More on Fisk's exercise in self-loathing from the WSJ:
To the evident surprise of the man known to his readers as "the champion of the oppressed," the oppressed decided to take on the champ. They lunged for his wallet and began lobbing rocks. Yet even as the rubble bounced off his skull, Mr. Fisk was shrewd enough to look for the "root causes":
"Young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn't see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find."
It's not their fault, he insisted, their "brutality is entirely the product of others"--i.e., George Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld, you. And in a flash, the gloom of recent weeks lifted and Mr. Fisk turned in the heady, exhilarating columnar equivalent of a Sally Field acceptance speech: you hate me, you really hate me!
You'd have to have a heart of stone not to weep with laughter. Even as a mob is trying to kill him, he absolves them of all responsibility. It's "entirely" America's fault. Noam Chomsky, eat your heart out. Any old Ivy League professor can give droning speeches about America's "silent genocide"; any European Union minister can swan off to U.N. gabfests in Durban to apologize to Robert Mugabe for Western civilization. But, at a stroke, Mr. Fisk has dramatically raised the bar for standards of Western self-loathing.
opinionjournal.com |
