Thursday, August 01, 2002

Pond Scum Alert
John Bradley, failed Henry James scholar and now Islamist brown nose, stamps his dainty feet in Arab News:
Arab News has received e-mails from many American readers who were so disgusted when they visited OpinionJournal.com after reading the article about Taranto that, as a result, they have promised to cancel their subscription to the print edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Many others have promised to register their complaints and outrage about Taranto with the newspaper's main editor in chief.

Arab News is today alerting the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the American Muslim Alliance and the National Association of Muslim Journalists to the anti-Arab drive behind Taranto's website.

...

To what depths will this vile Arab-hater have to sink before the decent-minded readers of The Wall Street Journal finally wake up and, by resurrecting the voice of American reason and decency, insist that this newspaper get rid of the unethical Taranto once and for all?
My, my ... this boy sure does fuss a lot. Not to mention writing like he has a pipe up his ventral orifice. Whatever happened to the scintillating sentences like:
Just as in his life James resisted being labelled categorically 'a homosexual' in a way that would have neatly (and falsely) summed him up, nothing now could be more objectionable that an approach to James that had as its goal the crude summing up: 'It's all about his being queer!' However, it is important that gay and lesbian themes and characters are focused on in isolation because hitherto overlooked or deliberately ignored aspects of the fiction can then be brought clearly to the fore. In the essays that follow, homosexuality in the novels and stories is explored as a crucial aspect of fictional worlds in which both heterosexuality and homosexuality find (or fail to find) their proper place, which is to say alongside the many other to which they are intimately related, James will be seen, not to have been more narrowly focused and therefore easily understood - as certain hostile Jameseans would appear to fear is the inevitable outcome of a gay approach to James's fiction - but as an even more extraordinarily expansive, subtle and curious author than has previously been recognised.
Come to think of it - what does he say to his pals at Arab News when they ask him about his prior work?

UPDATE: Hop on over to Little Green Footballs where they are having a nut roast.