Ariel Sharon, Dead at 85

Cue The Knack.

After seven or eight years in a coma, Ariel Sharon died a couple of days ago in a hospital in Tel Aviv.

Me?  I can't stand Charlie Rose.  But his is one of the few places where famous people are actually allowed to actually talk in an extended format with a minimum of partisan nonsense from the host.  So he gets props for that, surely.  He's just so fucking annoying.

Anyway, he did a show on Sharon the other night, the last half of which was comprised of clips of him interviewing the man himself from as far back as the mid 90s.  If Charlie Rose was interviewing guys like Ariel Sharon in the 90s, and has continued to do so, five nights a week, up to the present day, you can argue that Rose has had more interesting conversations with more interesting people than anybody in the history of the world.  Which is really something, no matter how annoying the guy is.

And although Sharon, by the 1990s, was a rolly-polly, jolly sort of a guy with a difficult accent, one can never forget the fact that if you put him at the head of a division of tanks and pointed him towards, say, Egypt, that he was right up there with George S. Patton in the meanest motherfucker on the planet category.

When it comes to Jews In Tanks I'll always be a Moshe Dayan guy.

But here's a nod to Ariel Sharon.  Who was the real deal, and who, it should also be noted, is the man in the photo with the bandaged head.

Attention must be paid.

Resources:

The Times has a nice obit here.  A bit more beef than I've provided.