(both images via AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
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We all have our youthful indiscretions, those young and irresponsible things that we did when we were young and irresponsible. Senator Robert Byrd, for example, was in the Klan, while George W. Bush was a cheerleader at Andover, and, most seriously of course, John Kerry was a war hero.
My own modest indiscretion is that I Was A Teenage Derridian. Yes, as a literature major in the early 90’s, I was inundated with the “critical theory” associated with various continentals from Adorno to Deleuze to Foucault and most of all, Jacques Derrida. And let me make it clear that I was not merely the victim of all this theory; in fact, I eagerly sought it out. Indeed, some witnesses even report that I had Derrida’s famous statement “il n’ya pas de hors-text” [“there is nothing outside the text”] stencilled upon my cap at graduation.
[Long, boring article follows below the break.]
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Tomorrow’s Corrections Today, vol. 5
Slated to appear on the New York Times’ Corrections page, October 12, 2004:
Because of an editing error, an article in yesterday’s International News section by Terence Neilan about the release of Yaser E. Hamdi, an American citizen who had been held in U.S. prisons for three years without having charges filed against him (until a Supreme Court ruling in June found the detention to be unlawful), “U.S. Returns Detainee to Saudi Arabia After 3 Years“, was both erroneously titled and published too early. The corrected article was slated to run in late January 2005, and should have been titled “U.S. Returns President to Texas After 4 Years”. The Times regrets the error.
We loves us some nuance when it comes to saying whether or not invading Iraq was a good idea. Or maybe just endorsing the resolution approving the matter. Or whatever. We hate nuance.
George W. Bush, October 9, 2004:
“Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision. The world is safer with Saddam in a prison cell.”
Dick Cheney, October 7, 2004:
Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in Miami Thursday that the report justifies rather than invalidates Bush’s decision to go to war. It shows that “delay, defer, wasn’t an option,” Cheney told a town-hall style meeting.
John Kerry, August, 2004:
Asked by a reporter, he said he would have voted for the resolution – even in the absence of evidence of weapons of mass destruction – before adding his usual explanation that he would have subsequently handled everything leading up to the war differently.
John Edwards, October 8, 2004:
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards said last week’s Central Intelligence Agency report confirming the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq hasn’t convinced him it was a mistake to authorize President George W. Bush to take military action.
“The vote on the resolution was the right vote, even in hindsight,” Edwards, a first-term U.S. senator from North Carolina, said in an interview aboard his campaign plane on Oct. 8. “It was the right vote to give the president the authority to confront Saddam Hussein,” he said. “That’s what would have given the president the power that would have allowed the weapons inspectors back into Iraq.”
RELATED: Cobb/LaMarche 2004, “Vote Green for Peace”
Where do you live, Jimmy Fallon? From left to right, the SNL wunderkind on the cover of Paper‘s November 2001 issue; and the star of Taxi featured as “Man of the Week” in the October 18, 2004 issue of Us
President Bush bestowing kisses upon a baby in Chanhassen, MN, Oct. 9, 2004. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Hannah Palcic, 5, inadvertently being forced to re-enact a Vietnam P.O.W. ritual at a Kerry rally in Albuquerque, NM, Oct. 10, 2004. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Presidential candidate John Kerry gracing the cover of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, an appearance which inevitably subjected him to the magazine’s notorious cover curse
From Sen. John Kerry’s remarks at the Second Presidential Debate, Washington University, St. Louis, Friday, October 8, 2004:
Chris Reeve is a friend of mine. Chris Reeve exercises every single day to keep those muscles alive for the day when he believes he can walk again, and I want him to walk again.
I think we can save lives.
From “‘Superman’ Star Christopher Reeve Dies at 52,” The Associated Press, Monday, October 11, 2004:
Christopher Reeve, the star of the “Superman” movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure, his publicist said. He was 52.
Reeve fell into a coma Saturday after going into cardiac arrest while at his New York home, his publicist, Wesley Combs told The Associated Press by phone from Washington, D.C., on Sunday night. His family was at his side at the time of death.
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Jacques Derrida, 1930-2004
“My death, is it possible?” asked the late philosopher Jacques Derrida in his book Aporias.
As one wag put it yesterday upon hearing of Derrida’s death, “I guess that answers THAT question.” (Thanks, Sarah)