Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Kevin's Notes

Kevin's Notes

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Kevin Horrigan, former sports columnist and now Editorial Page staff reporting to former television columnist and now Editorial Page Editor Eric Mink, proves that not only can you get promoted if you try hard enough and if ownership roils enough on your paper that you're the only guy left, but also writes an attempted satirical column depicting a Bush book report on Camus' The Stranger:

Some lessons in this book: One, if this is a French masterpiece, then I don't want to hear the French whine about anything any more. Two, don't go sleeping around. Three, what'd I tell you about the Arabs? Four, capital punishment is a good thing, because it not only put this guy, Meursault, out of his misery but it put the rest of us out of our misery, too.

Now, that's hardly satire; as a matter of fact, that and the preceding paragraphs pretty accurately sum up the book. But Horrigan loves his own wit, and has to turn an enlightening summation of the book into an imagined indictment of Bush:

Five, the war in Iraq made us all safer. Six, keep your expectations low. And finally, anyone who believes I actually read this book probably still believes Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

Well, now. Honestly, I think Bush probably read the book--it's skinny enough and it's not Entangled Existentialism like Being and Nothingness. Also, I think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and may or may not still have undiscovered caches thereof, but I wouldn't expect the newly reconstituted Iraq defense forces to have a WMD program already.

Secondly, I was going to apologize for my ad homenim funning above about Kevin Horrigan's pedigree. But, on the other hand, that sort of rhetorical goofballery is the kind of thing that can get you on the editorial page of the Post-Dispatch, and I just want them to know I am available, and fond of my own biting wit.

(In a bit of Brian lore, when I checked The Stranger out from the Marquette University library, I also checked out another slender volume called The Outsider by Camus. As soon as I polished off the 120 pages of The Stranger, I opened The Outsider and found it to be a strangely familiar, yet laden with Existential meaning, experience. As you probably know, well-educated reader, The Outsider is the British translation of L'Etranger. Imagine my chagrin.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:02 PM