A highlight of the week

was going with my friend A. to see David Remnick interview Seymour Hersh as part of the New Yorker festival. It went really well. Fascinating stuff about the internal culture of the military, especially the really good guys: because of my job, I found most compelling of all a very eloquent moment when Sy went off on how the high-up military types really do feel themselves in loco parentis with those kids (no thing more dangerous than an 18-year-old with a gun, he pointed out) and that the awfulness of the Abu Ghraib thing--the horror felt by officers thinking about it--is that part of their job is to stop those kids like Lynndie England from debasing themselves like that and undergoing a kind of moral degeneration that can't really be reversed. I wish I had his exact words, this doesn't quite do it justice. At any rate, a very interesting evening.