paralepsis

So here's a connection: Ted Haggard, schadenfreude case of the day, has apparently been found guilty by his church of committing "sexually immoral conduct." Not that this was surprising: the only question was how quickly the hammer would fall. (Pretty damn quick, I'd say.) Almost as rapidly, evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll's response to the drama, in the form of "practical suggestions for fellow Christian leaders," has been the subject of considerable commentary on the liberal blogs. (I heard about it through DK (not me!) at Talking Points Memo , who pointed toward David Goldstein 's excellent commentary the Huffington Post; naturally, Dan Savage has also commented ). Still, the kicker paragraph in Driscoll's post is worth repeating: Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take...

Blogs are interesting not really for what they say but for how they connect. Some blogs are purely informational; I go to Eschaton and to Daily Kos primarily for their rapid feed of new political developments. (Some kossacks, such as DarkSyde, Jerome a Paris, and bonddad, are quite insightful; some, like Pastor Dan, are moving; and some, like Bob Johnson, are terrifically funny. But I encounter these writers as a result of keeping up , not because I keep up with them particularly.) On the right-wing blogosphere, this can lead to a massive echo-chamber effect (or maybe that's just Malkin 's big empty head) or, as Truman Capote would have said about Glenn Reynolds , "that's not blogging, that's teletyping." I go to Ron Silliman and The Rude Pundit for range of reading and for their ability to make connections across diverse terrains. If paralepsis is to have any value, I hope it's of this type.

So the New York Times publishes an article about how military officials recognize that Iraq is a major clusterfuck, and it includes the following image: Reactions have been predictable. Over at Daily Kos , georgia10 notes that, along with the National Intelligence Estimate concluding that the Iraq war has exacerbated the terrorist threat, this picture shows "that the administration is well aware that Iraq is a 'failed state, that 'ethnic cleaning' is taking place, and that a stay-the-course policy has failed to stop the stop the steady march towards chaos." Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin (of course) froths at the mouth about the "blabbermouths" at the Times who betrayed their country by publishing classified material. Because as we all know, terrorists love them some PowerPoint. Has anybody pointed out how poorly designed this slide is? It's a validation of all that Edward Tufte has been saying about PowerPoint's ruinous effects. Note the s...