The Naked and the Senile Dementia

Lenin's actual 'one thing' is Kto kovo, (roughly) Who, to whom? In a zero sum world, every gain is someone's loss, every owned property is theft from someone else. Identify this dynamic in every transaction and relationship, and you can generate resentment and hatred and class warfare ... if that's your goal.
Norman remembers the point, but he's getting sketchy on the details. Sad.

Posted by Kelly at May 21, 2005 10:09 AM

Wait... You mean Mailer finds it more plausible to believe that "agents in the Pentagon are tricking journalists into printing anti-American lies so that bloggers will discredit them" than to believe "sometimes journalists are too lazy to confirm stories by anonymous sources"?

Kelly's right... Sad.

Posted by Harvey at May 21, 2005 10:51 AM

Kelly beat me to it here, but I just posted a long comment on Mailer and "Who whom?" here.

Posted by Dr. Weevil at May 21, 2005 11:12 AM

Huffington's blog is indeed execrable, but you link to it? Sir - why encourage the blogosphere version of rubber-necking at an accident?

Posted by P.A. Breault at May 21, 2005 11:23 AM
When you cannot understand a curious matter, ask yourself, 'Whom? Whom does this benefit?' "

On what plane of reality would it benefit Bush to stir up Islamic outrage in Afghanistan? The occupation and reconstruction has been amazingly successful. Does Mailer really believe Rove would jeopardize that just to put one over on Mike Isikoff?

Posted by Allah, blogger manque at May 21, 2005 12:54 PM

There is no plane of reality present in the doddering remnants of the "american intellectual."

Say or think "Bush" and all reality just blows away into dusty sputtering.

Posted by Gerard Van Der Leun at May 21, 2005 1:30 PM

Doesn't "Cui bono?" predate Ulyanov?

Posted by mrp at May 21, 2005 1:56 PM

Huffington? I thought Gerard was linking to Huffington-TOAST! That's kinda kewl, but to Huffington-ghost, with its inclusion of Norman (Post-natal) Mailer... UN-kewl, in extremis!

GVdL, gitcher act together, Lad!

Posted by Carridine at May 21, 2005 6:54 PM

I personaly could not stand Mailer's writing, even in his heyday--he was so very very full of himself. But it is interesting to speculate, based on the evidence of this blog entry, whether a goodly portion of whatever writing talent he may once have possessed was actually a product of good editing.

Posted by neo-neocon at May 21, 2005 8:54 PM

Glug.

Allah, surely you know that the pravda is that the reconstruction of Afghanistan, far from being amazingly successful, is in fact a terrible failure. Don't you know that the country is "decrepit" and "ruled by warlords", and that the people miss the orderly and pious Taliban? Go betake yourself to a re-education center.

Clearly, Darth Rove was desperate for a distraction from the utter failure of Chimperor McHitler's bloodthirsty policies and therefore it is entirely plausible that the CIA would trick an upstanding journalist into printing a lie, and be ready with agents provocateurs to create a scripted "riot" that would take public attention off the disaster in Iraq.

(You think I'm being sarcastic, or exaggerating. I'm not.)

Posted by jaed at May 22, 2005 3:53 AM

Isn't the “redolent…odor” comment a play on words rather than a pun?

Posted by Dave Schuler at May 22, 2005 6:42 AM

you are a total ass hole. Total. No percentage off.

Posted by wretching over you at May 29, 2005 8:52 PM