[RobCrowe]

I just finished reading Bruce Bawer's review of Paul Berman's new book and I say, Come out and admit it, Dan, you are a Neo-Conservative (at least of the Andrew Sullivan variety). Bawer uses the rebarbative, racist, and illogical term "Islamofacist," which only makes sense if we use the terms "Catholicofascit," "Evangelofascist", "Judeaofascist," etc., for other forms hate-based fundamentalism. It's a smarmy way of smearing an entire culture, not too mention a billion people. That Savage continues to allow this term makes me think he is a least a fellow traveler at the very least.

But what is truly pointless about this echo-chamber of a review--mind you, the perspective of which is very much East Coast--is that it continues to whine how the "left must wake up" which is, oh, so 2003. My response to Bawer, who seems to think that Europe is lead by a monolithic 68ers liberal elite (ah yes, I recall Chirac and Mlenke at the barricades) is, What exactly does the left need to do to "wake up" aside from agreeing with you about how horrible life is under the doomy cloud of Al Queda? Berman's book is dated already and Bawer's take is more than belated, though, I suppose in The Stranger's continuing desire to be thought more contrarian than the Weekly, this excrescence makes some slippery and pathetic sense. Either that, or Dan Savage has gone neocon like his friend Hitchens and perhaps has secretly registered as a Republican (how else does one explain Sharkansky's ride).

Yours in the Struggle,
RobCrowe