Glenn Reynolds gathers some posts from people who wonder to what extent anti-American reporting in the press is fueled by... the American punditocracy itself? He refers both to the small, loathsome minority among them who near-openly root for America's enemies, and to the far greater numbers whose critical views (sometimes fueled by intra-American partisan politics) are simply misunderstood by European journalists reading them out of context.
As Yogi Berra would say, "déja vu all over again". There is a bitter Jewish joke about antisemitic publishers never really getting anywhere until self-hating Jews started writing for them. I doubt this is what the Talmud had in mind when it admonished "Scholars, be careful with your words, lest you lead your disciples to a poisonous well, and they will drink from it and die" (Pirkei Avot 1:11). But like much of Pirkei Avot, its message is both universal and timeless: the greater the esteem a scholar or intellectual enjoys, the greater the care with which (s)he should express him/herself lest (s)he be misunderstood.
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