“right to life”: a political tool

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A highbrow article today about absurdity of the “right-to-life” movement reminded me that there is often a surrealist disposition in the high journalist voice—call it a philosophical import of the highly raised eyebrow (so entertaining in Gail Collins' columns, so overtly surreal in Mareen Dowd's columns). Factuality about uncanniness can’t easily hide (to this reader) a sense of drollness, if not cynicism about the ordinary theater of there being no theater.

It's something, I think, that must become the fate of the seasoned journalist who doesn't quit the world to do gardening in some backcountry. Though journalism is always in a mode of raised eyebrow, the reality cramps the eyes, as the hand must still write objectively.