I love blasts of withering contempt directed at the intellectually vacuous. As counterproductive among the public at large as it might be, no words get me giggling happily and my pulse racing faster than yawning dismissals of creationists, intelligent designers, fundamentalists, supply siders, state planners, prudes, rabid ideologues, or racists. I revelled in the blue state invective directed at the red staters and their empty "moral values" in the aftermath of the 2004 election. I rejoiced at US Federal Judge John Jones defenestration of intelligent design in the Dover, PA school board case. I cherish Winston Churchill's quip upon being told that he was drunk by a shocked society doyen: "Madam, I may be drunk tonight but tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be ugly". The sharp sword of spite can cut through layers of cant and hypocrisy.
Therefore, I feel compelled to reproduce part of an interview with my new hero, Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, who bested holocaust denier David Irving in Britain's libel courts and who now suggests he should be released from jail in Austria where he awaits trial on criminal charges concerning his lies about the Shoah.
"I am not interested in debating with Holocaust deniers," she (Lipstadt) says. "You wouldn't ask a scientist to debate with someone who thinks the Earth is flat. They are not historians, they are liars. Debating them would be nonsensical. But we also should not allow them to become martyrs. Nothing is served by having David Irving in a jail cell, except that he has become an international news issue. Let him go home and let him continue talking to six people in a basement. Let him fade into obscurity where he belongs."
The full piece can be found here.
1 comment:
Lipstadt's comment is so rational. But I am afraid the network newsies don't understand it.
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