Salon reviews Brüno:

Make no mistake: It is gay sex that has made Brüno stupid. Perez Hilton has the sobriety, moral rectitude and class of Lewis Lapham by comparison.

What could that sentence possibly hope to mean? Honestly, I’m not sure who comes out worse in a comparison between Perez Hilton and Lewis Lapham.Hilton, in all fairness, has higher standards of journalism. Roger Kimball reported some time ago in National Review:

What chiefly distinguished [Lapham’s tenure at Harper’s], however, was not its tone — an amalgam of hysteria and smugness — but its inaccuracy. As I pointed out at the time, “Tentacles of Rage” was littered with falsehoods, including falsehoods about the founding of The New Criterion. What made the piece notorious — and confirmed the widespread opinion that Lapham was a knave as well as a fool — was its “report” on the Republican National Convention. Lapham included an eyewitness description of the event, replete with withering comments on the crappy, ideologically motivated speeches given by Republicans. Unfortunately, no sooner had that issue of Harper’s hit readers’ mailboxes than some public-spirited citizen pointed out that Lapham had been reporting on an event that took place after that issue of Harper’s had been mailed. In other words, he just made it up.