"It's a shame stupidity isn't painful..."

Do you ever get tired of reading opinion pieces by supposedly informed commentators that are so mind-numbingly idiotic that you want to slam your own head in a door because you don't have the actual offender close to hand? (Rheotrical question - if that doesn't happen to you every so often you probably wouldn't be reading this).

My current frustration is around the massive media hyping of Nick Cohen's new book What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way. I can't bring myself to get worked up about the book itself, because its central premise, that those on the anti-war march were all basically supporting Islamic fascism, is the same tired, unoriginal and unpersuasive stuff that you get if you peruse the hawkish section of the American blogosphere for more than thirty seconds. What upsets me is that people who are paid to know about current affairs get so incredibly excited when this drivel is presented in book form, presumably for no other reason than because Cohen has delusions of being a bit left-wing himself. I've noticed the Times, the Observer and the FT falling into line on this (can't speak for any of the others, except for the New Statesman, which tore the thing to shreds pretty effortlessly).

John Lloyd at the FT really deserves a special mention for the brilliance with which he constructed an article apparently designed to make himself look like an idiot, though. It starts with a quick review of how he went to see a remake of the musical version of Candide (By the way, who the hell goes to see that anyway? What's next, The Social Contract on Ice?) which "satirised not, as Voltaire did, the view that life was always destined to turn out well... Instead, this was a satire on the US." Lloyd goes on to explain how those silly arty types on the left think anything's satire if it takes a knock at authority figures, and it's this sort of degenerate thinking and refusal to shoulder responsibility that characterises the left more and more. This, of course, is why he likes Cohen's book so much: "It is an essay of wide reference and great brilliance, which flays every kind of foot-shuffling excuse for not facing up to the nature of the regime which that most evil (and now, mercifully, dead) tyrant, Saddam Hussein, inflicted on his country and planned for his region."

Now I can't be the only person who recognises that, in the current context, that is a truly stupid statement. No WMD, a vicious civil war that looks like it might spread across the region and thousands of civilian casulaties. It seems to me that to think that the current situation in Iraq was anything like a vindication of the pro-war position, you'd have to be a quite serious believer in the idea that "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” Someone should really do a satire. Oh, hang on...