If It Ain't Broke, Fix

If It Ain't Broke, Fix It? - According to Drudge, Steven Brill is getting personally trashed by the chattering classes for his new book "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era".

His crime? Admitting the administration is doing a good job.

Says Drudge:

why have there been no fresh terror strikes in the United States since the start of the war?

Brill says it's the competence of the current leadership.

PBS host Charlie Rose shouted and squirmed and called Brill's premise "ridiculous" during a promo for the book "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," which Brill released last week.

[AFTER ranked #678 on the AMAZON.COM sales parade Sunday afternoon.]

"He is a laughing stock!" mocked one network executive, who has been a friend of the self-described "lapsed-liberal" for more than 10 years.

Brill has been telling associates how arguments over the 700-page book have "nearly become violent."

I'm sure they have. There's nothing the left hates worse than apostacy. The only thing worse than a conservative is a liberal that has switched sides. Brill apparently even commits the ultimate sin; praising John Ashcroft and aspects of the Patriot Act.

As a personal aside, here's the part I love, again from Drudge:

Brill explains: "I’ve had a kind of cultural revelation, and it centers on Tom Ridge, whom all my friends think is a bumpkin because he doesn't look and sound like them. Janitor’s son wins scholarship to Harvard, gets elected governor. Yet my friends think he’s a dummy. The reason: because he’s utterly without guile. To me he is emblematic of what’s great about the country – a guy who leaves his cushy governorship and therefore his wife has to go get a job to pay the bills because they have new rent to pay, and goes to Washington to help. And his staff is the same way.

"Sure they don’t do everything right, but they work their asses off and take all kinds of s**t from the press and the pundits and just keep their heads down and do the job they said they would do. The book is full of poignant scenes of these decent people just plain working hard and making sacrifices. No politics. No bulls**t. No glory. No scouring the papers for news clips about themselves."

The left hates that - real people doing a real job, the way most Americans do theirs. No macchiavellian intrigues, little evident sense of career entitlement; just people doing the job they were sent to do.

Can looks be deceiving? Of course - but the intense animus of the left is not a sham.

Posted by Mitch at April 6, 2003 08:52 PM