Tasty Read - Andrew Sullivan has a great review of Sidney Blumenthal's book The Clinton Wars. I care much less about the topic (Clinton, and Blumenthal's take on him), than Sullivan's writing - which is really great here.
It has the tone and manner and piety of one of those "Lives of the Saints" books most Catholic school kids were once forced to read at some point or other. It's not a memoir, or a history. It's a Gospel. ... the picture we get of Mr. Clinton from this book is strangely blank. No foibles; no expletives; no tears; no wit; not a single memorable phrase; not even a fresh insight into the man's psycho-sexual compulsions. That's what happens when the religious temperament prevails. The need to prove not just that Mr. Clinton's opponents were evil, wrong, dumb, malign, gob-smackingly corrupt and duplicitous in every single respect, but that the President was noble, grand, progressive, epic and world-historical must, by its very nature, obscure nuance. Nuance, after all, could lead to doubt; and doubt to error; and error to damnation. And beyond damnation, there's always the danger of becoming a Republican.
Chortle. A good review obviates the need to read any but the best book; this is the case here.

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