How Did I Get Iraq Wrong?

How did I get Iraq wrong?

Well, for one thing, I trusted the Germans. Those who know me will find this statement somewhat ironic, but there it is.

I trusted one German in particular. His name was August Hanning. In the run-up to the war, he was the chief of the BND, the German foreign-intelligence agency. I met him shortly before the war at the new chancellery building opposite the Reichstag in Berlin. He was spectrally thin and exceedingly sober. His briefcase was the size of a microwave oven. I pictured many consequential documents sequestered inside.
Read more

The Devil and Jerry Falwell

The Rev. Jerry Falwell died Tuesday at age 73; he was pronounced dead shortly after he was found unresponsive in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Falwell's most enduring legacy is likely to be his role in turning evangelical Christianity into an important part of the political right. But many will also remember him for his curious claim that the Antichrist was a living, male Jew. In 1999, Jeffrey Goldberg--living, male, and Jewish--visited the reverend to ask whether he, Goldberg, might possibly be the Antichrist.
Read more

TV Club: <i>Sopranos</i> Final Season

Dear Jeffrey,

It's an honor to be commemorating the final Sopranos season with you (Season 6, Part 2, if you want to get obsessive-compulsive about it). I am neither a psychoanalyst, like the intrepid team of shrinksSlate employed to pick over seasons 3 and granting, in a show of unprecedented generosity, a full 60-minute hour to the dysfunctional Soprano family, as opposed to the 50 minutes they give paying clientsnor a mob expert, like you or Jerry Capeci, who did the honors for Season 5. Nor am I former Slate New York editor Judith Shulevitz, with whom you dished about The Sopranos in Slate's inaugural dialogue way back in 2000, which technically was still the previous centurya lifetime ago for me, and perhaps for you, too.
Read more

John Gotti

It is a little-known fact, even among Mafia hobbyists, that John J. Gotti, a man seldom credited with sophistication, raised his children to be avid readers. His daughter Victoria, who is the smartest Gotti (and who, if the world were a different place, would now be the boss of the Gambino crime family), has a living room lined with books, many of which were not written by Sidney Sheldon, and she is a writer herself of halfway-credible mysteries. His son and sad-sack heir, John, who is known as Junior, is an autodidact and a compulsive reader of history, particularly the history of Native America.
Read more

Dialogues: Iraq and Al-Qaida

dialogues
Iraq and Al-Qaida
By Warren Bass and Jeffrey Goldberg
Updated Monday, March 25, 2002, at 1:08 PM ET

From: Jeffrey Goldberg
To: Warren Bass
Subject: Reason Enough?
Posted Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 10:24 AM ET

Dear Warren,

I must say, I'm looking forward to this exchange; it's not every day that I get to have a discussion with a genuine, AAA-approved, USDA-certified foreign-policy establishment pooh-bah, which is what you are, yes?

You've been doing great work, even if you've been doing it for the Man.
Read more

The Breakfast Table: Jeffrey Goldberg and Jack Shafer

From: Jack Shafer
Subject: Pols, the Press, and the Sad Bastard Story
Posted Monday, Feb. 5, 2001, at 7:46 AM ET

Dearest Goldberg,

During the campaign, the press busted the presidential candidates every time they harvested a mawkish anecdote from some specific sad bastard's life to make one of their policy pitches. (Often the sad bastard was strategically placed in the audience to give the TV citizenry that throat-clogging Oprah moment.) I cringed whether it was George Bush demonstrating his compassionate conservatism in one of the debates by misting up over the Texas convict who asked him who really cared about his jailed ass or Al Gore jawboning against pricey pharmaceuticals by complaining that his mother-in-law was paying three times as much for the same arthritis drug that her dog Shiloh consumed (a claim that turned out not to be true).

Politicians rely on cheap, emotional anecdotes for obvious reasons. Theirs is a cheap and emotional business. But what's to explain our press comrades' overreliance on the same technique? Scanning the morning papers I find two sad bastard ledes without even searching. My friend Rachel Zimmerman begins her Page One Wall Street Journal story about drug patent extensions with the up-close and personal story of "Mary Robinson, a Philadelphia X-ray technologist," who enrolled her 7-month-old baby in a drug-testing program in return for a $50 Toys "R" Us gift certificate. It's a fine story about the politics of patent extension, but the anecdote never pays off. Baby Robinson pops up only one more time, deep, deep in the story, where we find out that the diluted drug she was fed in the drug trial cured her indigestion.
Read more

Superhero Showdown

When you're a superhero, no one ever cuts you a break.

The Shopping Avenger knew it was only a matter of time before some sort of Avenger manqué would try to seize the scepter of consumer advocacy for his own pathetic self. After all, given the fabulous success and worldwide renown (and healthy self-regard) of the Shopping Avenger, why wouldn't some cheap hustler follow him on the path of glory he has single-handedly hacked through the jungle of corporate malfeasance and customer dissatisfaction?

So now comes a publication calling itself Consumer Reports, a sad spectacle of faux-Shopping Avengerness. Consumer Reports is published by a group calling itself the "Consumers Union," which claims to have been founded in 1936. The Shopping Avenger laughs at this claim, because the Shopping Avenger knows that he himself is the originator of American consumer advocacy, back in 1999, or possibly 1998.
Read more

Wiener Whining at Super 8

It is a well-known fact that the Shopping Avenger keeps a special place in his heart for the downtrodden and the outcast, including, but not limited to, the poor, the indigent, the day traders, and the blind. When the Shopping Avenger sees the forces of rampant capitalism manhandling an unfortunate soul, he will fly to the rescue straightaway, unless he's busy leading anarchists into battle on the streets of Seattle, or napping.

But there is one group whose persecution will instantaneously get the Shopping Avenger into superhero mode, and that is: wiener dogs.
Read more

I, Antichrist?

Early one shiny autumn morning, I got in my car and drove to Lynchburg, Va., in order to find out whether or not I am the Antichrist. You know: the Beast, the Worthless Shepherd, the Little Horn, the Abomination, the linchpin of the Diabolical Trinity. That Antichrist.

I had my suspicions. Nowhere on my body could I find the mark of the Beast--666--but I do have a freckle that's shaped like Bermuda. And though I have never been seized by a desire to lead the armies of Satan in a final, bloody confrontation with the forces of God on the plain of Armageddon, I do suffer from aggravated dyspepsia, as well as chronic malaise, conditions that I'm sure afflict the Antichrist.
Read more

You Don't Tug on the Avenger's Cape

Greetings, oh frustrated and bone-weary consumer! It is I, the great Shopping Avenger, who has pledged himself to the betterment of all humankind, or at least to that portion of humankind that shops at Circuit City and rents trucks from U-Haul.

The Shopping Avenger has much to discuss today: You will hear the tale of a Hasidic rabbi who suffered greatly at the hands of TWA, but who, due to his mystical and gentle nature, sought not the help of lawyers but instead the help of Shopping Avenger, who is a part-time kabalist and runs special discounts for clergy every Tuesday, and you will also learn the winning answer to the recent contest question "How much Turtle Wax constitutes a year's supply of Turtle Wax?"
Read more