Jacob Weisberg: The tone of good web writing grows out of email. It's...

In trying to explain our political paralysis, analysts cite President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for important legislation. These are large factors to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit of all: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.

Jacob Weisberg

political important ignorance

Artists like to talk about what they do with people who've read their books, or seen their films.

Jacob Weisberg

artist book people

Not all negativity is bad. In politics, it's a necessary clarifying tool.

Jacob Weisberg

clarifying negativity tools

Nearly everyone who chooses to work for Donald Trump is disreputable in one way or another; Ali Baba didn't find 40 wise men in the cave. But to label everyone in Trumpworld a grifter misses important subtleties. It conflates grifters and grafters, and it ignores the crucial distinction between the two.

Jacob Weisberg

wise work men way

All kinds of gambling, from bingo to baccarat, are benign entertainment for most people, dangerously addictive to a few, and capable of breeding unwanted side effects for society.

Jacob Weisberg

gambling entertainment society people

Book collectors are thrill-seekers. It is a vegetarian hunt to be sure, without much exertion or risk, but the endorphin rush of the chase and the adrenaline high of the capture are much the same with first editions as I imagine they must be in the pursuit of 10-point stags, largemouth bass, or 20-foot waves at Maverick's.

Jacob Weisberg

waves high capture book

Raised in a house filled with old books, I'm drawn to them: the dust jackets that call out a historical moment, the marbled boards, the words pressed into the page with movable type.

Jacob Weisberg

words moment historical house

Whether couched in terms of envy, admiration, or derision, celebrity fascination begins as an exercise in imagining what it would be like to lead a more carefree and pleasurable life.

Jacob Weisberg

celebrity envy exercise life

Without medical records that he hasn't released, we can't know whether Gingrich may have inherited his mother's manic depression. Nevertheless, one observes in the former House Speaker certain symptoms - bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, racing thoughts, spending sprees - that go beyond the ordinary politician's normal narcissism.

Jacob Weisberg

thoughts medical mother depression

Middle-class Americans really don't want to hear about sacrifices or trade-offs - except as flattering descriptions about how ready we, as a people, are, or used to be, to accept them.

Jacob Weisberg

accept ready want people

The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong.

Jacob Weisberg

you reading world school

The use of torture on suspected terrorists after Sept. 11 has already earned a place in American history's hall of shame, alongside the Alien and Sedition Acts, Japanese internment during World War II, and the excesses of the McCarthy era.

Jacob Weisberg

place war history world

The leader who loves books that tell him he is great and right may be worse than the leader who does not love books at all.

Jacob Weisberg

great tell leader love

Political analysts tend to overinterpret the results of isolated elections.

Jacob Weisberg

elections isolated results political

The first conversation I ever had about the Internet was in 1993 with Robert Wright, who was then a colleague at the 'New Republic.'

Jacob Weisberg

new who internet conversation

Thanks to Twitter, I learn about the revolutions in the Middle East via Arab activists and writers, not just from American foreign correspondents.

Jacob Weisberg

learn american just thanks

In authoritarian societies, cultural institutions tend to become ideological proxies - think of the National Ballet in Cuba or the East German gymnastics team.

Jacob Weisberg

become think cuba team

Academic Marxists were never going to be convinced that anything that happened in the real world could invalidate their belief system. Utopians of the Right, libertarians are just as convinced that their ideas have yet to be tried and that they would work beautifully if we could only just have a do-over of human history.

Jacob Weisberg

work history world ideas

As with the government failures that made 9/11 possible, neglecting to prevent the crash of '08 was a sin of omission - less the result of deregulation per se than of disbelief in financial regulation as a legitimate mechanism.

Jacob Weisberg

result possible sin government

The best thing you can say about libertarians is that because their views derive from abstract theory, they tend to be highly principled and rigorous in their logic.

Jacob Weisberg

say best you logic

The tone of good web writing grows out of email. It's more direct, personal, colloquial, urgent, witty, efficient. It doesn't waste your time. It reflects that engagement, responsiveness, and haste of web surfers, as opposed to the more general passivity of print readers.