"It's utterly bizarre!"

"They're just chanting 'Death to America,' but they seem friendly at the same time. It's utterly bizarre."

So reports CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward after chatting with Taliban members in Kabul on August 16, 2021. But is it really so "bizarre" -- that you can be a critic of American foreign policy and be pleasant at the same time? 

"Bizarre" might account for the inverse position: those who criticize American foreign policy are accessories to murder. But Americans have been using the word "death" to protest tax hikes since the days of King George III.

What has happened to news reporting in my lifetime? As Holland Carter once said of art criticism (in 2014), we are in need of "new commentators who don't mistake attitude for ideas."