Sauron/Saruman; (Osama/Saddam/Kim)
has a point
Yes! I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that Le Carre’s world-weary shtick was a bore.
This article is proof that he’s just another has-been griping about Amerikka to get his name in the papers.
Is this his idea of suppression of dissent? Someone stole his friend’s peace sticker - proof that there’s a massive conspiracy, led by Bush and his junta to browbeat ignorant Americans into a state of constant fear!
Typical Le Carre. I feel sleepy already.
Posted by: mary at January 15, 2003 at 01:09 PMBesides, I'd like to see how someone could "steal" a bumper sticker off a car. You can't get those things off a car without rubbing for two hours with industrial-strength solvents.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at January 15, 2003 at 04:28 PMActually, I'm on my second "My President is Charlton Heston" sticker.
I put up some new coffee porn today. I think I may go ahead and dedicate the whole blog to erotic cuisine.
Posted by: Steve H. at January 15, 2003 at 05:04 PMRuh-roh...Le Carre has always been a fave of mine. Never would have thought I'd read such tripe.
We oughta start a pool on Idiot Celebrity Sightings.
Posted by: Scott at January 15, 2003 at 05:26 PMAs one of my favourite authors, I'll cut the guy some slack and think he was having a bad day when he wrote this crap.
Be sure to visit him once he's jailed for writing this article ;-).
Why do I have images of a peasant yelling "Help! Help! My dissent is being crushed!" while King Arthur kicks him?
Posted by: Craig McFarlane at January 15, 2003 at 07:56 PMTry the Matt Helm books by Donald Hamilton. No, I don't mean the movies with Dean Martin. Pretty good stories, with a believable agent. Personally, I like them much better than Le Carre's stuff.
Posted by: Mark at January 16, 2003 at 01:40 PM