Slow Day

Not much is catching my interest so far today. There's Bill Simmons's bitter attempt to deny Kobe his justly deserved recognition. You'll notice he employs a similar technique as Kristol's: he spends something like 80-90% of his column trashing Kobe, but at the end disingenuously says he still amongst the gods or whatever. Nice work there, Billy. Let's just agree that you should never say anything about the Lakers, as you are completely incapable of setting aside your Celtic partisanship.

The Times's resident conservatives continue to produce drivel. For all the snarling about postmodernism amongst conservatives, they sure like to emulate their writing style. If you can find a coherent line of argument in Douthut's article, you are a better person than I. And Brooks continues his grand tradition of sweeping generalizations unsupported by empirical fact. Good work guys. Keeping the grand tradition of Enlightenment reason alive! Brooks is just unsalvageable at this point, but you gotta wonder about Douthut. Maybe he's found adapting too difficult.

On a more positive note, Eric Rauchway and Matthew Yglesias have some interesting things to say about the Senate.