Thursday, June 09, 2005
The Fatal Lack Of Irony
Hal Crowther writes another good column that you will enjoy and relish and forward to others:
Shame is for sissies: The Bush administration's contemptuous nomination of John Bolton to represent America before the world shows what happens when ignorant, arrogant people with no principles come to power.
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Irony, inseparable from humor and from humility, is the most reliable litmus test for human intelligence. Art, literature, history and even philosophy become crude and mechanical in its absence; personality loses its charm, hypocrisy proliferates unimpeded. And this is the conundrum the Bush White House presents and has always presented. Can they possibly be so stupid, or are we dealing with something even more alarming than stupidity, an obliviousness born of cynicism, native arrogance and the toxicity of power? Can it be a pose, this refusal to acknowledge any irony that weighs against them, no matter how immense?
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