1) As we have long known, the British press is more entertaining than ours. The headline over a blogpost at the Telegraph today is “A knee in the nuts that means serious trouble for Goldman Sachs.”
My column today carries the humdrum title “Che does Ireland, &c.” What is this totalitarian butcher doing in Ireland? Well, they’re erecting a monument to him, is all. Sometimes, a T-shirt isn’t enough.
2) At The Daily Caller, Jamie Weinstein has interviewed me about a new book: Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World. For the interview, go here. For the book, go here.
3) This morning, a writer at the Washington Free Beacon asked me what I thought of this: the “China Watch” section of the Washington Post. It is a “paid supplement,” the Post says. Is it anything more than CCP propaganda?
What could I say to the Free Beacon? That the PRC is a one-party dictatorship with a gulag (laogai)? That they torture, “disappear,” or outright kill some of the best people on earth: people such as Gao Zhisheng and Chen Guangcheng? That they are keeping the 2010 Nobel peace laurate, Liu Xiaobo, in prison? That they recently imprisoned a democrat, Zhu Yufu, for publishing a poem on the Internet?
There is barely any freedom of expression in China — but there is ample freedom of expression for the ruling Communists, anywhere they want. Including in the Washington Post, apparently.
As an editor of National Review, I love and crave advertising revenue, believe me. (Please advertise! Whaddya got to sell?) But there have to be some things more important in life than ad revenue — or any revenue — right?
P.S. Tell me if this picture, from the Post’s China Watch, doesn’t remind you of another time and place . . .