Smackdown
By Callimachus | Related entries in Hurricane Katrina, Partisan HacksGerard Vanderleun eviscerates James Wolcott, who first cheered for the onrushing hurricane …
… longing for it to become big and strong–Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.
…then, after it passed, lamented that the storm death toll among New Orleans’ poor was too few to match the 9/11 casualties.
I was going to wade into the fetid swamp of his prose to grapple with the wretched alligator that lurks in its depths, but thank you Gerard, for saving me the trouble.
[I]t’s clear that Wolcott’s Upper West Side dinner parties are going to be in deep mourning for the thousands of Americans that didn’t die in New Orleans.
“If only,” they will say, “some of those poor, black people could have taken one for the team and cast themselves into the sewage for us, the ones who care, and care deeply, about them. After all, isn’t it better that a few thousand drown now than that George Bush float on for three more years as President?”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 and is filed under Hurricane Katrina, Partisan Hacks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 13th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
Wolcott is pompous and overrated. Sure, he knows how to turn a phrase, and I’ve enjoyed some of his writings in the past, but this latest screed is just plain indefensible.
Must be nice in the Ivory Tower. The only problem is you’re so high up you can’t really see what’s going on below, so you merely guess. And to that point, at least Barbara Bush’s gaffe didn’t SEEM intentional.
Wolcott should be ashamed.
August 7th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Good job.