I’d planned to do a number on Paul Johnson’s extraordinary “rant”:http://www.forbes.com/columnists/free_forbes/2003/1006/037.html against Europe, but “Mark Kleiman”:http://markarkleiman.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_markarkleiman_archive.html#106461571572522168 has beaten me to it. I don’t have much to add, except to say that Johnson is a dreadful old fraud, even as superannuated Tory farts go. And his prose style is wretched; the sort of sub-Burkean lugubrious sententiousness that conservatives are liable to mistake for profundity when they’ve overdone the port a bit.
Still, there’s good news for those of you who think that Johnson’s right about Europe’s economic backwardness. Silvio Berlusconi has just launched a “new marketing effort”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3137406.stm, encouraging foreigners to invest in Italy. As Berlusconi describes it:
bq. “Italy is now a great country to invest in… today we have fewer communists and those who are still there deny having been one … Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries… superb girls.
It’s a cliche to say that you can’t make this stuff up. But you can’t. You really can’t.
{ 11 comments }
Tom 09.27.03 at 11:52 am
Ugh. Johnson really doesn’t improve with age, does he?
For a little light relief, here is a brilliantly rude smackdown by Christopher Hitchens. It’s from the period before he too began to lurch towards Johnsonhood.
Ophelia Benson 09.27.03 at 4:58 pm
“And his prose style is wretched; the sort of sub-Burkean lugubrious sententiousness that conservatives are liable to mistake for profundity when they’ve overdone the port a bit.”
Brilliant! Even almost Burko-Johnsonian-Hitchensian, perhaps. With just a dash of Hazlitt.
Henry 09.27.03 at 5:30 pm
I’d actually thought about linking to the Hitchens smackdown (pun intended?), but thought that I was already being mean enough.
Ophelia – thanks for the nice words.
Doug 09.27.03 at 7:43 pm
Pity the American conservative, though, often a teetotaler on top of everything else, averse even to overdoing the port…
David Duff 09.28.03 at 7:29 pm
Weeeeellll, as Jeremy Paxman might wheeze, I read both pieces and if you think Kleiman did for Johnson then I can only suppose you also think the French won the battle of Waterloo. If there was any ranting in evidence it came entirely from Kleiman. Johnson’s prose by contrast was a model of clarity and brevity of sentences except for those requiring a list of examples to support his arguement. Johnson is an old man. My guess is that Kleiman is a young man. But I know which one is the windbag!
David Duff
Seb 09.28.03 at 8:14 pm
Even when Johnson allegedly offers “facts,” he turns out to be all wrong.
dsquared 09.28.03 at 11:50 pm
You missed the best bit of SB’s speech, the bit where he started boasting about low inheritance taxes with the slogan “come and die in Italy”
Henry 09.29.03 at 1:22 am
Didn’t actually _know_ about that other little nugget. You got a link to it? See Naples and die how are ya.
dsquared 09.29.03 at 2:59 pm
I shit you not
dsquared 09.29.03 at 5:12 pm
Paul Johnson, eminent British historian and author [arsehole – dd], Lee Kuan Yew, senior minister of Singapore [beneficent and wise father of his country, if perhaps a little inclined to litigation – dd], and Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico [arsehole – dd], in addition to Forbes Chairman Caspar W. Weinberger [arsehole – dd], are now periodically writing this column.
Wow.
Mark 09.29.03 at 9:43 pm
“superannuated tory fart” – Brilliant
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