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Scott Long

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I misremember Iraq

By 57

Scott Long comments on the Brian Williams scandal that he lied about his experience in Iraq, but he doesn’t understand why this is an issue. Williams made up a story, but he was in the middle of the most fantastic made-up story in American history. The Iraq war was a gigantic fiction: the reasons were fake, the goals were fake, the triumph was fake. Rather than Williams’ tall tales, the real scandal is journalism’s complete submission, as the “war on terror” raged, to the fantasies of patriotic allegiance.

Why I am not Charlie

By 472

Scott Long writes about the killings at Charlie Hebdo and the debate over free speech, Islamophobia and the meaning of solidarity. He writes, “There’s a perfectly good reason not to republish the cartoons that has nothing to do with cowardice or caution. I refuse to post them because I think they’re racist and offensive. I can support your right to publish something, and still condemn what you publish. I support free speech. I oppose all censors. I abhor the killings. I mourn the dead. I am not Charlie.”