Good ol' TJ.

Okay. So I'm a little obsessive. I know, big surprise. "The guy with the blog called 'Punctuation Fetish' fixates on little details? What a shock."

Yes, it bugs me when things are wrong. When people say things that are incorrect for whatever reason. But there are times when you want so much for them to be right that it seems counterproductive to make the correction. This is when you stand at the line; and it's interesting to see who crosses over. Is it really about the importance of what is right? Is it really about how obsessed with perfection I am? Whatever it's about, I'm crossing that line here today. [Note: there are also times when you want something from the person so much that it's counterproductive to correct them. But that's not what we're talking about today.]

A little background: I don't read the Chicago Sun-Times. I think it's a crappy paper. If it's lying around and there's nothing else to read and I'm stuck waiting for something, then sometimes I'll pick it up, but it seems like I never actually enjoy reading it. They have lame articles and lame comics and too many classifieds (although they do have Roger Ebert). And their columnists just make me angry. Especially Mark Steyn. That guy is such a jerk. He's totally full of himself, and he often comes across as bigoted, or at least mean-spirited. He's a conservative Republican through and through. But goddamn the man can write a good column, and as much as it pains me to say so, I have to say that I liked and agreed with his column of April 30th.

In it, Steyn attacks John Kerry for using a quote in a speech that Kerry mistakenly attributes to Thomas Jefferson ("Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"). I think Steyn relies too heavily on ad hominem attacks against Kerry (a common Steyn problem), but his basic point is correct: Get a fact checker, John! I, like Steyn, find continued use of this non-Jeffersonian quotation RIDICULOUS.

However, I object to it simply on the grounds that it is incorrect. Steyn seems to object to it because he thinks what the quote is talking about is wrong, and doesn't want such a bad idea attributed to a great American like TJ. For example, Steyn says that "As far as I can tell, it was Nadine Strosser, the ACLU's head honcho, who cooked up the Jefferson fake." First of all, her last name is Strossen, not Strosser. And second of all, yes, she's an easy target, and one that I'm sure Steyn would like to nail with a charge of making stuff up. But, even a simple Google search will turn up an article on About.com attributing it to historian Howard Zinn. And these guys did some research on Lexis and Westlaw and discovered that Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson said it all the way back in 1965. So, um, get a fact checker, Mark!

The worst part is how accurate he is about the state of politics in America today. Like I said, the man can write. Toward the end of the column is this powerful quote: "If the right is full of armchair generals, the left is full of armchair generalities: Nothing can be done, any course is futile, everything's a quagmire." It's true that the hardest thing in the world right now (certainly for me at least) is believing that anything's ever going to change. My favorite quote from the Illuminatus! trilogy is:

"They did then look further and, lo, high as they were they saw the founding of a great republic and proclamations hailing new gods named Due Process and Equal Rights for All. And they saw many in high places in the republic form a separate cult and worship Mammon and Power. And the Republic became an Empire, and soon Due Process and Equal Rights for All were not worshipped, and even Mammon and Power were given only lip-service, for the true god of all was now the impotent What Can I Do and his dull brother What We Did Yesterday and his ugly and vicious sister Get Them Before They Get Us."

Amen.