There’s something so cynical about the way bloggers on the left cite John Derbyshire. Here’s The American Prospect’s Garance Franke-Ruta on Derb’s review of Ramesh Ponnuru’s The Party of Death:
I’ve got to give a hand to John Derbyshire’s editors at the New English Review, who published the piece Matt cites. The gap in quality between this piece and the writings of someone with the same name and professional history at National Review’s The Corner could serve as a case study on the dangers of turning to blogging when you should really just be writing articles, and of the difference between carefully constructed thoughts and tossed off asides.
Why do I get the feeling that the difference between “carefully constructed thoughts” and “tossed off asides,” for Franke-Ruta, is the same as the difference between instances in which she agrees with Derb and instances in which she does not? For instance, Derb has written at length on the Corner about his problems with the idea of teaching Intelligent Design in science classes. I seriously doubt Franke-Ruta would disagree with Derb’s arguments in this area — does she still consider him ill-suited for writing “tossed off asides” in such instances?
Liberals quote Derb when they find it convenient and pretend that his other writings, which derive from the same principles, are just poorly reasoned. But Derb is remarkably consistent; his fairweather fans less so.