Greenfield's Lament:

Jeff Greenfield hasn't yet read Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's new memoir.
He hasn't got time or so he told Don Imus this morning, what with his step daughter getting married and the Yankees game and etc etc etc.
Here he joins an ever lengthening list of elite members of the DC Press Corpse who have not read "Living History".
At this point we could draw up a list and some serious elite journalists would be on it.
Just as well, most of these yobs never got her story right.
They've falsely accused her of crimes she didn't commit, or else affected a phoney world weary air whenever her name came up in conversation.
Because that is what Jeff Greenfield did and lord knows he set the standard for the right hustling attitude in DC.
Otherwise Jeff is feeling "terrific" (per his call in to Imus today) certainly he was at his most lugubriously pontifical for the balance of the discussion.
I love the fact that NOW, with American soldiers getting shot at every day in "post war" Iraq, Greenfield calls for a full and measured investigation into the faulty WMD intelligence that sparked our invasion of that benighted country.
Where the hell was this kind of somber judiciousness before the war?
Nowhere to be seen insofar as Greenfield's Imus-in the-Morning appearances.
Hell, he was bowled over by the evidence two months ago!
NOW, he wants to talk about the Niger Forgery....
It's readily apparent that Jeff Greenfield's agenda is not limited to simply becoming another pundit or op-ed stalwart. No, he is desperate to enroll himself among the small pantheon of American Public Intellectuals like Walter Lippman.
Patronizing and orotund he talks on and on about investigations that'll never happen because of our 24-7 media culture (his favorite straw man by far) or some other inane reason.
Jeff has no interest in any recovery of the facts, he just wants to sound interested with the proper gravitas.
The funny thing about Jeff's hero Walter Lippman, he was the first modern pundit and largely a self selected one at that. He always sounded authoritative because he was good at fitting the facts to suit his own belief system...do that well and you and sound like an expert on anything.
It's just sad when you realize that our Jeff thinks a measure of disingenuousness is the crowning touch that'll seal the
deal.
Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally Licensed airwaves
and elsewhere
6-18-03
7:50am EST.