Things Worth Fighting for: Collected Writings

I have been a fan of Michael Kelly since I first discovered him in the pages of the New Republic back in the early nineties. He was that rarest of pundit/journalists. He was a man profoundly interested in truth and profoundly disgusted by modern ?spin.? Although a moderate liberal by birthright and inclination, Kelly found himself moving further and further from the reservation as the Clinton years proceeded. Kelly eventually was fired as editor of the New Republic for being too harsh on the Clinton administration. He then found his way to a regular syndicated column in the Washington Post and a job as editor in chief of the Atlantic, which he turned around completely. He became an embedded reporter during the Iraq war and as most know was tragically killed when his jeep came under fire and crashed on the way to Bagdhad. He was forty seven and left a wife and two young sons. We will never read the book he would have written about the war. I have no doubt it would have given us the real story, unvarnished and without an agenda. Because that?s what Kelly was about. His loss is not just a tragedy for his family, it is a national tragedy because a vital voice has been lost at a crucial time in American history. A reading of this brilliant collection of Kelly?s writings will attest to just how great the loss is. This book is a collection of Mike?s writings from 1990 through his death in 2003. The book is organized, not chronologically but by section. There is a section on ?Visions of America? in which Kelly?s columns and articles on American culture in the nineties is collected. These writings display the wit and satire for which he was well known. In sections on politics and the ?Age of Clinton? Kelly skewers the emptiness of ?spin? politics, when elections become nothing more than winning a game and where image and perception are more important than substance. His more lengthy personality profiles are brilliant examples of the genre and reading his profiles of Jesse Jackson in middle age, Ross Perot, Louis Farrakhan, Hillary Clinton and many others will bring back memories of a time that seems long distant now. His descriptions of the results of Sadaam?s tyranny against Kuwait will churn the stomach more than a decade later. His account of the first Gulf War brings home the reality of modern combat brilliantly. He also wrote bemusedly, in a section on family, about the world of his toddler and pre-school sons who he obviously loved dearly.It is in his post 9/11/01 writings, however, that Mike really found his voice. As the stark reality of the struggle we face was brought home, Kelly remembered, less than fondly, the profound emptiness of the Clinton age, and looked forward to a time of newly found resolve. I am sure he would be horrified at the breakdown of the national consensus, along party lines. As the argument began for action against Iraq, Kelly?s most eloquent essay, ?Immorality on the March?, demonstrates the profound

Michael Kelly, Things Worth Fighting For: Collected Writings, is a compilation of works written by Kelly over a period of about fifteen years. I had not read any of his columns or essays before reading this book and, indeed, barely paid much attention to the announcement of his death covering the Iraq War as an embedded journalist. That was to my own detriment, as I think, after having devoured these essays, I would have enjoyed following his witty, sometimes graphic, occasionally grim, and always insightful writing. The book is divided into sections generally covering periods such as the Clinton Administration, the Gulf War, the Palestine/Israel peace accords, the War on Terror and the Iraq War. There are also pieces on culture and society (including some short biographical works on Jesse Jackson and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley Jr.), and even some emails he sent to his family while in Iraq. Publication date and original source for each essay and column are at the end of the book ? I would rather that that information been included in the headings for each. There are enough of his writings collected in the book to get a sense of the man and even some hints of the evolution of his thoughts and attitudes. His writing style is fluid and succinct. I could just barely stop reading the book when it was time to go to sleep each night.The most poignant, and graphic, of his writings included in this book are those covering the Gulf War. He started it having never seen the human and material costs of war first-hand and ended it believing that there truly are things worth fighting, and dying, for. Kelly describes the torture and murder that the Iraqi regime visited on Kuwaiti civilians sparingly but with enough detail that you are left wondering how such evil could have been allowed to survive the war without proper punishment. When reading his coverage of the Iraq War it is apparent that his experiences during the Gulf War informed his reporting and his attitudes.Kelly?s writings about the Clinton Administration are interesting for the analysis of Bill Clinton the man. Clinton?s childhood environment explains, though it doesn?t excuse, some of his behavior. His mother?s outlook, ?taught, ultimately, that people are not to be judged by their actions, but are endlessly free to reinvent themselves?.Since ?what-ifs? do not exist,, one needn?t worry that the promise of the moment cannot be met in the future?.[and] Since the ?irrelevant? past does not really exist either, the actions of the moment cease to exist once the moment becomes the past, and cannot be held against one later.? As with his war reporting, the selections included in the book give a sense of the change his viewpoint underwent during Clinton?s terms in office ? going from a somewhat neutral analytical tone to weariness from, what he felt was, the incessant lying and prevarication of a man who should be impeached.This collection is particularly interesting to me because I lived through all of t

The review from the "Reader from LA" had so many typos that one suspects it was written by Barbra Streisand and should be treated accordingly, but as someone who was inspired by Michael Kelly to go to Afghanistan, I would like to point out that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal maniac and if it was not right to overthrow him, it was not right to overthrow anyone. More than 300,000 graves have been found so far, many of them infants and children. If America doesn't care, no one will care. Michael Kelly was always a liberal, but one with his feet on the ground which is why he wrote so powerfully against the Clintons, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson and every other person who has confused personal welfare with public welfare. What made Michael Kelly's work so lasting is that he wasn't standing up for privilege or power. He shared the liberal instinct, but was far too intelligent to fall for empty rhetoric. One's feeling toward Michael Kelly is a bellwether of one's own intelligence, character and empathy. His loss will be deeply felt. This book collects most of his most important pieces and what is striking is how almost nothing is dated. Although many of his subjects are now history, the principles Kelly stood for and the style of his writing make these pieces as alive and timely as if he wrote them today. If there is any criticism of this book, it is that it is not a "collected works," but maybe we'll have that one day, too.

This is a remarkable book. Having Michael Kelly?s essays and columns together in a single volume is a treasure. Reading them together, seeing themes developed in a way that was not visible when the essays came out individually, gives them an extraordinary cumulative power.There are essays in this volume that are worth the entire book, including Kelly?s two-page essay on the degeneration of political protest (?Imitation Activism?), the classic ?Nice Column,? essays about the Middle East (?Arafat Bombs on Opening Night?), and an essay written on September 11, 2001 (?When Innocents Are the Enemy?) that cannot be read often enough.LA Reader?s comment below is unfortunate, not only for its personal denigration and political criticism in the guise of reviewing a book, but because of its intended effect ? to persuade readers to skip a literary work of enduring value that belongs in every serious library.

Michael Kelly spared no words, not even "fighting words," when he was writing with that righteous fervor about something he saw that was wrong. I so looked forward to Wednesdays when his column would run in the Washington Post, with a perspective that was fresh and articulate, and which skewered the "political correctness" and conventional wisdom which surround us. His book about the 1st US/Iraq war, Martyr's Day, of which there are excerpts here, is unbeatable journalism which does not really age with time. Michael supported the 2nd US/Iraq war, and in fact his life ended while he was there covering it. But another wonderful aspect of his writing was that eternity was implicit between the lines, and would peak out when he wrote about his family, or the vignettes he could capture so naturally and effectively. And for me, the eternal was also present even when he was very down to earth, for example writing about something like the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, because he would unhesitatingly remind us that there is right and wrong in this world of ours. His work well justifies publishing this collection.