Good piece. Read it and smile! :-)

[austinboy]

http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/m-n/morris/2004/morris012704.htm

[Skittles]

1. It IS a good read

a tip, Austinboy - when you post a link to an article, post the first couple paragraphs as a teaser to make us lazy DUers want to read more. :D

[SharonAnn]

2. Yes it is. I'm sending it to my email list of Democratic friends

Thanks.

[austinboy]

5. GOTCHA!

Still new to this posting stuff...but I'm learnin'. :-)

[Mixxster]

3. Kick

[chiburb]

4. Here's a taste, and my email to the author:

Snip:

More importantly, though, half the things I wrote back then were devoid of actual substance. I didn't have ideas. I had suggestions. I had templates. I applied them to whatever topic was hot, and voila! I had an article. Which is a fine way to make a deadline, sure, but it's really not so fulfilling. Take, for example, this gem from my February 25, 2003, article, "Time, Like France, Is Not On Our Side": "You know, it's not that I've ever taken things for granted, but my deep appreciation for American life only really settled in on September 11th. The feeling has yet to let me go."

Well, that's great and all, but what the hell was I saying? It didn't mean anything. Watch me change the words: "You know, it's not that I've ever taken the Canadian porn industry for granted, but my deep appreciation for it only really settled in when I witnessed Taliban porn firsthand. The feeling has yet to let me go." And you see, much like Mad Libs, a few changed words didn't change the substance one lick.

And I'll tell you the thing that gets me now is I really, truly believed at the time that that was one of my finest articles ever. At the time, it probably was. But I wrote a lot of stuff like that during the build-up to the Second Gulf War. I was still in a woe-is-me, post-9/11 rut back then, and I went along with the war without thinking critically or questioning a damn thing. This bothers me now because, regardless of whether I support my having supported it, I would've done well to have followed less blindly -- as a writer, as an American, as a man.

In that very same article on February 25, I wrote: "I don't want this war… anymore than the next guy." That sounded nice when I wrote it, but it wasn't exactly true. I mean, of course I wanted the war more than the next guy. I was rooting for it with thousand-word diatribes each and every Tuesday. The least I could've done is not lied about it. But, indeed, I was the one I was lying to. It was one of those you're-only-fooling-yourself moments, and I fell for it.
End snip.

My letter:

Just read your Jan 27 piece And want to compliment you on publicly "seeing the light". It takes a REAL man to admit when he's wrong, and it's rarely seen in this day of blustery, faux machismo.

I don't expect you to come over to the side of light and bright, though you're certainly welcome to the Big Tent!

Thank you,

[Demeter]

6. One Down, 499,999,999 to go (eom)