Just two notes on the passing of a very good journalist, but a very crusty personality. First, he added one of the best phrases to our political lexicon when, writing about the hubris and triumphalism of the ignorant lot Kennedy and Johnson surrounded themselves with in the years of escalation in Vietnam, he decided to entitle his work The Best and the Brightest. That these folks still, for the most part, consider themselves such should tell us just how intellectually vapid they are. Their neo-con younger siblings, who have given us our present-day horror show on the other side of Asia are not more stupid, or ignorant, or convinced of their own intellectual superiority; they are just more vocal about it.
I saw Halberstam speak exactly one time, about a week to two weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks. He was doing a tour to promote War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals, and was appearing at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. I sat in the back of the room, rapt as Halbserstam spoke, not of his book, but of his own experiences that fateful day. I have read some of the quotes Glenn Greenwald has compiled, even some of those close to 9/11, but all I remember was the way he managed to lead less a speech on a political topic, than a group therapy session in which all of shared our own pain and grief and sorrow. After the speech, as people filed out of the room for a book-singing session outside the lecture hall, I was standing in line when Halberstam put his hand on my shoulder (he came up behind me, and I jumped a little). "Would you like me to sign your book?" he asked. I smiled and handed it to him. "Geoffrey, with a 'g'," I said. He smiled as he signed my copy, which sits on my shelf. I am glad now that I had the opportunity to go and listen to him speak. A great journalist, and social critic (aren't they the same? shouldn't they be?), is gone, but his work lives on.
