It would be an understatement to say that I became indignant when someone posed this question to me yesterday during a water-cooler chat with three colleagues. Like everyone else we were gabbing about the release of Amanda Knox. And, trust me, it was clear that he asked it more in disdain than in jest.
I ignored him; and neither he nor anyone else dared follow up.
But it occurred to me later that he might’ve been giving voice to a suspicion others share. The irony, of course, is that the reason I use quotes from previous commentaries is to distinguish myself from all of the other pundits and commentators who will say anything to “look good”. What is particularly galling is that they have no qualms about saying something today that completely contradicts what they said just days ago. And they get away with it because most people these days have the intellectual memory of scatterbrained gnats.
Anyway, I find it stupefying that anyone would think that I would go to the trouble of waiting for the Italian court’s decision on Monday, and then writing something, and then inserting that into a commentary I wrote two years ago on Amanda’s conviction, and then inserting it as the opening quote for Tuesday’s commentary on her release.
I’m sure regular readers know this is demonstrable bullshit. But since I had an easy and unassailable way of disabusing my colleague of his suspicion, I decided to do so.
Accordingly, today I brought in a hard copy of Volume V of my commentaries with its 2010 publication date and directed him to the chapter and page where the quote in question is memorialized in black and white.
I accepted his apology by autographing that copy and instructing him to take it to show the other parties to our chat why I ignored his question with such righteous indignation.