who are your favorite political writers?

albert camus
greil marcus (at least in lipstick traces and in the fascist bathroom)
hannah arendt

least favorites:
anyone who subscribes to that whole slimy mises institute libertarian "income tax is worse than the holocaust" school of thought - they're worse than fking ayn rand!
george will
andrew sullivan
hitchens 2/3rds of the time

John Stuart Mill, Orwell, George Will, Andrew Sullivan, and Christopher Hitchens are some favorites.

To Pound Fascism was the culmination of an ancient tradition, continued in the personalities of Mussolini, Hitler, and the British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley.

Pound had already studied the doctrines of the [German] ethnologist [Leo] Frobenius during the 1920's and gave a mystical interpretation of race. Cultures were the product of races, and each had its own soul, or "paideuma," of which the artist was the guardian.

In Mussolini, Pound saw not only a statesman who had overthrown plutocracy, but someone who had made politics an art form. Pound stated, "Mussolini has told his people that poetry is a necessity of State, and in this displayed a higher state of civilization in Rome than in London or Washington."

Writing in his 1935 book Jefferson and/or Mussolini, Pound explained: "I don't believe any estimate of Mussolini will be valid unless it starts from his passion for construction. Treat him as ARTIFEX and all the details fall into place ... The Fascist revolution was FOR the preservation of certain liberties and FOR the maintenance of a certain level of culture, certain standards of living ... "

Pound and his wife Dorothy settled in Italy in 1924. In 1933 he had a meeting with Mussolini, outlining his ideas for monetary reform.

He also became a regular contributor to the periodicals of Mosley's British Union of Fascists, met Mosley in 1936 and continued to correspond until 1959.

From the late 1930s he began to look increasingly toward the economic policies of Hitler and regarded the Rome-Berlin Axis as "the first serious attack on the usurocracy since the time of Lincoln."

In 1940, after having returned to Italy from a tour of the USA during which he attempted to oppose the move to war against the Axis, Pound offered his services as a radio broadcaster. The broadcasts called "The American Hour," began in January 1941. Pound considered himself to be a patriotic American. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he attempted to return to the USA, but the American Embassy refused him entry. With no means of livelihood, Pound resumed his broadcasts, attacking the Roosevelt administration and usury in a folksy, American style, with a mix of cultural criticism.

Robt Caro seconded, thirded, fourthed and fifthed. Sixthed when his final LBJ installment comes out. Though I might call him a biographer and/or historian he began as a journalist and hence belongs in this category. His books are just untouchable.

I like Bob Herbert in the NY Times and EJ Dionne in the Wash Post -- hey I'm a liberal -- but can't make a case for them as great writers.

other political writers i have read semi-recently: kissinger (hated), chomsky (blah, okay, he is chomsky). Krugman, does he count as a JK Galbraith type? (He ws okay but i was mostly just reading his economics). Soon to be reading: John Stuart Mill and Thomas Hobbes, hopefully next weekend.

Good call on Christopher Hitchens. I really should read more of what he writes, because when I *do* read something from him, I can always (at least) understand where he's coming from. Hate Cockburn, though.

i guess andrew sullivan's a lot saner than he used to be, but his post-9/11 fawning over bush and co was so repulsive that i can't take him seriously at all.

On the flip side, while I agree with him 99% of the time, the NY Times' Frank Rich is one of my least favorites. As a political writer he's a good theatre critic. His columns are lazy, meta-journalism at its worst, armchair rehashes of what he's seen on TV and collated from Nexus during the week. "Bloviating about bloviating" to employ one of his pretentious pet terms.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11253

Good call on Henninger, who's superb (and with whom I agree probably 30% of the time).

As for Hitchens' latest, this should get leftists' blood pumping:

http://www.slate.com/id/2145889/?nav=tap3

Saw Ryan Lizza speak today, part of some series they have here every year called “Curious Minds.” The topic was Trump, of course.

He was excellent. Don’t think he hit a false note the whole 90 minutes. (The guy interviewing him, from Toronto’s Globe and Mail, seemed a little too eager to please.) Contrary to Lizza's residency on CNN, pretty sure I didn’t hear “double-down,” “pivot,” or “takeaway” the whole afternoon.

I brought along the New Yorker from 2008 with the famous Barry Blitt cover of Barack and Michelle (Lizza wrote the accompanying story), hoping to get it signed, and also something a friend and I had written that I wanted to pass along to him. No luck before it started, so after he finished I went to the side of the podium as he was leaving. The handler charged with taking care of him: “Sorry, we’ve only got 10 minutes” (before the next speaker--they actually had 30 minutes). I garbled something in response, the basic point being that getting a magazine signed and handing him a book would take approximately 15 seconds--he was standing right there. Nope, can’t do it.

I was furious, and, I’ll admit it, what I wanted to say was, “You know, a small part of the reason there’s a buffoon in the White House right now is that there are 60 million people who hate it when some weasel like you takes what seems like a very personable and approachable journalist and pretends he’s William Shakespeare so they can exercise the little bit of authority they’ve been granted.” I bet Ryan Lizza hasn’t been asked to sign something he’s written 25 times in his life (he hasn’t written a book yet)--I’m sure he’d be glad to do it.

Happily, the other handler politely took the magazine and the book back to him behind the curtain and came back with it signed.

Nice!

Actually I get asked to sign things
at least 25 times a day, and so
my hand consistently aches!
I suffer through this long
signature in the hopes
that someone will
understand my
true pain,
R. Lizza

Shape poetry...it's a handgun!

The last words r pizza ever hears

r lizza

Walter Kirn, Lewis Lapham, Thomas Frank, Matt Taibbi