Jack Shafer and The New Republic.
Look, I don't want to get backed into a defence of Martin Peretz, besides saying that he's an enormously important figure, more so than I expect we realize right now. Every time a column appears under his byline in TNR I devour it with fascination, faced once again with the simple but profound truth that Peretz -- breathtakingly racist, facile, pretentious, obsessive, obtuse, windy, totally devoid of irony -- has no redeeming qualities whatsoever as a columnist. (I can't think of another writer for whom that's true -- at least Victor Davis Hanson is occasionally hilarious, if unintentionally so). And yet, here he is, heading the only magazine of political commentary I really couldn't do without, and maintaining a stable, year after year, of the smartest political writers in America. Could the magazine exist as it does without him? I don't know, but I worry about the answer. Insofar as The New Republic is significant, it makes Peretz significant.
Anyway, just hacking at Peretz is easy. (Really easy.) And it doesn't provide much of a backbone to Jack Shafer's problematic (in my view) take on Franklin Foer's assumption of TNR's editorship from Peter Beinart. First, a point of pendantry, but my specialty field of pedantry: TNR isn't really "neoliberal". It's much better described as "liberal-neocon". Neoliberalism as I understand it, is better characterized by its charter publication, The Washington Monthly, build on founder Charles Peter's gentle, insidery, reformist-establishment focus on the workings and tendencies of bureaucracy and power-arrangements and on how to improve them. Neoliberalism, so defined, is largely the celebration of moderation and good government for it's own sake, as an ideological goal, as part of a grander vision for functional society. At it's best, it's profoundly noble, inclusive, wonky in the best sense. At its worst, it's detached, complacent, obvious, dull. Peretz' TNR, driven by its owner's fierce and bitter falling out with the New Left in the late-sixties and early seventies, is something quite different: openly polemic, pulled and sometimes buffeted between the siren song of New Politics radicalism, the moderate populism that paves the road to power in the US and, of course -- it is Marty's rag, afterall -- an unblinking, occasionally wildly inappropriate zionism. New Republic liberalism, like the neoconservatism with which it flirts, has always been about power. And that's what makes it so much fun (and, by the way, the real reason their endorsement of the politically pathetic Joe Lieberman in the 2004 primary was so stupid, so totally against character).
It also, in my view, undermines Shafer's complaint, after praising the masthead for its solid journalism, that I don't visit the New Republic as often as I do, say, the Weekly Standard, because too many of its pieces taste of medicine that's supposed to be good for me. (See John Powers' brilliant LA Weekly piece about how the right-wingers swiped fun from liberals.) The New Republic's young staff, for some perverse reason, has been encouraged to write like old farts when they're completely capable of having fun while saving the world if their editor will only let them.
Good God. If I had to limit myself to one single criticism of the TNR approach it would be the magazine's over-reliance on irreverance. Also, accusing the self-consciously provocative T.A. Frank of writing like an "old fart" strikes me as just weird. But it's at least an original criticism, unlike the conventional wisdome Shafer rolls out next:
...[U]nder outgoing editor Peter Beinart, the magazine invested inordinate energy to navigate to an island inhabited by only the couple of dozen Democrats who were as devoted as it was to the defense of Israel and a pro-Iraq war policy that was also anti-Bush. Unable to move left and having shifted as far right on foreign policy as physically possible, Beinart's magazine became in its final months a sort of Joe Lieberman Weekly: daring in its audacity but of more interest to Republicans than Democrats, the magazine's traditional constituency...It doesn't make much sense for a neoliberal publication to savage Democrats repeatedly, as Beinart's magazine has, when Republicans run all three branches of government.
I'd say that Shafer assumes a level of moderation and intellectual openness among conservative and Republican intellectuals that simply does not exist, at least not outside The Corner or Belgravia Dispatch. (How many TNR citations does one encounter on the "conservatarian" Instapundit? Very few, despite TNR's fairly libertarian bent.) I agree with Eric Alterman that TNR in the Beinart years is actually quite a bit further, and more coherently, to the left of where it was in the Lane years, let alone the Sullivan or Kelly years. (The shift has certainly made its hardline Likudnik editorial stance more jarring, but that's a biproduct of TNR's renewed liberalism, not evidence of its further deterioration.)
