ruth wisse: the conservative noam chomsky.

you heard me.

ruth "the hebrew hammer" wisse wrote a stupid column for the WSJ today. luckily, no one cares. but i have a couple things to say, anyway.

i'm not going to debate middle east policy, because i'm not smart enough to beat out every foreign policy expert ever, who all still debate what hapened at oslo.

all i can say are two things:

(1) the title ("Bush Installed a Dictator. Clinton Installed One. Which of Our Last Two Presidents Made the World Safer?") and the arguments it represents are a tad ridiculous.

"Mr. Bush removed the most ruthless dictator of his day, Saddam Hussein, thereby offering Iraqi citizens the possibility of self-rule. Bill Clinton's analogous achievement in the Middle East was to help install Yasser Arafat, the greatest terrorist of his day, as head of a proto-Palestinian state."

yeah okay, if you only look at the middle east, you can make that argument. but uh... did we just forget about the balkans and milosevic?

whatever; i'm more concerned with my second point...

(2) ruth wisse is the conservative noam chomsky.

ooh, i'm being provocative! look, here's what i'm saying: both ruth and noam became famous for their academic work. noam is the greatest linguist of his generation. ruth is one of the greatest literature scholars of hers.

but then they completely abused the fame they received for that legitimate work.

both of them said "hey, now that everyone is paying attention to me, i might as well spout off my fucking crackpot ideas about foreign policy! and since i'm a famous academic, then everyone will have to take me seriously! because they'll think i'm an academic in foreign policy! brilliant!"

seriously ruth. you may talk all the time about israel, but let's leave this to the professionals, okay? shut up.

and i should shut up, too. rant over.