I probably wouldn’t have minded The New Republic so much if it hadn’t pretended to be liberal while Marty Peretz was at the helm. Eric Alterman (this excerpt is longer than usual, but it makes its point unusually well):
Well, it’s finally over. Martin Peretz, who, according to David Horowitz’s Frontpage webzine, “has been a pillar of responsible liberalism since buying The New Republic magazine in 1974 has finally been shown the door.
[…..] [W]hile it is true that under Mike Kinsley, Rick Hertzberg, and to lesser extent, Peter Beinart and Frank Foer, TNR lived up to its reputation as a lively, contrarian read on the week’s news with a strong liberal voice, its net effect — even in its best years — was to weaken liberalism and comfort conservatives. The primary problem was the fact that unlike say, Commentary, which after a few years of claiming that it had been “mugged by reality” owned up to its conservative conversion, TNR continued to insist that it spoke for American liberalism. And people who did not pay too close attention — or had their own reasons for indulging this conceit — played along. And so the virus of liberal self-hatred infected the entire bloodstream of liberalism — particularly with regard to Israel and the Palestinians — and bore at its body from within.The old “even the liberal New Republic” line that dates back to the Reagan era was no joke. Kinsley and Hertzberg could write the most brilliant eviscerations of Reaganite nonsense available anywhere, but the fact that elsewhere in the magazine, these same endeavors were receiving the enthusiastic endorsements not only of Peretz, but of Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke — even on occasion, the likes of Jeane Kirkpatrick and Richard Perle — counted for far more in the context of contemporary debate. The sad fact of political life in Washington is that “liberals” are never so influential as when they are throwing in the towel on their own team and endorsing the arguments of the other side. (The punditocracy tends to call this “moderation.”) The New Republic “mattered” when it endorsed the contras, the US war in El Salvador, the MX missile, Charles Murray’s racist pseudo-science, Republican lies about the Clinton health-care-reform plan, the Iraq War, and pretty much everything the Israeli government has said and done for the past 37 years; other times, not so much. Liberals making liberal points, however eloquently, might make other liberals feel better. They might help to inform their arguments. But they do not make news; they do not get their authors invited on Sunday shows or invited to the White House.
I think Peretz’s corruption of liberalism within the media went even deeper. He hired a lot of TNRers when they were young, just out of some Ivy League school. I knew a lot of the type of the kids he would hire and they are the most affirmation-craving people you could possibly imagine. A few years of getting patted on the head by a millionaire for churning out contrarian Harvard-dining hall bullshit leaves its mark on such souls. I don’t think Michael Kinsley ever recovered from it, though I agree he can be very sharp when he’s not basking in the brilliance of his own counterintuitive ironies. With nearly all of these TNRers, the desire to bust out “how genocide is good for your 401K” remained long after they were no longer in Peretz’s employ.
There’s no question that prominent so-called “liberals” in the media have wanked around “spreading freedom”, bashing unions, doing triple-backwards contrarian reverses, musing about IQs and school uniforms, while the American middle-class has languished on life support. That’s not right.
Alex S.
Mubarak isn’t even gone yet, and it’s already bad for Israel (/snark).
Kryptik
But Writer, isn’t this just more proof that we can’t dare have Liberals in charge of even Dog Catcher? I mean, even THEY can’t decide what they should believe in, why should we believe them?!
I’mma stop right there, since I just realized I can’t satirize this enough to out-absurd the dipshits on this.
jacy
I think that pretty concisely captures it. That’s exactly why I can’t stomach any of the adolescent ramblings of a Writer over the Daily Dish.
And there are so many of that ilk, it’s almost as if there’s a secret lab somewhere they raise them, far away from any messy real world experience.
Gin & Tonic
@jacy:
There is. Harvard.
BGinCHI
I think Yglesias still eats there.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
Did you mean “affirmation-craving?” Or are you saying the new TNR hires were mentally deranged?
D. Mason
You know, I was a child and not paying attention to politics at the time The New Republic was supposedly a liberal cornerstone but ever since I have been paying attention it has seemed like a publication about fence sitting.
ignatov
You left a “T” out of the author’s name.
cathyx
I knew a lot of the type of the kids he would hire and they are the most affirmation-crazing people you could possibly imagine.
