And as we expected, the worst stuff is coming from the left. First they were griping because I haven't put any "progressives" on my team. Now comes this hatchet job disguised as a 400,000-word (or maybe it just feels that long) profile of Naomi Klein in the latest New Yorker. You need to jump to page 7 of the online version to get the part where Naomi and her husband Avi Lewis have some not very nice things to say about me:
Both Klein and Lewis are skeptical about Barack Obama. “I’ve been at rallies and seen him speak, and I feel that feeling that one feels,” Lewis says. “It is thrilling. And it’s churlish not to allow yourself to be thrilled. We crave inspiration, and it’s a bleak life to always be dissecting things. But the main feeling that Obama creates in me is fear, because I see people fooling themselves. If you actually look at his policies, what they reflect is the triumph of the right-wing political paradigm since Reagan, and I think he could set things back dramatically, because for young people who are getting engaged in politics for the first time, for them to be disillusioned is very, very damaging.” Because Klein doesn’t expect much from any politician, she doesn’t spend time wishing Obama were more progressive. “I don’t want to appear too cynical, but when I first saw the ‘Yes We Can’ rock video that Will.I.Am made, my first response was ‘Wow, finally a politician is making ads that are as good as Nike’s,’ ” she says. “The ‘Yes We Can’ slogan means whatever you want it to mean. It’s very ‘Just Do It.’ When you hear it, you catch yourself thinking, Yeah! We’re gonna end torture and shut down Guantánamo and get out of Iraq! And then you think, Wait a minute, is he really saying that? He’s not really saying that, is he? He’s saying we’re going to send more troops to Afghanistan. He’s telling regular people what they want to hear, and then in the back rooms he’s making deals and signing on to the status quo.
You know, all I can say is this: Et tu, David Remnick? I guess this is payback for the way we responded when they ran that idiotic cover with me as a terrorist. Whatever. The backlash needs to happen. As long as we can absorb it and contain it, we'll be all right.
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