I mostly know Michael Kinsley as the bemused and incredulous counterweight to Pat Buchanan during the glory days of Cross Fire on CNN. He was articulate and had a good eye for identifying and taking apart logical inconsistencies (fisking before fisking was cool). And I've always considered him the closest the Left can come to the multitude of quality commentators produced by their opponents on the right (George Will, Bill Kristol, Michael Barone, etc.).
But who knew he was funny? His latest column for the Washington Post, “Curse You Robert Caro!”, concerns his experiences as a judge for the 2002 National Book Award for nonfiction. Here’s a sample:
Well, imagine that you are sitting on the floor, surrounded by clouds of despair and mountains of Styrofoam packing popcorn. You tear open the next shipping envelope and out comes "A Certain Curve of Horn: The Hundred-Year Quest for the Giant Sable Antelope of Angola." Once again: No offense intended to the author of what may be a brilliant book. But the title seems designed to repel invaders rather than welcome visitors. If, with superhuman energy, you work up enough curiosity about the Giant Sable Antelope of Angola to at least open the book, the phrase "hundred-year quest" will kill it right off. And if your interest survives that second wave of defense, it will not, in its weakened state, have a chance against "curve of horn" -- a great who-cares phrase made even greater by the modifier "certain," which implies that the differences among curves of horns of animals in Angola that this book is concerned with are not even large or easily noticeable. Expecting us to overcome all these barriers and read the book anyway: That is what's unfair.
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