I will assume you meant affirmation-craving people. These poor rich kids don’t get enough attention from mumzy and father because they are too busy with the lives that rich people lead. So the children are left to seek accolades from their bosses.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
@cathyx:
Thanks, I corrected it.
PeakVT
@BGinCHI: I find it a bit odd to watch his mind rot in real time.
As Peretz: good riddance to the shit.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I always skipped Marty when I had a digital subscription to TNR, reading Chait and Cohn. The best thing they did on the site was give him is own little corner.
I suppose you could knock them for claiming to be liberal, though – probably since I didn’t listen to Marty – I only heard it called liberal by others. They did claim to want to be in the middle.
There’s this one site associated with a giant cat that I visit a lot because of the same tone.
freelancer
Yeah. “Liberals”, like Senior Editors Andrew Sullivan, Michael Kelly, and Chuck Lane.
Kryptik
@freelancer:
But don’t you see? They gained sanity after taking a peek at the inner workings of the real liberal mind and converted from the sheer evil within! QED, bitches!
Quaker in a Basement
I knew a lot of the type of the kids he would hire and they are the most affirmation-craving people you could possibly imagine. A few years of getting patted on the head by a millionaire for churning out contrarian Harvard-dining hall bullshit leaves its mark on such souls.
I heard a loud “sproing” sound. I think it was Somerby getting wood.
lol
I wonder if there’s money/attention to be made as a self-styled conservative Republican pundit who nonetheless endorses Obama’s policies.
A less hysterical and more intellectually honest Andrew Sullivan if you will.
Paul in KY
@freelancer: Micheal Kelly, what a slimeball he was.
Zifnab
I think that’s not entirely fair. If you’re going to blame TNR for devouring liberalism from within, you might as well blame FOX for destroying moderation through the hackneyed use of the phrase “Fair and Balanced”.
That TNR editors kept getting attention by launching into contrarian self-hating diatribes was the product of a greater media atmosphere that rewarded this kind of liberals-bashing-liberals language.
Blame MTP. Blame the WaPo Op-Ed board. Blame the yuks who made Kate Couric the anchor for CBS. Blame Alan Colmes for taking a paycheck from Rupert Murdoch.
These are the guys that stacked the deck. These are the guys that turned over the megaphone to the con-artists and the lunatics. We’ve got a thousand small circulation newsletters that could have replaced TNR as it took a rightward turn. They were deliberately left untouched. Mother Jones and Washington Monthly and countless others – ignored because the big media networks didn’t want to broadcast their opinions.
If Peretz hadn’t poisoned TNR, the big media outlets would have just raided the Atlantic. Or the Politico. Get someone on screen who says he’s a liberal, and who is going to disagree? No one knows what the hell liberals believe anyway, except whatever stereotypes they picked up watching sit com tv.
aimai
Spot. Fucking. On. Writer Writer’son or whatever your name is.
aimai
Phil Perspective
DougJ:
Have you read the Old Grey Lady’s Peretz blow job in this weekend’s Magazine?
BruceFromOhio
And who are you, exactly?
Southern Beale
Dang well it’s about time. Good riddance.
On another note, thought people would be interested in this:
Special Report: A Long Island Tax Cut Backfires On The Tea Party
Especially:
Hello Teanuts, that is the free hand of reality slapping you on the ass….
GregB
Remember when Christine O’Donnell pooh-poohed evolution because there weren’t any monkeys that were evolving?
Christine O’Donnell weeps today.
Southern Beale
Money quote from Alterman’s piece:
This is true. Can someone please explain to me why? I don’t get it. Never have.
Keith
In Other News ….
It appears Bristol Palin has finally learned the withdrawal method.
That, or Wash U students protest too much.
Elia
The the last graph is something of an Andrew Sullivan’s Greatest Hits.
cleek
@Southern Beale:
60s
when the left freaked out and got all loud and protesty and impolite, it became déclassé and gauche to be an unabashed liberal. ambitious people then learned that they could prove their seriousness by punching hippies. thus was born The Serious Left, and it’s still effective, since Boomers still control everything.
Southern Beale
@cleek:
Really? Is that it? How … banal.
