Of mob politics and the decline of reasoned discourse

Funny thing about my new book: I had begun shopping around the proposal for writing it long before my brief period of employment with that other magazine and the subsequent witless chimp-brained media freakout and Caffeine-Free Diet Maoist struggle session that followed and climaxed with my being fired by Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg on my third day of employment there and after a good deal of stink eye from some seething young woman with an unfortunate All-Lesbian World Bowling Champion haircut loitering glumly in the coffee room. I was, for a few days, a writer …