In declaring TNR to be more rightwing than ever, Shafer, and others, generally mean the Iraq war, which remains, with justification, the sore spot for liberals. But here, again, it's worth keeping in mind that, politically at least, the doves aren't always right (though it's never ignoble to oppose a war on the demerits). The Washington Monthly, for instance, recanted its rather fierce opposition to the first Gulf War later on in the 1990s. TNR's profound wrongness on the current Iraq War was confounded for sure by its weasely "Were We Wrong?" issue in 2004. But what difference does it make whether The Editors collectively repent? If anything, Operation Iraqi Freedom (gag) has butressed the argument that, when it comes to war, the only thing that matters is the initial decision to support or oppose a military move. Once the invasion and occupation took place, everything that followed has been more or less inevitable, including the sanctimony of the war's original opponents (myself included) and the ass-covering and sophistry of its original supporters. That plenty of liberal hawks (including Peter Beinart, the only contributor to "Were We Wrong" to suggest that he was, in fact, wrong) later came to the conclusion that supporting the invasion was a bad idea is fairly irrelevant. Liberals probably couldn't have stopped the war from happening, but that they didn't try is a big problem. It just can't be laid at the feet of The New Republic any more than at those of (off the top of my head) Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall, the Washington Post editors, most of the columnists at Slate, Ken Pollack, Richard Holbrooke and on, and on, and on.
It's this passage, though, that makes me wonder if Shafer reads TNR enough to really have a valid opinion, beyond his disdain for Peretz and the repetition of conventional wisdom:
It's not Beinart's fault that he was editor during the interval when long-time owner and editor-in-chief Martin Peretz winnowed his three obsessions—Israel, race, and Al Gore—to one: Israel. Had Beinart piloted the New Republic in an earlier era, when Michael Kinsley, Hendrik Hertzberg, Andrew Sullivan, and Michael Kelly thrived, his magazine might not have sounded so one-note. Had Peretz still been working through three obsessions instead of one, Beinart might have found the breathing room to put a more interesting brand of unorthodox into his unorthodoxy. It doesn't make much sense for a neoliberal publication to savage Democrats repeatedly, as Beinart's magazine has, when Republicans run all three branches of government.
First, that Peretz has stopped writing about race in TNR's pages strikes me as basically a blessing. Also, as a general rule, political magazines should concern themselves with politicians who are actually, like, active politically. Second, compared to either Mother Jones or The Nation or, for that matter, The Daily Kos, TNR can hardly be accused of "savag[ing] the Democrats repeatedly." The difference -- and one the determinedly libertarian Shafer might not be sensitive to -- is that TNR bashes from a highly partisan perspective, frustrated on one hand with the Democrats' failure to regain the power that is TNR liberalism's lifeblood, and on the other, that the Democratic doves supposedly have the upper hand again in intraparty battles (an extremely debatable point). The result is a bit schitzophrenic, sure, but it's fundamentally far more big-D Democratic than what you find in most of the journals to its left (The American Prospect and most of the frustrated liberal blogs excepted). Third, TNR is not at all a one-note magazine unless you only read Peretz' column and take it as representative. It's not. The editorials rarely concern Israel. I usually skip their zionist commnentary since it's so predictable and I don't learn much from it. Yet the magazine manages to keep me highly entertained.
My own take on the Foer editorship is mild disappointment. That's because Beinart was, in my view and based on my zealous reading of the mag over the past few years, a damn fine editor but a generally lousy columnist (currently turning this lousy column into a book). I have a soft spot for Foer since the first political essay I ever wrote, thrashing a hatchet-job he wrote on the Deaniacs, is presumably still floating out there somewhere on the internet. But he's generally an excellent, genuinely provocative writer, far less predictable than Beinart in his idiocyncrasies (though I've yet to read his book). Becoming editor might cut down his writing time, while freeing up Beinart, after his own book tour, to write more columns. Unless you agree with Shafer that TNR needs "revival", which I obviously don't, this seems a lousy tradeoff. Not that there's any chance I'll stop reading.
