Part of the Stench

“Rats on the West Side, bedbugs uptown / What a mess! This town's in tatters / I've been shattered,” Mick Jagger sang in 1978.

Midge Decter woke up the morning after the night of looting during the New York blackout of 1977 feeling as if she had “been given a sudden glimpse into the foundations of one's house and seen, with horror, that it was utterly infested and rotting away.”

Oh dear. Someone thinks we care what Midge Decter felt? Ever?

Worse, they think this in the same paragraph with Mick Jagger?

When cultural galaxies collide.

These things are not to be handled lightly, my dear Mr. Brook—oops. Watching Mr. Brooks' little bio videos on the New York Times, I see that he is exactly the sort of person to handle these things lightly, as well as being perhaps the only person on earth to whom this coupling would occur.

It is a strange world. I dislike the neocons. (Do they want to be capitalized?) Just as I dislike anyone who takes a false position, which is to say, one with hidden (albeit perfectly obvious) motives.

I'll pose you a question: The Astrodome? How many “neocons” were in the crowd?

End of story. It really is.

No matter how likable or bright—even forgiving the Midge–Mick thing—I already know I do not care for Mr. Brooks. I like honest people, and politics like his, like that of all the neocons, exist for one reason, and one reason alone: that the rich get richer—and when that makes the poor get poorer . . . lie about it.

In other words, the morality of neocon politics just plain stinks.