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I Found It in the Reference ListNovember 07, 2005 Sorry for the weekend silence; I'm rushing to get one big job done so I can devote my full attention to the other big job I've got, the one I've been stirring one-handed for the last few weeks. Designated Blog Time hasn't been till 11 p.m. or so, and after hours of untangling sentences, cross-checking facts, and tracking down AWOL URLs, I can't think straight enough to compose a coherent sentence. Well, OK, coherent sentences are possible, but interesting coherent sentences are out of reach. Especially when you want to write about suicide bombers and the latest effort to vision the future of Martha's Vineyard. (Probably not in the same blog, but now that you mention it -- who knows?) I guess I could have stayed home in the afternoon and blogged then, before the brain went sludgy . . . Instead of riding? Surely you jest. Not to mention that my brain customarily takes its long siesta after noon: the body functions fine, but the mind likes to set aside tangled prose and devote its full attention to making up grain, picking out paddocks, and (yesterday) persuading Allie to do a shoulder-in instead of the leg yield she thought I was going to ask for. Anyway, last night I did my second pass through the 60-page reference list (aka bibliography). Reference lists are the cesspools of academic and other nonfiction manuscripts: authors dump everything in there, and the copyeditor gets to pump it out and make sense of it. OK, so it's not that gross, but it is tedious grunt work and just about manageable by the brain that would rather be skimming e-mail, taking the dog for a walk, or falling asleep. Or playing one last game of FreeCell (don't ask). Once in a while, though, a little gem sparkles through the sludge, often when you least expect it. All I was doing was Web-checking the name of a Paris publisher that looked bogus, mainly because diacritical marks tend to go awry when files are transferred from one format to another, one computer to another. The book was Saddam Hussein (remember him?), the authors were Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie. While Googling the book and hoping to get a definitive spelling of the publisher's name, I realized it was that Judith Miller, the latest embarrassment to the journalistic profession, whose shenanigans have somehow spun her into a poster child for the First Amendment. Hunting for details about the book, I happened on a couple of bloggish sites that offer it as evidence that Judith Miller has been a lousy journalist for quite some time, like since the 1980s. The fun stuff, though, was about her co-author, Ms. Mylroie, who seems to be a crusading anti-Saddamite. Pretty soon I was flying through date-by-date recountings of who met who when and where -- if only I'd managed to keep my eyes open, I'm sure I would have learned the real truth behind Plamegate, the disastrous invasion/occupation of Iraq, the U.S. disastrous Middle East policy in general, and and the ass-kissing spinelessness of certain standard-bearers for the Fourth Estate. Tomorrow. I'll figure it all out tomorrow.
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