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CANYONS OF BOB
Mark Steyn on Robert Fisk:
This is a man who, whenever he tries to pin down a factual aspect of a situation, is wrong. And the rest of the time he essays off into these crazy, drivelling columns, which tend to be framed as a series of questions that loop around the canyons of his mind to no effect at all.
Oh, I’m not sure about no effect at all; Fisk’s columns are quite useful for the purpose of discrediting Fisk. And for entertaining the not-insane.
UPDATE. What was Steyn saying about Fisk being unable to pin down the facts? Here’s Mister Robert on August 12, following the foiled London bomb plot:
I’m sure Independent readers will join me in watching how many of the suspects - or “British-born Muslims” as the BBC defined them in its special form of “soft” racism (they are surely Muslim Britons or British Muslims, are they not?) - are still in custody in a couple of weeks’ time.
Ha! Eleven of the bastards have now been charged:
Eleven people were charged yesterday in connection with an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners as police revealed that they had found suspected bomb-making equipment and martyrdom videos.
Eight are accused of conspiracy to murder by planning to smuggle the components of bombs on to aircraft, assemble them and detonate them.
A fine piece on Steyn; thanks for the link.
“RF, a vacuous, empty-headed old parrot squawking the rote phrases he learned a long time ago.” An excellent description! And there he is yet, clinging, fumble-footed, to his squeaky perch, decorating the pages of The Independent which line his cage with his droppings of wisdom.
And now, thanks to the miracles of modern science, we actually have a brain scan photo of the canyons of Fisk’s mind .
I’ve always loved the phrase “gone native”. So economical, so picturesque. Captures the essence of a complex pathology in two words. And it fits Fisk to an “A”.
“You want to do it because you want to enjoy all those small personal pleasures like being able to walk into a piano bar in London and hear a fantastic new singer singing The Way You Look Tonight. That is one of the small pleasures of life, and it’s those accumulated pleasures that are something very important and something valuable.
I simply can’t imagine any other way of life. And I refuse to even consider trying.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 21 at 11:47 AM • permalink#8 I agree with Mike.A. Sure, there’s a big market for biased, ill-informed reporting on the Middle East, but why would any news outlet hire a spluttering buffoon like Fisk? It’s as if Walter Duranty, in the course of a long career covering up Stalin’s crimes, had walked around in clown shoes and introduced himself at NYT conferences by employing the use of a joy buzzer and squirting seltzer down the publisher’s pants (or, in Fisk’s case, accidentally sitting on his own buzzer and shooting himself in the face with seltzer). Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d be forced to conclude that the MSM has such little respect for their readers’ intelligence that they’d feel perfectly safe in sending a rhesus monkey out to cover stories.
Paco: “Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d be forced to conclude that the MSM has such little respect for their readers’ intelligence that they’d feel perfectly safe in sending a rhesus monkey out to cover stories.”
Beautiful.
And under normal circustances—say, absent our deathmatch with Islamist psychopaths—we could all chuckle over such an insult to our intelligence.
cosmo: our deathmatch with Islamist psychopaths
I read deathMARCH, and both apply. The early medieval radical Islamists [the standard form] did indeed use death marches or their equivalent for infidels.
The parallel is not fanciful with the rhetoric now, and with Nazism.
It amazes me how the left, by and large, cannot see this.It amazes me how the left, by and large, cannot see this.
I think they see it, and are concerned. However, all problems are caused by the attitudes of RightWingDeathBeasts like me and all problems would go away if only I would. Their world is all sunshine and flowers.
They’ve got their fingers in their ears like children who don’t like what they hear…*NA NA NA*. I do not treat them like adults.
They just don’t know what to do, that’s all. I grew up with ‘better Red than dead’, and ‘War is harmful to children and other living things’...it made no sense then, nor does it now.
They gave us the world they wanted in the ‘30s. They’re trying again. They haven’t forgotten the ‘40s, they just don’t want to think about them. They only want peace, but their way only gets the peace of the grave.
Radical Islamists, of course, take the view that there are no small pleasures in life
You could say the same thing about the Left. Who has time for small pleasures when you’re whining about global warming, Bush, Iraq, greedy corporations etc?
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 08 21 at 10:39 PM • permalinkthe point I made earlier about the fultility in reading anything Fisk writes seems to be furtehr justified by Tim’s quote.
“I’m sure Independent readers will join me in watching how many of the suspects - are still in custody in a couple of weeks’ time”.
As Tim points out now all charged etc.
But why on earth would Fisk know anything about whether they would be charged or convicted or not or whatever. He seems just to bullshit on about stuff he couldn’t possibly know any more about than you or me.
I can well understand that there are crackpots out there that sprout all sorts of ignorant stuff but why do they end up writing for major newspapers.
Yes I know what the answer is…there is a big market for lefty bullshit…but surely there are better leftie commentators than this.
To say Fisk’s columns have no effect is too miss the obvious:
So soft, so absorbent.
Posted by Paul Wright on 2006 08 22 at 02:03 AM • permalinkDon’t get excited about the charges, Tim. An activist judge will be along shortly to f*ck it all up.
Posted by Daniel San on 2006 08 22 at 05:20 AM • permalinkSteyn fails to see that not all British Muslims are borned in Britain (i.e. naturalized citizens) - thus the reason for “British-born” instead of “British Muslim”. Actually, I think, in liberal thinking, it’s probably more offensive that way - to suggest a sectarian group breeding terror.
Also, British-born Muslims may not necessarily be a subset of British Muslims… there might be one or two Muslims born each year in the UK that decide not to take up British citizenship. Might.
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The contrast between Mark Steyn and Robert Fisk couldn’t be more stark: Here’s MS, a man of fierce intelligence and perspicacity, versus RF, a vacuous, empty-headed old parrot squawking the rote phrases he learned a long time ago.
But as you say, Robert is good for a laugh now and then.