THE NUTTY PROFESSOR & THE SENIOR EDITOR


ward & dahlia & strange blogfellows.

For the second time this week and the fourth time since I've started this blog, another writer beat me to a subject I'd been wanting to write about -- and did so with such a sure hand and mind that anything I add would be redundant. I'd been contemplating and (in my mind, at least) slowly crafting a piece about the Ward Churchill / Bill O'Reilly / "Roosting Chickens" / Academic Freedom brouhaha. And the whole, silly mess still oddly fascinates me in the way that only silly messes of political punditry and manufactured controversies can. But just about everything I'd wanted to say (and more) appears quite neatly packaged in Dahlia Lithwick's excellent essay, "Stupidity as a Firing Offense," on Slate.com.

Ms. Lithwick is one of my favorite essayists -- always a thoughtful and compelling read -- and she often demonstrates, as she does in today's piece, an uncanny knack for cutting smartly and swiftly to the big and beating heart of the controversy du jour. Her October 2003 essay on the depressing (and still-ongoing) Terri Schiavo euthanasia battle remains the most lucid and powerful commentary I've read on the subject, and one of the best, most resonant socio-cultural essays I've read from anyone on any subject.

I've noted here before that a good writer should always know and always defer when a better writer has already better written his own thoughts. And so, as I have before to Ron and Bill and Ashlee, today, I defer to Dahlia.

Posted: Thu - February 10, 2005 at 10:41 PM          

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