Even The Liberal The New Republic
As Leon Weiseltier starts his new job writing the "Maureen Dowd" column for The New York Times, here's a reminder about The New Republic whose checks he was happy to cash, or, at a minimum, roll into smaill paper tubes.
While all that Alterman is saying about TNR's inexorable decline and demise under the tutelage of Marty Peretz is certainly true, it's all imbued with a certain "ohmigod, these guys were such clever writers" schtick that one is meant to forget that they were shilling for a bunch of right-wing hacks who didn't have an idea worth remembering past, oh, about ninety seconds. Sure, they were good propagandists, but they were propagandists nevertheless.
ReplyDeleteAnd, certainly, one can use as a gauge for this tendency Alterman's general description of The Nation as something akin to or beyond the Socialist Worker Party Newsletter, which is worth a chortle, given that the magazine at the time was pretty boilerplate New Deal liberalism--that's how far the TNR and other rags had pushed the narrative rightward.