Monday, January 08, 2007

Left Behind, by Joe Klein



A new blog has just been birthed by the Time Magazine, and Joe Klein wrote the inaugural post on it (via Prospect). The name of the post is "Left Behind" and here are the first few sentences:

I'm afraid I'm going to get cranky about this: The Democrats who oppose the so-called "surge" are right. But they have to be careful not to sound like ill-informed dilettantes when talking about it.

It's like falling into some inner science fiction world to contemplate the Left Behind series of rapture-ready science fiction, taken as the literal truth by so many, while reading this post. Who is it, exactly, that comes across as ill-informed in this world where creationist books are sold at the Grand Canyon site? The Democrats, that's who. It is they who have forgotten to do their homework, to study all the facts. I don't remember many journalists telling the Republicans that they have to be careful about anything, these past six years.

The Time is in financial trouble, by the way, as is the case with many other magazines and newspapers. The internet technology has not yet managed to find a way to make people pay sufficiently for what they read, and I sympathize with the problem. The Donate-buttons don't really work.