This is a very

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This is a very post-9/11 Washington moment. It’s 3:30 in the morning and I’ve just been woken from my sleep by a large helicopter buzzing over and over my apartment building. My tense nerves are probably also quickened by the news (overplayed, I hope, here but also mentioned elsewhere) of rumors that some new attack, could be in store somewhere on Saturday the 22nd.

Let me briefly explain what this is about. A number of associates of the hijackers had bought tickets for flights on Saturday. A couple of them are still at large. The London Times really beats the drums about it and it is mentioned in the Washington Post and other American outlets, though a lot less prominently and with denials of a sort by American officials.

Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker told the Washington Post that “There is no credible evidence of any threat for Sept. 22.” And an “official” told the Associated Press that “We absolutely have no credible evidence to substantiate any major threat on that date although it did raise some suspicion” — which in case you’re asking, for my money, is a troublingly qualified response.

I spent part of the evening reassuring a friend that there likely wasn’t anything to this issue of Saturday, when all she and I had heard were rumors. But reading this stuff later in the evening I can’t deny that it made my body tighten and rippled at least echoes of tears under my eyes.

In any case, let me try to put the moment to some good use with this post. One of the occupational hazards of writing TPM is many readers’ distressing lack of irony or discernment. When I got to my computer just now I got an e-mail telling me that my line from yesterday evening (that “Democrats now being a politically oppressed group in Washington”) was “asinine.” I think this message actually came from a reasonably well-known columnist, who I went on TV with once, but I can’t be sure it’s her. She just shares the same name.

In any case, I wrote back and tried to deal with the matter as failing of diction rather than stupidity, noting that the more appropriate word might be “ironic” rather than “asinine.” But, to each her own, I guess.

I got another email from a conservative reader who agrees with me about Andrew Sullivan’s regrettable over-the-topedness but still says one can’t compare his scoring cheap political points with those who are, in essence, blaming the victims for this tragedy. I’m not sure I agree with the way this reader framed the distinction. But I think I probably do agree with him on the lack of a complete equivalence. So I take his point.

I had some questions about writing that post (which my friend Mickey Kaus has just linked to as a ‘Mezine Melee’) in large part because in person Andrew is mostly warm and kind-hearted; and he’s been generous to me.

I once told a friend that another on-air commentator wasn’t really an *$%hole, he just played one on TV. I’m not calling Andrew as $%#hole (far from it), but the broader concept, or rather distinction, applies. There are of course folks like David Horowitz who plays an *$#hole on TV and, as I learned from personal experience, really is an *$%hole. But I digress …

Anyway, those were my thoughts about the Sullivan post below. Though I was again disheartened by this late-night post which hits the ground praising Christopher Hitchens with lines like “Not everyone on the left has been craven” … and Hitchens “grasps what some other liberals haven’t” …

You get the idea.

So I still think my reader is right, that the equivalence is not quite there, that this kind of wild-eyed quality has just become Sullivan’s trademark. But somehow I keep expecting better. From those to whom much is given, much is expected.

The helicopter’s gone; so now I’m going back to sleep.

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