Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Boot vs Barnett

Barnett. It's clear who got the best on this one, right?
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6 comments:

Mr roT said...

Jez has a funny tear at Barnett's prose:Hey guys! I know it doesn't involve $80,000 WHORES or anything, but someone actually more important than Eliot Spitzer resigned this week, and it was all on account of Esquire, the Hearst men's magazine. The official in question was William "Fox" Fallon, David Petreaus's boss, a guy who was neither whoremonger nor warmonger and therefore had to leave the Bush Administration. I hadn't read the story when it appeared -- fuck, it's not even touted on the cover- but I sorta-read it this morning. And it is not, mind you, a work of literary greatness. There are the usual cloying Esquire-isms -- THE FIRST THING you notice is the face, one section begins; the Gaza Strip "continues to hum like a bowstring"; a whole column concerns the term "chickenshit" -- but it is clear that Fallon chose Esquire as the venue in which he would respectfully pay the administration his final middle finger. He opposed the troop surge and going hawkshit on Iran, is generally portrayed as the consummate diplomat under a regime in which diplomacy is a trait disdained in diplomats, much less Naval commanders. The story is your classic "hero journalism" profile we've all come to expect from Esquire, a type sought out in the past by frustrated (emasculated?) Bush Administration dissenters Paul O'Neill and John DiIulio. It is worth reading.

3/12/2008 1:14 PM
Tecumseh said...

Good find, JJ. I had some inkling that this Fallon guy was fishy after reading between the lines of the initial reports, but now it's clear he's a Barack-Pepe-Wes Clark kind of guy, through and through. You think McCain would be more careful about promoting such stalking horses than W?

3/12/2008 1:39 PM
Tecumseh said...

Barnett: He received his MA in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia as well as his Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard. (Yada, yada.) After the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald and its carbon credit brokerage subsidiary CantorCO2e were destroyed at One World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, Barnett described the event as the "first live-broadcast, mass snuff film in human history." (What a guy!) Barnett admits that he was not the only person at the Pentagon or elsewhere to notice these trends. He credits his superior skills at presenting information with making his point of view rise above others in his field. (Right-o.)

3/12/2008 1:44 PM
Mr roT said...

jez really sods him on that skill of his, huh?

3/12/2008 3:38 PM
Tecumseh said...

More on that putz, Fallon. Makes one pine after Wes Clark. (Almost. )

3/12/2008 11:41 PM
Mr roT said...

More on Fallon, and better than Barnett and different than Boot.

3/13/2008 9:59 AM

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