Disassembling D'Souza

There's a cottage industry out there for rightwing pundits who articulate wild-eyed theories and stupendously outrageous rhetoric. Ann Coulter is one of the leading scam artists in this vein, for example.

The latest work in this serious of over-hyped diarreah comes from the pen of Dinesh D'Souza, whose newest collection of shallow prevarications entitled The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 received a justifably brutal review from political science professor and New York Times contributor Alan Wolfe (thanks to Steve Duin for the head's up).

But even better than Wolfe's obvious disgust at D'Souza's lack of shame (not to mention intellectual heft) was this morning's complete and utter disassembling of D'Souza by KPOJ's own Thom Hartmann.

An excerpt:

Hartmann: But in your book you're actually deadly serious about it. Throughout this book you use phrases like "the liberal left" and "the liberals" and you characterize people who are actually frankly not communists and not socialists. They're just good old trade unionists and basically Democrats in the United States--and characterize them as if they are in some way responsible for 9/11. I think this is despicable, sir.

D'Souza: Well lets be clinical about it. I don't just use generalizations. I think for example the blunders of the Carter Administration which withdrew American support for the Shah were instrumental in installing the Khomeni Regime.

H: How about going back to the Eisenhower Adminstration that helped put the Shah in place?

D: Well, maybe so.

H: How about overthrowing Mossadegh, overthrowing a
democratically elected government and having the CIA go in and install a dictator. And now you're upset because the dictator falls???

This interview is chock full of wonky goodness so as to delight your soul. Plus Hartmann throughly takes D'Souza to the woodshed and spanks him silly. Its a fairly long snippet..but so very worth your time.