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August 24, 2005

Mark Kurlansky: Not Exactly the Salt of the Earth

Posted by Dave Blount at August 24, 2005 9:31 AM

Another good link passed along by V the K offers a glimpse into the strange mixture of nastiness, egotism, and jejunity that makes up today's liberal elite intellectuals. Mark Kurlansky was understandably proud to have heard that President Bush was reading his book Salt: A World History. You almost can't blame him for puffing out his chest and boasting to his cronies at The Guardian about it. Unfortunately, he couldn't stop spewing sophomoric venom even long enough to pat himself on the back:

What does it mean that George W Bush, a man who has demonstrated little ability for reflection, who is known to read no newspapers and whose headlong charge into disaster after cataclysm has shown a complete ignorance of history, who wants to throw out centuries of scientific learning and replace it with mythical mumbo-jumbo that he mistakenly calls religion, who preaches Christianity but seems to have never read the teachings of the great anti-war activist, Jesus Christ, is now spending his vacation reading my book, Salt: A World History?

Kurlansky then goes on to pontificate that one day oil won't be as economically critical as it is today. Since all sophisticated intellectuals know that the struggle to uphold democracy and defend our civilization against terrorism is "all about oil," this means that Bush should put away his books and his silly grownup stuff like foreign policy and go out to chat with the hostile freaks at Cindy Sheehan's sideshow.

To answer Kurlansky's question as to what it means that the President read his book, it probably means that since you can learn from pretty much anyone, even an obnoxious fool's book might be worth reading.