I do so love insomnia.
Anyway, it looks like James Lileks has been on the receiving end of that phenomenon of the sphere o' blogs known as the Delinking Letter. One wonders if Muslims do it thusly: "I delink you, I delink you, I delink you."
Anyway, I had thought of adding my two pennies to this swirlyfest over Salam Pax, the letter, and everything. Then I got to reading the reactions of others (start here and work your way back), and then I got to Brian Linse's hilariously self-righteous girly-slap of Lileks, and I decided that this subject had just jumped the shark.
Besides, I had grown bored with the little Baghdad pantywaist ages ago. Sorry, peeps, but living under a totalitarian dictatorship does not automatically confer sainthood on one. (That's for all those leftoids hopefully proclaiming "Bush = Hitler OMGWTFBBQ!" Sorry to have to break it to you this way, Sunshine, but you'll be just as much of a failure of a human being under fascist rule as you are in a democratic republic.)
Anyway, I had lost interest in Pax once it became clear he had 1) survived just fine, and 2) become a pet of the chatterati of Western Europe. I knew then that barring an intervention -- from, say, his pal Raed, who doesn't seem to have been offered celebrity hosannas even though the blog they both started was named after him -- we weren't going to hear another useful word out of Salam Pax.
I wish James hadn't apologized for one little thing. I guess it's some Midwestern thing, to get embarrassed over a cuss word. I wouldn't have been so vehement myself, but that's because I'm jaded. But I don't think James owes the dinkwad delinkers and Pax-worshippers (in more than one sense of the word) one ounce of contrition for anything.
As for the whole notion of delinking, well, that's one of the many reasons my blogroll is private. No one sees who I have on my blogroll. In other words, I have basically delinked everyone. Beat that, prissies.
(* Well, if Treacher can do it, why not me?)
Posted by Andrea Harris at November 24, 2003 01:55 AM