Sloppy Writing, Sloppy Thinking

In the pantheon of bland phrases, "a pox on both their houses" must occupy a prominent pedestal. With that in mind, I've been meaning to write about the mind-numbing nature of most Daily Star editorials for a while. And along comes this inevitable piece, accusing Lebanese politicians of being "obtuse," and I could not resist.

What does it say? Well, not much of anything. It stakes out the brave ground that Lebanese politicians should talk, and that they should compromise. It criticizes the "invincible stupidity," whatever that might be, of March 8 and March 14 pols. It asserts the gooey proposition that Lebanon's "irretrievably stubborn politicians [must] be made to understand that however gargantuan their egos, they are meaningless compared to the lives and livelihoods of more than 4 million people." It employs adjectives that do not quite mean what the author seems to believe they mean.

Substantively, I am annoyed by the assumption that all of Lebanon's problems were created by the individual stupidity of Lebanon's political class. It is almost as if the great and wise Lebanese people, whom the Daily Star dares not criticize, did not vote their representatives into office. It ignores that there are important differences between the rivals' vision of Lebanon's future which compromise cannot easily resolve, and that the continuation of the crisis is driven by this division.

Look, if the Daily Star wants to have a pro-opposition editorial page -- well, fine. If they want to offer the Siniora government qualified praise, great. But this sort of writing is worse than wrong. It is boring.

P.S: I am aware that comments are currently broken. My apologies. This was most likely caused by a group of spambots that have been tormenting the site, weighing down old posts with approximately 20,000 useless comments. Anyway, I'm working on getting the problem fixed. For now, if anyone has anything they want to add, feel free to send me an e-mail and I will be happy to post your messages in a new entry. Note: offer does not apply to spambots.