I'm Only Asking

In the June issue of Harper's Ben Metcalf poses some interesting questions. For example this juicy number:
Because I am loath to violate whatever fresh new mores the people have agreed upon, or have been told they agree upon, and because I do not care to have my ass kicked repeatedly in a holding cell while I beg to see a lawyer, I almost hesitate to ask the following question. I will ask it, though, out of what used to be called simple human decency: Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands?

Another excerpt:
True, George W. Bush is an ignorant, cruel, closed-minded, avaricious, sneaky, irresponsible, thieving, brain-damaged frat boy with a drinking problem and a taste for bloodshed, whose numerous crimes have been abetted by the moral corruption of his party cohort and whose contempt for American military lives alone warrants his impeachment, but what has it ever won us to say so? How has it profited the people for their writers to argue that a wealthy, comfortable citizen deserves a wealthy, comfortable retirement when we all know full well that he has earned confinement and conviction and perhaps even a request for that barbaric death penalty he so loudly supports? What goal, besides an impoverished guarantee of my own personal “freedom,” is served by a refusal to acknowledge that I might easily, and enjoyably, rid us of this man forever with my very hands? [Full article here. Found via Frank's Wild Lunch.]

And file this under "Who's Minding the Fucking Store?" The Washington Post review of Ron Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine.

Finally, check out David Byrne's consideration of Hitler's Secretary and E.B. White's This Is New York.