A word from Roger Kimball
Roger Kimball is the publisher and editor of the New Criterion and the man to whom National Review turned for a review of Dinesh D'Souza's very bad new book for NR's March 5 issue. Roger and New Criterion managing editor James Panero invited me to review the book for the New Criterion itself; my review is here. The New Criterion blog Armavirumque has followed up with posts here by James and here by Stefan Beck.
Having read his book closely, I have found it an educational, i.e., shocking, experience to watch D'Souza respond to his critics at his AOL blog and in his four-part NRO series that Victor Davis Hanson described as "suicidal." NRO allowed Dean Barnett, Peter Berkowitz, me, Roger, Stanley Kurtz, and Robert Spencer to respond here. Robert Spencer comments a bit more here and here.
Roger Kimball has sent me a copy of his email message to Robert Spencer in which Roger takes a look back at the proceedings:
Well, it’s an extraordinary performance on DD’s part. It’s been clear from the beginning of his career that, though undoubtedly intelligent, he was a glutton for low-rent celebrity. Until this latest episode, however, I had no idea hat he was addicted to such wholesale mendacity. The way he misrepresents his opponents, not to mention his own writings, is as breathtaking as it is disconcerting. You and Victor document that thoroughly. In part, Dinesh’s procedure is an example of what the philosopher David Stove called “reasoning from a sudden and violent solecism.” I do not know Dinesh personally, so I am undecided whether such systematic misrepresentation betokens unusual brazenness or an unusual insulation from reality. But contemplating the spectacle of six or seven people dutifully lining up to respond to his hogwash, I am reminded of Hazlitt’s observation that “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” Marshalling the sort of rhetorical ammunition against DD that NRO did was to grant him and his argument far more importance than either deserves, though I realize that not responding would have only confirmed him in his insufferable smugness. His behavior has been both sad and comical, I suppose, though also undeniably irritating. You, Victor, and the others have made mincemeat of him; among serious people, I think, he will never recover. Now he should be allowed to rage alone on the heath of his self-generated grandiosity.
