Wednesday, August 08, 2007
A Brilliant Take-Down of Iraq hawk's dubious mea culpa
Check out cartoonist David Rees's satiric look at Michael Ignatieff's New York Times Magazine essay on why he's changed his mind on the war -- but is still smarter than everyone else.
Check out cartoonist David Rees's satiric look at Michael Ignatieff's New York Times Magazine essay on why he's changed his mind on the war -- but is still smarter than everyone else.
Ignatieff's latest essay is what Latin people call a "mea culpa," which is Greek for "Attention publishers: I am ready to write a book about the huge colossal mistake I made." I imagine the book will be about a man struggling to do the right thing-- a man who thinks with his heart and dares, with a dream in each fist, to reach for the stars. It's about a journey: a journey from idealistic, starry-eyed academic to wizened, war-weary politician. (Ignatieff used to work at Harvard's Kennedy School; now he's Prime Chancellor of Canada's Liberal Delegate or whatever kind of wack-ass, kumbaya government they've got up there.)
In a way, it's a story much like Cormac McCarthy's recent best-selling "The Road." Both follow a hero's long march through thankless environments-- in Ignatieff's case, from the theory-throttled, dusty tower of academia to the burned-out hell-hole of representative politics. Danger lurks. Grime abounds. The narrative tension is: Can the hero be wrong about everything, survive, and still convince people he's smarter than everyone in Moveon.org?
