Petraeus on Capitol Hill and here it's quiet

Insulting to whom?

And it's not really an OpEd per se. Cavett's had a blog in the online opinion section for a while. Not much of a writer.

He's almost entirely insufferable, but I give him credit for a lot of great bookings when he had his late night show on ABC.

 

Sly Stone was an all time classic.
So was Hendrix.

 

Insulting to General Petraeus.

Agree its more of a blog but it uses Times opinion section as it's launch point.

Petraeus has done as good a job as possible under very difficult circumstances and Cavett is worried about the words he chose.

As said, on some level its very funny. It just seems misplaced in location.

The Times as a whole has always given Petraeus very favorable coverage. When he was head of 1o1st he allowed he gave Times reporter Jim Dwyer tremendous access which resulted in some very good stories at start of the war.

 

I wasn't sure if you meant insulting to the general or to the reader.

I think Cavett's central premise was OK - the emptiness of language used by the DoD and its attendant bureaucrats - but he didn't do much with it. And that complaint goes back to the Vietnam era in any case, when the military's corruption of common sense language really began in earnest.