Ta-Nehisi Coates Isn’t a Talented Writer with Bad Ideas. He’s a Bad Writer with Bad Ideas

In the news quite a bit last week was Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book The Message and its predictable chapter about the evils of Israel, gleaned from a ten-day visit to the West Bank. The book, in which the author proudly advertises his lack of intellectual curiosity about its subject matter, probably doesn’t deserve attention at all, let alone two excellent reviews. (If you simply want an enumeration of the facts Coates got wrong, see here.) Barton Swaim rejects the notion, oft stated by Coates’s critics, that he is a brilliant writer with bad ideas; rather, argues Swaim, he is a bad writer with bad ideas. I’ll spare you from having to read the quotation dissected here: