LITTLE IMPORTANT INTERVIEW ~

RICKS: I think that Benghazi generally was hyped, by this network especially, and that now that the campaign is over, I think he's backing off a little bit. They're not going to stop Susan Rice from being secretary of state.

SCOTT: When you have four people dead, including the first dead U.N. ambassador -- U.S. ambassador in more than 30 years, how do you call that hype?

RICKS: How many security contractors died in Iraq, do you know?

SCOTT: I don't. 

RICKS: No. Nobody does, because nobody cared. We know that several hundred died, but there was never an official count done of security contractors dead in Iraq. So when I see this focus on what was essentially a small firefight, I think, number one, I've covered a lot of firefights. It's impossible to figure out what happens in them sometimes. And second, I think that the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of Republican Party.

SCOTT: All right. Tom Ricks, thanks very much for joining us today.

RICKS: You're welcome.

EARTH ~

JULY MOUNTAIN




We live in a constellation

Of patches and of pitches,

Not in a single world,

In things said well in music,

On the piano, and in speech,

As in a page of poetry —

Thinkers without final thoughts

In an always incipient cosmos,

The way, when we climb a mountain,

Vermont throws itself together.


_________________  


Wallace Stevens
Selected Poems
(Knopf 2009)



 

Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens

Key West, 1940

photo: Alexandra Schueler