Finally, Something Not Your Fault, Only Poynter's

Every time the Book Babes top themselves with another boneheaded piece of publishing industry commentary, one wonders if they've finally managed to reach their limit. And yet they always manage to come up with something just a little more insipid, something so outrageous it may even bring Ed back from his jaded disdain for some choice rebuttal. This week, I think it may have happened. In response to Margo's recap of the Linda Jaivin controversy down in Florida, Ellen starts attacking coverage of the Abu Ghraib atrocities:

[D]on't you think that it's reasonable for people to expect that depravity won't be served up with our cornflakes? This expectation has been sorely tested this week. Over and over again, we see the same photos of prison abuse in Iraq. And now, you can even witness the slaughter of an American innocent on the Internet. When does freedom yield to a form of depravity, of witnessing torture and death as if it were normative?

Claiming "it's about figuring out what facts are fit to print," she suggests that it's time to exercise a little self-censorship, further suggesting "that at some point unfettered free speech leads to barbarism." Which may well be why, when she realizes that this is actually a column about the book biz and that she'd better mention a book, she reaches back to recycle the American Psycho brouhaha. Maybe she thinks Bret Easton Ellis taught our soldiers the fine art of torture. (If it isn't completely obvious by now, given my earlier cites to Sy Hersh in this blog, I'm as sickened and repulsed by the unfolding story as anyone--but I'm not blaming the messenger for that outrage, or suggesting that the news media shouldn't report on such atrocities because they might make me sad.)