Archives for 2009

What is it with Villagers and their extralegal remedies?

Cokie today:

Roman Polanski is a criminal, Roberts said. “He raped and drugged and raped and sodomized a child. And then was a fugitive from justice. As far as I’m concerned, just take him out and shoot him.

Joe Klein on Scooter Libby:

My differences with the lockstep left on the Libby verdict involve matters of sentencing: Instead of sending Scooter to jail, at public expense, I’d rather have him paying back the public by emptying bedpans at Walter Reed and having to stare, every day, into the eyes of those whose lives he shattered. He can do this wearing an ankle bracelet or whatever. But I want to see him–and the rest of them–pay a personal price for this war.

Richard Cohen on Polanski:

Let Polanski go — but first let me at him.

It’s like some crazy marriage of “Dirty Harry” and the fake Seinfeld pilot where George is sentenced to be Jerry’s butler.

This is how children think of crime and punishment.

Rough justicePost + Comments (94)

It will be interesting to observe the Village black-balling of Taylor Branch’s new book about Bill Clinton. Evan Thomas sets the tone (bold mine):

Clinton was not wrong to be frustrated or to believe that the single greatest mistake of his administration (against the advice of the first lady) was to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Whitewater. He also had the canny insight that Whitewater served as a proxy for what really interested reporters: those rumors of “bimbo eruptions” floated by political enemies and less-than-reliable state troopers.

Given all that, how could Clinton have been so foolish as to take up with a White House intern just as he was turning back the tide of Gingrichism in the fall of 1995? The reader longs for some insight, some Shakespearean narrative to help explain Clinton’s self-destructive recklessness. But Branch does not deliver; he merely reports that Clinton said he “just cracked.” Branch seems almost too embarrassed to try to find out more. Partly because Clinton did not summon him for several months as the Lewinsky scandal was breaking in the winter of 1998, Branch skips past the drama of the darkest days, when Clinton’s presidency seemed to hang in the balance.

Shorter Evan Thomas: Taylor Branch should have asked more detailed questions about the blowjobs.

Start learning Mandarin, people.

Update. Commenter Martin thinks I’ve got it wrong:

It’s “Shorter Evan Thomas: Taylor Branch should have made shit up to deliver our Shakepearean narrative about the blowjobs.”

Evan Thomas and John ThomasPost + Comments (72)