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Things Worth Fighting for: Collected Writings

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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.

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 immorality of the protesters who would doom the Iraqi people and the World to a permanent Hussein tyranny. In ?Who Would Choose Tyranny? he reveals the absurdity of the argument that Iraqi?s would choose the jackboot of Sadaam to liberation by America.

The final section has some columns Mike filed during the early days of the war and personal E-Mails to his family and friends sent from Kuwait just before he left to meet his destiny with the Third Infantry Division. Even in these simple E-Mails, Mike?s profound skill with words is obvious. I know if Michael Kelly were alive today, no journalist would be better situated to write on the war?s justification and in eloquent support of the larger war on terror. No one would be better able to ridicule the fools on the left, the Michael Moore?s who spout absurdities and hurt our morale and resolve. Most importantly, no one would better shame the politicians and pundits who condemn the Bush administration without offering alternatives, who place electoral expediency over the national interest. Mike fought this his whole career. He would not refrain from criticism where such criticism is warranted but he would be believable, because he would place it in the context of the larger events that shape the direction of the world. No one did it better than him. Please buy this book, not only as a way of supporting Michael Kelly?s young family but because it represents the final legacy of a career cut tragically short. I am no fan of Maureen Dowd but she is absolutely correct in this assessment of Michael Kelly ?Michael died for two things he believed in: journalism and ridding the world of jackboots.? It will be small comfort to his beloved wife, children and parents but it may be of some consolation to fans of his writing.

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 the events covered ? as a spectator perhaps, but lived through it nonetheless. In some sense, Kelly helped me to look back and articulate what it was I felt during Bill Clinton?s terms as President of the United States, the Persian Gulf War, and September 11th. This book is well worth the time spent reading it. I didn?t always agree with his assessments, but I found much to think about. And it is a fitting memorial for a journalist that I wish I had known during his lifetime.

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 was killed in Iraq in 2003, and after you read this wonderful collection of his essays you will understand what a terrible loss that was to American journalism. He rose through the ranks of the establishment press but he never lost his inner core of tough working-class Irish-Catholic values. This made it possible for him to ruthlessly bust phonies and hacks in the age of Clinton, and gave his work an irrefutable moral clarity after 9/11. As editor he revitalized "The Atlantic" into a fascinating, readable magazine. Plus, he seems to have been an incontestably decent, lovable guy. So when someone like Maureen Dowd (who has a favorable quote on the back cover of the book jacket) read some of his opinions that I'm sure she detested, she couldn't gainsay his integrity.

Here are his brutally candid portraits of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson, which no doubt startled and disturbed the rest of the usually somnolent Washington press. (You won't soon forget Kelly's account of Jackson's thoughtless cruelty to a chubby little kid.) Kelly was a lonely voice in the mainstream media who actually called for the impeachment of President Clinton, and in searing, Mencken-esque prose he describes his reasons. Here also are his reports from the war zones of the Balkans and Kuwait and Iraq. Kelly not only clearly depicts the ravages of war but the horrors of dictatorship. That Kuwait was "raped" by Saddam's military can't be disputed after reading Kelly's reporting. In a time when someone like Michael Moore is lionized as a hero, it helps to remember another, honest reporter who saw the world clearly, and put his life on the line about "things worth fighting for."

After looking forward to his regular writings as published in the Washington Post for a number of years, Michael Kelly's death had a personal impact that surprised me. I took his material for granted until it no longer appeared. He was a great journalist. I am so happy that his writings have been collected for me to re-read as many times as I like. As a student of journalism, veteran and a mother now living and working in Washington DC, so much of his material hits home. He is a great writer whose prose is enjoyable and worth reading even when you might disagree on the issue. This is a guy who spared no one his critical eye and sharp wit. What a loss. What a terrific volume of work.

Michael Kelly was a true journalist, a term term that had become so bastardized by the modern media as to be unrecognizable. But Kelly lived what he wrote about and had the ability to convey war and politics with devastating truth and piercing accuracy. He was just as brilliant when describing a horrifying war scene as he was fileting the likes of scoundrels such as Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy.

"Things Worth Fighting for" is poignant not only for the words inside, but the awful reminder of what was lost a year ago.

Michael Kelly embodied the very finest ideals of what a great journalist could and should be. A keen observer of world events and the human condition, a brilliant writer and artist with words, an objective reporter dedicated to the pursuit of truth...Kelly was all of these things. He was also apparently a heckuva friend to people who knew him; a decent, honest, likeable guy. All of these things shine through in his reports and essays. We grieved when we lost him in Iraq, and the grief is re-awakened when we realize afresh how profoundly his wisdom and reportage is missed now. A man of faith who dearly loved his family and his country, Michael Kelly was everything an aspiring journalist today should hope to be. May Kelly's legacy be one of inspiring a new generation that will restore integrity to journalism.

I bought this book in order to read the authors columns on the Iraqi wars. I heard about the author too late to read much of his work in real time so this book was a nice review of his work. The book offers so much more then just the war columns. In fact some of his better writing might be in his coverage of politics in the 90's. Lastly, I bought the book because a heard some of it read on CSPAN and if you enjoy solid, quality writing then this author has to be on your list. The more I read the book the more I enjoyed the writing. The author is a master at low key yet biting humor and he makes you feel good not being one of the hip in crowd.

Although I picked up the book for the coverage of the war, and I enjoyed that a great deal, what I really liked was his brutally honest columns on some political figures. I will never be able to look at Jesse Jackson again the same way. The view that the author paints of Jackson is so unflattering that you have to think Jackson probably hated no man more. What was so great about the reporting was that the author brought out some of the more low key traits of Jackson that lead to bigger issues. Only knowing a bit about Jackson, I saw the traits and started to see where the author was going. I also loved his view of Perot, the picture he paints is of a small little man that has let his ego and paranoia take over in equal parts. I would not be surprised if the man has a food taster at the ready.

The coverage of Clinton was also fair I felt. This is to say that it would make a Clinton fan a bit uncomfortable. Overall the author does seem to take to task Democrats more then Republicans, but his targets of choice are so deserving of his attention that it is hard to make a case for bias. Overall this is a wonderful book. The author was a gem, a true master with the language. He could make the most dull topics sing off the page. If you are a fan of the author then this is a nice book to keep his memory alive. If you are new to him then you will be excited to read each page and will only be disappointed when the book comes to an end.