Politics: CHARLES PIERCE, BABY

Pierce is sitting in for Alterman today, as the Alternator is hocking "What Liberal Media?". Everyone should go there and read every word Pierce has to say. I want to have Pierce write two weblogs and column for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. Read:

Richard Perle should go. Today. He shouldn't simply be fired from whatever job it is he has at the Pentagon -- Strategist? Consultant? Pro-consul? -- but he should be fired as a talking head. What Perle said about Sy Hersh, which has Josh Marshall's dander up here, as well as my own, as well as the dander of anyone who takes this craft seriously, should disqualify him forever from a place in our national discourse. Now, I know from reading the above-mentioned volume that nobody ever gets fired from that job, at least not for lunatic Rightism, but shouldn’t the leaders of major journalistic institutions realize that they've been threatened here by a messianic unelected yahoo who's been agitating for other people's blood for a flat decade or so?

I mean, if Perle got up on CNN tomorrow and announced he was Napoleon Bonaparte, or that his politics were formed by dictates from Zonga, Queen Of Neptune, we never would see the man on TV again. What he said about Hersh was no less nutty, and considerably more dangerous to any of us who believe that a democracy should not have to be lied into a war. CNN should lose his card from the big Rolodex. The New Yorker should find him unavailable for comment. He should be sent off to declaim his geopolitical genius from atop an orange crate in Tompkins Square.

Argument to the contrary: every morning, in the lobby of the UN, I see my representative during this perilous time.

John Negroponte.

There’s never a wreath of garlic around when you need one.

Read it, and tell Pierce he needs a blog of his own or two.