Reviewing Dinesh D’Souza's new book, which attempts to implicate the cultural left for helping cause 9/11, Dean Barnett fires off a postmodern update to a classic Reagan riff:

While I’m tempted to compare certain precincts of the publishing industry to a crack whore that would turn any trick for money, that would be unfair to the crack whores of the world.

Power Line's Scott Johnson adds:

After I became aware of the learned critic John Simon in the late 1960's I saw him on one of the daytime television talk shows. Jacqueline Susann was the guest; the host was David Frost, and Frost was conducting a gushing interview with Susann about The Valley of the Dolls. Was this some kind of set-up? He turned to John Simon, sitting in the first row of the audience, and invited him to ask Susann a question or two. Simon asked Susann: "Do you think you are writing art or are you writing trash to make money?" (The interview degenerated into a memorable spectacle, as recalled in this remembrance of Susann by Abby Hirsch.)

Simon and Susann briefly exchanged comments and Susann then asked Simon if he'd read the entire book. Simon responded that he'd read only the first 40 or 50 pages, but that it isn't necessary to eat all of a wretched, putrid stew before you get sick and spit it out. That's how I feel about Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.

Taking a contrarian tack, James Lileks writes that there could be something to D’Souza's new tome, reminding us of the shocking lyrics of the hit song by the slatternly blonde video and pop star at the height of her career when Osama Bin Laden's chief mentor toured the United States.

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