Howell and Arafat By Donnel Jones, May 23, 2003

Two of my favorite writers write about two of my least favorite individuals. Andrew Sullivan's superb sizing-up of the New York Times, once the model of American journalism, takes no prisoners. He's up front about his own erstwhile relationship with "The Grey Lady." Read it and weep.

Once thing's for sure. Sullivan can write. He is utterly relentless, yet not obsessive. His language is completely without baggage, but burns to the touch. This man is on a roll. Here's a taste.

Into this elegant but slightly musty china shop barged Howell Raines. A guilty white liberal Times-man from Alabama, Raines had won a Pulitzer for a profile he once wrote about his black nanny. A baby-boomer, his moral values were deeply influenced by the civil rights movement. He hadn't, like other editors, come from the newsroom; his previous job had been on the editorial page, where he'd written thundering jeremiads against conservatives, and laced them with a contemptuous streak with regard to Bill Clinton. He was very friendly with Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the latest scion of his family to run the business. Sulzberger's crunchy-liberal politics fit beautifully with Raines'. And when it came for Sulzberger to appoint a new executive editor two years ago, the job went to Howell.

I'd say Sullivan is no fan of Howell Raines.

Another writer I much admire is Victor Davis Hanson. Let me just jump to the sample treat:

Two years ago nuts in caves talked about Americans who were scared to fight; now the world is worried because we fight too quickly and too well. There are no more videos of Osama bin Laden strutting with his cell phone trailing sycophantic psychopaths. Yasser Arafat is no longer lord of the Lincoln bedroom, but shuffles around his own self-created moonscape.

I couldn't resist giving you Hanson's taste of Arafat. It's absolutely correct. Though the toga reference elsewhere is cornball. Otherwise, Hanson, like Sullivan, is pitch perfect. It is a rare thing when writers of such intelligence and learning do not withdrawl from their passions but tame them with moral clarity, to understand the world around them better and to better understand themselves.