I have to interupt that first phone call with M. Stanton Evans to recount an anecdote of the moment, inconsequential but nonetheless related to McCarthy. Most of them are.  

The Washington Post published Stan's obituary today. It was going along fine until it got to McCarthy and Blacklisted by HIstory.

There's something to be said for even getting to McCarthy and Blacklisted by History, Stan's magnus opus. Some do not.

It wasn't the nearly impossibly circular summation of the book (McCarthy was himself a victim of "in effect, a left-wing form of McCarthyism")  that caught my eye. It was obituary writer Matt Schudel's use of two attack-quotes (and no praise) to make his point.

"The book was admired by some reviewers in right of center journals," he wrote, "but others found it wrong-headed and intellectually specious." Then Schudel quotes two such "others" but no "some." That's not fair -- and especially in a man's obituary.

I thought that deserved a tweet (see above).

And what did the intrepid obituary writer say to that?

Zilch. He "blocked" me.