Monday, July 02, 2007

I Hear Ya   [Jonah Goldberg]

A few readers want me to respond to all of the pests and table-thumpers who're attacking me for writing a book they haven't read. But more readers are bored with the same kabuki dance: Some nosebot like Tim Noah gets his knickers is a twist (actually, they seem to be on auto-twist throughout his entire career), I respond how he doesn't know what he's talking about, and then the dance begins again. I don't want to debate my book before people have read it for every obvious reason under the sun. But a lot of people want to discredit it and me before it comes out, either out of animus towards me or, perhaps, some more revealing worry. It does say something that all of these people have spent little or no time fretting over the gaggle of prominent liberals and leftists who traffic in ill-conceived and cliched  ad hiterlum arguments but are determined to pelt me from the stage even before they've heard what I have to say. 

Anyway, you've heard all of this before. So here's the deal:  barring some really beyond-the-pale shabbiness that demands a response, I'm just  going to stop taking the bait for a while. I'll let the critics amass their paper trail of bad guesses, I'll let them shadow box with an argument I'm not making. And, when the book comes out, maybe we'll have a reckoning. So for the summer, at least, this is my last response of this sort.

In the meantime, you might be interested to read some comments from someone who has, I dunno, read the book.  

07/02 09:39 AMShare