David Halberstam

In the last six months it seems that all the wrong people are dying.

First, Molly Ivins, then Kurt Vonnegut and now David Halberstam. Irreverent truth tellers all, Halberstam was perhaps best know for his volumunous work on the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest, a tome that took the Kennedy Administration to the wood shed when most of the country was all moist eyed about Camelot and a bit thin- skinned about our bloody debacle in Southeast Asia.

It seems that Halberstam will be survived by a gaggle of grubby sycophants that are more concerned with their table assignment at the Washington Press Club and preserving their access to the rich and powerful than in actually relaying complicated truths to the American people.

I reprint below a bit from a 2005 essay in Vanity Fair that I (and apparently a lot of others) held on to:

We strut, all of us, too much. Our weaponry is so exceptional that our political
leaders need no allies-they dictate our plans, and if the allies do not agree
with us, they are called cowardly. Our businessmen are brittle, ever more sure
of themselves and their deals and their right to prosper on an ever grander
scale, whether or not they are competent at their jobs, even as they produce
less and less in terms of real goods. Our celebrities, so loudly heralded in
this entertainment age for what are often marginal talents, are more arrogant
and more self-indulgent than ever. Our athletes, when they go overseas for
international competition, are all too often an embarrassment in their personal
behavior.

When did all this happen? What are the roots? As we achieved
greater affluence in the 50 years after World War II, did we steadily become
more arrogant than our parents and grandparents, more convinced that we were
special and apart from other nations? Where is the country I thought I knew?
Where did our modesty go?

Once again, we are all a bit less.