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November 30, 2005
LGF’s Foul Ball
Little Green Footballs scores more editorial touchdowns than The New York Times, but it recently dropped the ball. In Nov. 18 post, a Duke University professor for "demonstrating once again that special moral obtuseness that marks so many of America’s college professors." What was the professor’s offense? Praising bin Laden’s prose style in Arabic. (Prof. Bruce Lawerence reads Arabic and recently translated a collection of bin Laden’s speeches and recordings.) So how did LGF step out of bounds? It turns that Prof. Lawerence’s remarks, printed in a student newspaper (!), were taken out of context. In a recent radio interview I read from LGF’s post and questioned Lawerence about his praise of bin Laden’s prose style. He pointed that Che Guevara and other human monsters can speak beautifully, while doing evil. He made it quite clear that he is not pro-bin Laden, referring to him as "evil" and his message as "poison" among other things. The professor’s anti-bin Laden statements seemed genuine, not a mere rhetorical flourishes. And, while Lawerence is a man of the left, he is an unusual one: he repeatedly described himself as a "24-7 Christian," later adding that he an ordained minister who reveres the orthodox 1928 Book of Common Prayer. LGF could have done better...
Posted by Richard Miniter at November 30, 2005 08:48 AM