On second thought, that cannot possibly be correct. The Teanuts are loud and protesty and impolite, hell they are SHOOTING congress people and hanging them in effigy at meetings and walking around with guns strapped to their legs which the Dirty Fucking Hippie Pinko Commie Lefties never EVER did. They just broke some windows.
But the Teanuts are on the cover of every magazine and on every Sunday bobblehead show and CNN airs Teanut Madame Michelle Bachmann’s insane rebuttal to the rebuttal or whatever the fuck that was.
So no … it’s just gotta be something else.
a commenter at balloon juice a/k/a p.a.
does an editor emeritus draw a salary? maybe the heritage foundation can pick up the tab.
TheF79
Chait and Cohn are almost always a good read. I particularly enjoy Chait’s willingness to go after the “intellectuals” at various conservative think tanks. A lot of blog writers can entertainingly snark at the dumber denizens of the rightish blogosphere, but Chait can bring the snark and the wonk to bear on the big “thinkers,” exposing that their thinking is just as shallow and callow.
But Peretz was vile. Back when they had a more open blogging format from the staff, you could tell a Peretz post without reading the byline about two sentences in (clues: name dropping, terrible writing, insinuations that Arabs were genetically incapable of being peaceful, etc)
p.a.
‘heritage foundation’ gets me in moderation? or something else in a 1-line comment?
Southern Beale
@cleek: @Keith:
So Bristol is a quitter just like her mom? Shocker.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
So, Peretz and his money are on the loose? I’ve never owned a bespoke suit. I dress left, Marty.
Tim
So let’s get right down to what’s important: Given recent revelations that Peretz has long played for my ghey team, what are the odds that he was banging Sully back in the day?
Seriously.
Punchy
At least Medicare’s about to be fixed.
OT: Anyone else finding this site taking fooooooreveeeeeeeerrrr to load today? Slowest blog on the nets, bar none.
Southern Beale
@GregB:
Holy smokes, I have seen how this movie ends and it ain’t pretty!
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
Except, of course, when I’m in Israel.
Southern Beale
@Punchy:
Nope not today though I have had that problem in the past…
morzer
I keep hoping that DougJ might adopt the joyous and party-atmospheric moniker of “A Balloon At Writer-Juice” just to celebrate the fall of Sullivan’s enabler and proud peddler of ignorant, hate-filled and racist nonsense, the Arch-Wanker Peretz.
cleek
@Southern Beale:
the tea partiers have a long way to go to match the 60’s left.
have you read Nixonland yet?
and hell, the left is still burning effigies.
Phoebe
@Keith: Oh! I’m proud. I went there for law school. And by proud, I mean of the students, not the bozos who thought an “abstinence panel” was a good idea. At a college. If they had invited her to debate with Dan Savage, then ok. But this didn’t look like anything other than a bubbling bullshit stew.
Also:
Thank yooooooooooo.
asiangrrlMN
@Keith: They withdrew the contract after much protesting by the students. And, not to toot my own horn, but…
I wrote this post yesterday about Grifter Jr.
Then, this morning, I find out she’s been canceled. I’m taking all the credit, so phear me.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@Zifnab:
You know, as much as I trash the Atlantic, when NPR goes for an Atlantic liberal, they put James Fallows on. The official liberals at the Atlantic are Fallows and TNC. I’ll take them over Chuck Lane and Mike Kelly every day of the week.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@Phil Perspective:
No, I will check it out.
someofparts
I wondered about this. Satisfying to see the missing pieces of the jigsaw laid out.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
I see what you did there, you sex-beast liberal goddess you!
SteveinSC
Is anyone willing to take a run at the metamorphosis of some Jewish intellectuals from good ole left-wing, socialist/communist democrats to AIPAC-controled, enhanced interrogation excusing (a la, Dershowitz), right wing, crypto-fascist, end-timer/christianist-loving, Israel boosters. Oh, I guess I already did.
Bob
Can you say, Micky Kaus?
Buller? Buller?
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I like Chait and Cohn a lot and if there’s movement towards it becoming an actual liberal magazine, I will purchase an online subscription. I think that with Marty gone, it could become a good magazine. My view is that his grip has been loosening the last few years and a lot of the younger writers are pretty good.
morzer
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice:
He is planning to write a column and to do occasional blog-posts. Cthulhu hasn’t left the building quite yet.
