7/4/10 In this moment of national and personal crisis, I have resolved to record my final thoughts of each day in the hopes of drawing strength from a purer form of expression. I wonder if Malcolm Gladwell does anything like this?
7/5 Profile of me out in New York magazine today, generally positive, almost fawning. What a kind-hearted naif, that profile writer. Blind to all of my insecurities, steamrollered like my employers and the Obama administration by my dime-store sophistry and center-right mystifications. Then again, what do you expect from a Slate staffer? This can’t last. How much longer will I be able to fool the world with my false veneer of rationality?
7/6 Country seems to have bought my column today arguing against the extension of unemployment benefits. Rahm Emanuel called and sweared only eight times, which I took as a compliment. If I could only convince his boss that the only solution for the problems of the poor is for them to be well behaved, stop complaining and suffer in dignified silence. Would that be so hard?
7/7 Call from the White House today asking for solutions to the oil spill. Told them to put faith in free-market principles. They must not have seen Matt Taibbi’s trenchant criticisms of me yet. I wonder if Matt has contact info for the Leona Helmsley look-alike he mentions?
7/8 Bad news from Iraq. They’re smuggling Kurdish oil by the tanker into Iran. It’s as if we plotted this war in order to destroy ourselves. How could I have been such a fool? Only George Packer understands my pain.
7/9 My column on reading books vs. playing on the Internet today was a total dud. I haven’t read a book cover to cover in five years. I rue the inevitable day when I will be known as the poor man’s Reihan Salam.
7/10 Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan. Sarah Palin. Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan. Michele Bachman. Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan. Ana Marie Cox. Peggy Noonan. Lady Gaga?
7/11 Bill Buckley, why did you forsake me?
7/12 Detected much less outright hostility and aggression in Rahm’s phone voice this morning. Think he might have a crush on me.
7/13 In my darkest moments I wish I was Jack Nicholson at the end of Five Easy Pieces, ditching my girlfriend, my wallet and my whole sham of a life at a gas station in Oregon and climbing aboard some stranger’s big rig to ride across America and really be free. Either that or I wish I was Barack Obama.
