Please Stop Pissing

Do you ever do something and realise soon after you should not have done? This is one of those moments for me. Of course I have an advantage here. Mr Ailes will never see this so can't take umbrage. I also consulted my trusted advisors. OK it was one advisor. I feel comfortable posting this.

I'll start by saying I think Roger Ailes is insightful, a fantastic writer and scary intelligent, but I have to question the need to piss on William F Buckley Jr. From a recent post.

My favorite bit of William F. Buckley's ballyhooed column on the miserable failure's miserable failure.

"It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats."

Buckley lacks the balls to attribute that opinion to himself, so he puts the words in the mouth of a hypothetical soldier. And tortures the language to do so. (emphasis mine)

This is a good post and Roger is accurate in his observation Buckley is not "owning up to" his own idea.

The comment about torturing the language is unecessary. I've noticed more and more examples of such attacks that are what my family calls "cheap shots".

Attack ideas, arguments and logic, but stop with the juvenile attacks on presentation. A competent linguist can find fault with anyone's writing. I'm not capable of doing this at all. That's why I write simply. But such superiority stances bring nothing to the discourse.