Osama's Pal Gets Kakutanied!

There's a reason many an author fears and loathes Michiko Kakutani, the NYT's literary critic. Here are a few courtesy of Wikipedia:

[Kakutani's] more famous excoriations include: John Updike's Seek My Face ("bogus in every respect"); Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons ("cheap, jerry-built affair that manages the unfortunate trick of being messy and predictable at the same time"); and Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis ("a long day's journey into tedium").

Ouch!

Today, Dinesh D'Souza, spiritual, intellectual, and cultural brother of Public Enemy No. 1 Osama bin Laden gets the Kakutani Treatment. Kakutani review's D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11. It ain't pretty:

...[T]his embarrassing volume is an out-and-out partisan screed made up of illogical arguments, distorted and cherry-picked information, ridiculous generalizations and nutty asides. It’s a nasty stewpot of intellectually untenable premises and irresponsible speculation that frequently reads like a “Saturday Night Live” parody of the crackpot right.

And then:

...D’Souza often sounds as if he has a lot in common with those radical Middle Eastern mullahs who are eager to subject daily life to religious strictures and want to curtail individuals’ freedoms and civil liberties.

And finally,

It’s an interpretation [D'Souza] does not deny: “Yes,” he writes, “I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap.”

Yep, that's pretty much what he said on teevee.

As an aside, courtesy of the review, I learned that Osama's kids engage in good, old-fashioned, wholesome pasttimes like playing Nintendo. I bet Dinesh approves.