Radosh.net

"Undergraduate"?

It was a rhetorical flourish for which I actually have no ideal follow-up. Consider this a new contest. You're in the lead.

It is as if the great patriots at Newsweek had taken a few lessons from Cuba's (my old country) Granma. Memories...

how about "Dixie Chick?"

Radosh.net? I wonder if....and yep. There you are! Blast from your Oberlin past!

i've been enjoying the way that they were leaking grisly new zarqawi tidbits every news cycle to keep the story going. the bit about him being alive for 52 minutes after the bombing and that he saw the american soldiers and knew that WE got him... that was exquisite.

Not to pull things off track into an almost-completely-unrelated subject, but: I've never understood the fuss about criticizing your government while overseas. It's a rule that implies that the entire United States is fight club. Maybe that sort of prohibition made sense back in the 19th century -- when news from foreign lands was hard to come by, the mass media were in their infancy, and it actually made a difference where you said something. But nowadays, it seems silly to argue that, if Natalie Maines criticizes the president in Buffalo, it's fine, but if she does it in Toronto, it's not. 'Cause these days, if she does it in Buffalo, they'll find out about it in Toronto, and vice versa. It seems like one of the consequences of the mass media age is that nowadays, it really doesn't matter where you're standing when you say something.

I didn't suggest "undergraduate" as a compliment to Newsweek, or to dismiss R's rhetorical flourish.

And of course, anonymous's comments were supposed to be implicit in my flourish via the miracle of irony.

I think the actual word would be "expatriot".

I'm surprised that you haven't commented on Time's Zarqawi cover, which is even more idiotic than Newsweek's -- and suggests that Time's editors have been spending a bit too much time playing Grand Theft Auto. More troubling (God, how I hate Time) is the title of the article inside: "Funeral for Evil." (If I'd been headlining the article, I would have gone with: "Daddy Killed the Bad Man.") Seriously: are we all officially required, now, to act like we're five years old?

My colleague Tom Vinciguerra called the Time cover "X inflation" (I would have gone with "defining Xing down"). It's a callback to the classic cover on the death of Hitler -- which Time already referenced in its 2003 cover on the capture of Saddam. The implied analogy was obnoxious in the Saddam instance and flat-out ludicrous in the Zarqawi one. Are they going to X out every two-bit terrorist and thug to come down the pike now? What about Star Jones?

cphoffman: do you mean "expatriate" or "ex-patriot"? because there's some folks what would make an argument for both....

I note the absurd redundancy of complaining that Americans abroad are “distancing themselves from their home country once they get overseas.”

It's amusing that you want it both ways: you condemn Newsweek for claiming to be part of the "we" and then condemn them when they indicate that they are not.

It's amusing that you want it both ways: you condemn Newsweek for claiming to be part of the "we" and then condemn them when they indicate that they are not.

My irony must be losing its magic.

Failed irony! We could make a new trope: "the magical irony". I'd call it the "the magical Radosh" or "the magical Oberlinian" but that might have trademark issues.

'Americans abroad are “distancing themselves from their home country once they get overseas.” '

well, this one did so just so he could...and in response to 'Why' from 'Old Europeans', he says he's "a political refugee" (from the illegal regime of 'the shrub', the guy who couldn't shoot straight, MacNamara redux... etc.)... And throw in obligatory Spanish lessons ;-)

"Rhodes Scholar"?

if the home country is the "homeland" than maybe the word is "smart."

"Canadian"

[that is, the word is "Canadian in quotation marks"]

I thought it was "Gore."

It's called "selling magazines". I suppose the single word for it is "capitalist". Not that I mean to defend journalists' celebration of terrorists.