And I still want to see you as “A Balloon At Writer-Juice”.
Uloborus
@Southern Beale:
Actually, I swear I’m starting to notice the MSM slowly about-facing. I thought it was them realizing the permanent Republican majority is not actually going to happen and there’s no one to genuflect to, but it could be that they’re noticing that the Tea Jerks aren’t Our Kind Of People!
burnspbesq
Hertzberg started at TNR?
AFAIC, that’s a perpetual get out of jail free card.
And Chait and Cohn are about as good as it gets these days.
Back off. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
burnspbesq
Guilt-by-association for writers is bull.
Jane Mayer worked at the Wall Street Journal for 12 years. You got a problem with that?
El Cruzado
@Southern Beale:
Conservatives are to be taken seriously.
Liberals are to be taken seriously when they agree with conservatives.
But there is no conservative bias anywhere, no siree.
Mike Kelly
As a long-time reader and very-infrequent poster, can I just apologize for my namesake’s inveterate douchebaggery. De mortuis nil nisi bonum does not apply here.
Midnight Marauder
@Southern Beale:
Shut up, you stupid liberal.
Bubblegum Tate
Apropos of this thread title, David Porter’s “I’m Afraid the Masquerade Is Over” came up on my iPod during my morning commute. I listened to it three times. What a beautiful, brilliant song–seldom have I heard something so perfectly capture the sadness of no longer being able to pretend that a relationship is working.
Arclite
Every time I read “A writer at Balloon-juice” I crack up.
That is too funny.
kyle
I knew a lot of the type of the kids he would hire
That’s some heavy research there. Good to have your first-hand experience with people other than the ones hired by Martin Peretz.
A few years of getting patted on the head by a millionaire for churning out contrarian Harvard-dining hall bullshit leaves its mark on such souls. I don’t think Michael Kinsley ever recovered from it
So Michael Kinsley is desperately in need of affirmation and that’s why he writes the way he does? Seems kind of a tough road for the long haul, since being contrarian, by definition, involves saying things that a sizable number of other people will disagree with.
In fact, you ever notice that Peretz himself was not one for flipping ideas over and spinning them around? He simply laid out his own narrow, brutal point of view.
Maybe Kinsley simply believes what he believes because he believes it, and he writes the way he does because that’s the way that’s natural to him. And other tnr semi-liberals express the views they have because not everyone is going to agree with you all the way down your checklist.
RSA
Krauthammer has been on the TNR masthead for years, which always struck me as strange–well, strange if I think about the “even the liberal New Republic” line.
joel hanes
I actually subscribed to TNR for a couple years.
As nearly as I could tell, it was a magazine about Israel.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: It is likely to make you annoyed. At least that was my visceral response.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q):
Thanks, I realized that about 45 seconds after I asked and deleted my comment since I already knew the answer.
maus
@Uloborus:
You think they think too much.
They saw a shiny, nothing more.
Sometimes it works slightly to our favor, usually not.
Uloborus
@maus:
No, no. It’s subtle, but not everything is being interpreted as good news for John McCain anymore!
bobbo
Genius.
Ken Pidcock
That’s some pretty heavy lifting for what is usually regarded hereabouts as an irrelevant rag, dontcha think?
agrippa
I never found TNR to be all that liberal. There seemed to be a lot of crankiness for the sake of crankiness; contrariness for the sake of contrariness.
Within the commentariat, I found TNR to be a leader in both.
I prefer a commentator to make sense. Sometimes, one of them approaches making sense.
Sherry Reson
@Zifnab: Zifnab rightly points to the larger socio-political environment. I grew up reading TNR in the ’50s-’60s when it seemed to me we did know what we believed and TNR seemed to inform and reflect that.
Today, Balloon Juice readers, writers, and commentariat (thank you @Stuart_Zechman for introducing me to that construct) might Virtually Speaking Liberally: What We Believe where he and @JayAckroyd tease out the meaning of liberalism for this decade. They’ve been brilliant on ‘centrism as ideology.’
Sherry Reson
After clicking to edit, how does one save the edit@Sherry Reson: I tried to add (something like)
“In recent decades, when I bothered to read TNR, I wondered if I’d imagined the good old days when we understood the relationship between liberal values|outlook and the importance to democracy of a strong middle and working class.”