GIVING NO SLACK

I gotta start checking out newyorker.com more often. Had I known this profile of Crazy Lou Dobbs was online, I could have saved myself $4.50. It's a pretty fact-heavy but useless piece, doing exactly what Dobbs himself stands most firmly against: giving all sides a chance to filibuster without ever calling bullshit on anybody. Sure, it's objectively pro-Dobbs; the photo's a goddamn campaign ad. But still, Auletta seems unwilling to actually sack up and take a side on Crazy Lou's frothings one way or the other. Me, I think he's the king of dinner-hour comedy - some of what he says is true, but it's true in the most felt-not-thought, no-such-thing-as-gray possible way. (And that dead-eyed female substitute they get to run the show while he's out patrolling the border, or whatever, is like something out of They Live.) Anyway, read and enjoy, but don't expect to come away with your mind expanded, or even changed about anything. Ken Auletta's an empty-suit access-broker, one more rich white typist whose reputation is utterly mysterious to me.