Over the past weekend a New York Post sports media columnist named Phil Mushnick attempted to eviscerate me for some of the columns I have posted here, most particularly my persistent references to the well-established irregularities which cast doubt on the validity of the 2004 Presidential election. To learn the linking code for the column I would have had to pay $3.95, so instead I'll paraphrase for you: Mr. Mushnick essentially charges that I am an insufferable egomaniac whose political ravings are too extreme to be relevant or effective, and that I made a dubious choice in 1991 to do a television infomercial for a finance company which later failed and attracted fraud charges.
Mushnick is entirely correct about the poor choice I made in 1991, and I'm glad he broke that story because it strikes me as really hot news. Post readers have waited a long time to learn the truth about that one.
As for my insufferable egomania, I'm reminded of a line from Bob Dylan's "Visions of Johanna": "show me someone who's not a parasite, and I'll go out and say a prayer for him". If my ego's insufferable, I regret that, but if you are going to make strong statements in public, and I do, it's useful to have some self-approval. After all, you're going to run into some Phil Mushnicks along the way.
Most of all I'm grateful to Phil and the Post for the useful promotion. He might have brought another half-dozen readers to the Huffington Post. And when I sign onto the site and read in the headlines that the Bush Administration continues to embarrass itself and the rest of us on the subject of global warming, that Katherine Harris is going to run for the U.S. Senate in Florida (has she already won? Is Fox News Channel ready to designate her the winner?) and that a British newspaper has established a link between the Bush "energy policy" and the desires of ExxonMobil, I know anything that brings more eyeballs here is a positive.
I was more than happy to be this week's sacrificial lamb, and I don't really think Phil Mushnick so much as laid a glove on us.