Thursday, June 14, 2007

WaPo's Assault on Reason


Andrew Ferguson, over at the neoconservative Washington Post, doesn't like Al Gore's new book. Ferguson's Limbaughesque critique of The Assault on Reason might be a mite more credible if only the columnist did not exhibit the same talent for getting it wrong as the Commander Guy.

Says Fool Ferguson in the opening lines of his attack:

"You can't really blame Al Gore for not using footnotes in his new book, 'The Assault on Reason.' It's a sprawling, untidy blast of indignation, and annotating it with footnotes would be like trying to slip rubber bands around a puddle of quicksilver. Still, I'd love to know where he found the scary quote from Abraham Lincoln that he uses on page 88."

This is the problem with doing book reviews based on rants by Rush Limbaugh. You miss a few things:

"[E]very one of the nearly 300 quotes found in The Assault on Reason is accompanied by an endnote with complete sourcing information, including the quote on Page 88 that Ferguson focuses on. The endnotes consume 20 pages of the book."

Check out Liberal Values for a review of The Assault on Reason by Ron Chusid, someone who appears to have actually read and understood the book.

via Steve Benen