March 12, 2003
DOES ANYONE EDIT THE TIMES? (part 52,891):
White House Listens When Weekly Speaks (DAVID CARR, March 11, 2003, NY Times)It's been a good if busy season for the Weekly Standard and its aggressive version of American greatness. A change of administrations and 9/11 have made the tiny journal, the prime voice of Republican neoconservatives, one of the most influential publications in Washington.The circulation of The Weekly Standard, which was founded by the News Corporation in 1995, is only 55,000. The Nation, a liberal beacon, has 127,000, The New Republic has 85,000, and National Review, long a maypole for conservatives, counts 154,000 readers. But the numbers are misleading in a digital age in which thought and opinion are frequently untethered from print and reiterated thousands of times on Web sites, list servers and e-mail in-boxes.
"Reader for reader, it may be the most influential publication in America," said Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation and author of "What Liberal Media?" (Basic Books). The circulation may be small, but "they are not interested in speaking to the great unwashed," Mr. Alterman said. "The magazine speaks directly to and for power. Anybody who wants to know what this administration is thinking and what they plan to do has to read this magazine."
A few weeks ago President Bush attended the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute to compliment Irving Kristol. Now 83, he is the forebear of the neoconservative movement that his son, William, The Weekly Standard's editor, now champions.
The younger Mr. Kristol, 50, was happy that President Bush graciously acknowledged his father, but he was even more pleased by the text of his speech, which seemed lifted from The Weekly Standard's hymnal. [...]
Mr. Kristol has spent 18 years in Washington. He served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and has done occasional stints as a pariah of both the right and left. He acknowledged that the staff he helped assemble seven years ago has made a quick trip from rock-throwing revolutionaries to an amen corner for the administration.
This is either just a terribly unfortunate slip or the insidious point of the article, because the phrase "amen corner", with its implication of dual loyalties, is precisely the one that got Pat Buchanan accused of anti-Semitism in the run up to the First Iraq War, and is not substantially different than the language that got Charles Lindbergh accused of anti-Semitism prior to WWII. In 1990, Mr. Buchanan infamously said: "There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in The Middle East - the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.'' Whether Mr. Buchanan's usage reflected genuine anti-Semitism or not is beside the point--I personally doubt it did--but to repeat the formulation after everyone has been put on notice that it is considered unacceptable is to court the charge of anti-Semitism for one's self and one's paper. Even if Mr. Carr was unfamiliar with the events of a decade ago, someone at the Times should have spotted this. Did they fail to, or were they trying to resurrect Mr. Buchanan's intemperate charge? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 12, 2003 8:40 PM
Unbelievable! Not only is this one of the world's newspapers of record, but it happens to be in NEW YORK! Simply no excuse to let that one get by (unless, as you hint, it was deliberate...)
Posted by: Kevin Whited at March 12, 2003 10:54 PMIt was probably deliberate and it will be ignored. Only the Right can be anti-Semitic, remember? How often does the Left recognize the fact that, for example, Stalin was a vicious anti-Semite?
Posted by: Paul Cella at March 12, 2003 11:34 PMIt's disturbing, but no, don't jump to conclusions too quickly. It may, in fact, be a quote that Kristol, quoting St. Pat, used about himself (tongue in cheek, of course).
Has to be checked.
If my conjecture is wrong, then it is of course intentional and likely characteristic of the strange humor circulating within the NYT of late.
This is only one example of how the New York Times has become tone-deaf. I suspect the phenomenon is due to a lack of diversity. Howell Raines apparently is quite thin-skinned, promotes only people like himself and rejects those like Andrew Sullivan who cross him, with the result, I read somewhere, that 5 of the top 6 editorial positions last year were occupied by gay white males of similar left-wing ideology. This many years into the reign of Raines, the reporters may have a similar profile. I suspect the Times seems unedited because writers and editors share the same prejudices.
Posted by: pj at March 13, 2003 7:56 AMSome Gems from today's David Frum's Diary
:
For the Democrats:
"But here’s what puzzles me: If the Democrats condemn anti-semitism, why has not one of them had a word to say against the most extreme and the most visible anti-semite in their party, Al Sharpton? In 1995, Sharpton led a series of protests against a Harlem store owned by a Jewish merchant. Sharpton called the owner a “white interloper,” but his followers got the message – they responded to Sharpton’s speeches with chants of “Kill the Jews.” And sure enough, that’s just one what one of those followers tried to do. He entered the store and set a fire that killed seven people. Sharpton has never apologized, never expressed remorse, never even acknowledged the connection between his inflammatory words and the flames his followers set. And there he is now – an honored leader of the Democratic party."
For Buchanan:
“We charge that a cabal of writers who misuse the title of ‘conservatives’ are rallying to defend an Iraqi dictator who has waged war on American allies, attempted to assassinate an American president, fired on American aircraft, and who is now arming to threaten Americans with mass murder.
“We charge them with making common cause with left-wing radicals and radical Islamists, former communists and other people who hate the United States – all in order to prematurely halt the war on terror and preserve the Iraqi dictator’s rule.
“We charge them with forgetting George Washington’s warning in his Farewell Address against ‘habitual hatred’ for any nation – and instead allowing their unreasoning loathing of the Jewish state to lead them into what Washington condemned as a ‘passionate attachment’ to Baathist Iraq.
“We charge them with disregarding their wartime duty to lay aside their prejudices and resentments for the sake of the common good. We charge them with attempting to undermine a conservative Republican president in a moment of national emergency. We charge them with acting as excuse-makers for America’s enemies. We charge them with failing to put America first.”
Like the man said, go read the rest.