Frank Rich, I mean. Three weeks ago, I spent an hour or so debunking his claim that Obama cut your taxes. Being quite proud of the result, I immediately e-mailed it to Instapundit and . . . no linky-love.
So after about four or five hours, I e-mailed him again: “I don’t get it. Here we have Frank Rich using his New York Times column to push a bogus Democratic Party talking-point a week before the election, and I’ve expended the time and effort to dismantle it, and no linky-love? What gives?”
The answer came in the subsequent link:
“PICKING ON FRANK RICH IS SO EASY IT’S HARDLY WORTH IT, but some people enjoy the practice.”
Well, the election is over and Americans evidently weren’t swayed by that idiotic Obama-cut-your-taxes propaganda, so I suppose Professor Reynolds is right: Frank Rich can be ignored as harmless.
It is nevertheless enjoyable practice to dismantle the endless idiocy of the Worst Columnist in America the World All Human History.
Today, for example, Rich denounces those “wealthy Americans . . . who take far more from America than they give back.”
Rich’s editors permit him to go on in this vein for 1,538 words in a column that involves no original reporting. He interviewed no one. He didn’t pick up the phone and call any sources, nor did this column require him to set foot outside his apartment. He watches “60 Minutes,” reads Think Progress and throws in some “empirical evidence” from a “deservedly lauded new book” by two political science professors.
What is the journalistic purpose of such an effort? Where is the value to the New York Times?
One possible answer: Rich articulates the inner rationale by which the newspaper’s liberal readership justify their political prejudices. He lends his Harvard-educated eloquence to these prejudices, providing his readers with reassurance that they’re absolutely right and that anyone who disagrees with them is hopelessly ignorant. Continue reading Kill the Rich! →
