Of all the Richard Holbrooke encomia I accidentally read this week, none affected me quite like the musings of bad father and excellent TV actor Alec Baldwin. I am laughing (through tears) as I copy and paste from “Remembering the Great White Shark of American Diplomacy“:
I did not know Holbrooke that well. Then again, I wonder if I ever could know someone as peripatetic as he was. Holbrooke was a political and diplomatic Great White Shark. Intellectually powerful, scaldingly opinionated, indefatigable. A gentleman who made even political sideliners, like yours truly, feel like a worthy comrade if you were genuinely on the side of one of the things Holbrooke seemed possessed by, and that was the truth. The extension of US military power and diplomatic cunning on behalf of global stability being the other.
I had no idea that Great White Sharks were “scaldingly opinionated.” That must be what separates them from regular sharks.