{"id":255,"date":"2003-09-12T20:18:12","date_gmt":"2003-09-13T03:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=255"},"modified":"2003-09-12T20:18:12","modified_gmt":"2003-09-13T03:18:12","slug":"wall-street-jeckyll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/09\/wall-street-jeckyll\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street Jeckyll"},"content":{"rendered":"

I take it back, my approving mention in the preceding post<\/a> of The Wall Street Journal’s “gracious” op-ed piece<\/a> lauding Anna Lindh as “Sweden’s conscientious, stylish and intelligent foreign minister.” It turns out that article appeared only in the European editions of the WSJ. If you want to know what the WSJ pitched at its core domestic market, you need to read what their columnist James Taranto posted to the WSJ editorial blog The Best of the Web Today<\/a> last night:<\/p>\n

Terror Attack Kills Terror Apologist<\/b>
Remember Anna Lindh? She was the Swedish foreign minister dubbed the “Scandinavian Taliban” for her terrorist apologetics. She’s shown up occasionally in this column, first in January 2002 for her quote: “I think this discussion about equating [Yasser] Arafat with terrorists is both inappropriate and stupid. It is a very dangerous policy.”
 
Then, in November, she denounced America for killing six al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen: “If the U.S.A. is behind this with Yemen’s consent, it is nevertheless a summary execution that violates human rights,” she said. “Even terrorists must be treated according to international law. Otherwise, any country can start executing those whom they consider terrorists.”
 
Lindh, 46, died this morning. In a horrific irony, she herself may have been the victim of a terrorist attack: “She was knifed in an upscale Stockholm department store Wednesday by an unknown assailant,” reports the AP, which in another dispatch describes her as “an outspoken human rights advocate.” Lindh’s tragic death is proof, as if any were needed, that “understanding” the enemies of civilization will not stop them from killing you if they get a chance. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trust James Taranto to once again blow past all bounds of decency in writing a sneering, triumphalist take on the Lindh murder. I’ve caught him<\/a> doing such stuff before<\/a>. If Lindh’s other ideological sparring partners — such as The Jerusalem Post<\/a>, Little Green Footballs<\/a>, Andrew Sullivan<\/a> and Instapundit<\/a> — stayed quiet on Lindh’s murder, refusing to speak ill of the dead, or perhaps realizing that there simply is no “I-told-you-so” moral to this tragic story, what compels Taranto to verge on saying that she got what she deserved?<\/p>\n

I suspect it’s because Taranto suffers from some sort of psychological imbalace, but maybe that’s letting him off too lightly. He’s certainly known as a loose canon in NYC media circles. Even so, there are plenty of nutcases at the fringes of the blogosphere; the question is, what’s this one doing among the most esteemed opinion leaders of American conservative thought? Do Paul Gigot and Bob Bartley approve of this? Do they know this is being written under the Wall Street Journal banner? Or are they under the impression that because these rants only appear online, they carry less weight? I think they know very well what they’re doing: Putting forward an acceptable face as a newspaper of record by day, but simultaneously catering to a core constituency of right-wing demagogues in the online underworld. Let’s face it: Best of the Web Today<\/em>is a very popular blog, and it gives the WSJ street cred.<\/p>\n

What are we now supposed to believe is the view of the WSJ editorial board? That Anna Lindh was a true democrat who got what she deserved? A Scandinavian Taliban who was conscientious and intelligent? For clarity’s sake, Paul, can you please either fire your European editorial writers or James Taranto? And if it’s not the latter who goes, surely you’d understand if the Swedish government now ostracizes Wall Street Journal reporters? Ah, but of course, the Swedes are decent people, they would never do such a thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I take it back, my approving mention in the preceding post of The Wall Street Journal’s “gracious” op-ed piece lauding Anna Lindh as “Sweden’s conscientious, stylish and intelligent foreign minister.” It turns out that article appeared only in the European … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-economics","category-sweden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-47","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}