Anyway, just hacking at Peretz is easy. (Really easy.) And it doesn't provide much of a backbone to Jack Shafer's problematic (in my view) take on Franklin Foer's assumption of TNR's editorship from Peter Beinart. First, a point of pendantry, but my specialty field of pedantry: TNR isn't really "neoliberal". It's much better described as "liberal-neocon". Neoliberalism as I understand it, is better characterized by its charter publication, The Washington Monthly, build on founder Charles Peter's gentle, insidery, reformist-establishment focus on the workings and tendencies of bureaucracy and power-arrangements and on how to improve them. Neoliberalism, so defined, is largely the celebration of moderation and good government for it's own sake, as an ideological goal, as part of a grander vision for functional society. At it's best, it's profoundly noble, inclusive, wonky in the best sense. At its worst, it's detached, complacent, obvious, dull. Peretz' TNR, driven by its owner's fierce and bitter falling out with the New Left in the late-sixties and early seventies, is something quite different: openly polemic, pulled and sometimes buffeted between the siren song of New Politics radicalism, the moderate populism that paves the road to power in the US and, of course -- it is Marty's rag, afterall -- an unblinking, occasionally wildly inappropriate zionism. New Republic liberalism, like the neoconservatism with which it flirts, has always been about power. And that's what makes it so much fun (and, by the way, the real reason their endorsement of the politically pathetic Joe Lieberman in the 2004 primary was so stupid, so totally against character).
It also, in my view, undermines Shafer's complaint, after praising the masthead for its solid journalism, that I don't visit the New Republic as often as I do, say, the Weekly Standard, because too many of its pieces taste of medicine that's supposed to be good for me. (See John Powers' brilliant LA Weekly piece about how the right-wingers swiped fun from liberals.) The New Republic's young staff, for some perverse reason, has been encouraged to write like old farts when they're completely capable of having fun while saving the world if their editor will only let them.
Good God. If I had to limit myself to one single criticism of the TNR approach it would be the magazine's over-reliance on irreverance. Also, accusing the self-consciously provocative T.A. Frank of writing like an "old fart" strikes me as just weird. But it's at least an original criticism, unlike the conventional wisdome Shafer rolls out next:
...[U]nder outgoing editor Peter Beinart, the magazine invested inordinate energy to navigate to an island inhabited by only the couple of dozen Democrats who were as devoted as it was to the defense of Israel and a pro-Iraq war policy that was also anti-Bush. Unable to move left and having shifted as far right on foreign policy as physically possible, Beinart's magazine became in its final months a sort of Joe Lieberman Weekly: daring in its audacity but of more interest to Republicans than Democrats, the magazine's traditional constituency...It doesn't make much sense for a neoliberal publication to savage Democrats repeatedly, as Beinart's magazine has, when Republicans run all three branches of government.
I'd say that Shafer assumes a level of moderation and intellectual openness among conservative and Republican intellectuals that simply does not exist, at least not outside The Corner or Belgravia Dispatch. (How many TNR citations does one encounter on the "conservatarian" Instapundit? Very few, despite TNR's fairly libertarian bent.) I agree with Eric Alterman that TNR in the Beinart years is actually quite a bit further, and more coherently, to the left of where it was in the Lane years, let alone the Sullivan or Kelly years. (The shift has certainly made its hardline Likudnik editorial stance more jarring, but that's a biproduct of TNR's renewed liberalism, not evidence of its further deterioration.)
In declaring TNR to be more rightwing than ever, Shafer, and others, generally mean the Iraq war, which remains, with justification, the sore spot for liberals. But here, again, it's worth keeping in mind that, politically at least, the doves aren't always right (though it's never ignoble to oppose a war on the demerits). The Washington Monthly, for instance, recanted its rather fierce opposition to the first Gulf War later on in the 1990s. TNR's profound wrongness on the current Iraq War was confounded for sure by its weasely "Were We Wrong?" issue in 2004. But what difference does it make whether The Editors collectively repent? If anything, Operation Iraqi Freedom (gag) has butressed the argument that, when it comes to war, the only thing that matters is the initial decision to support or oppose a military move. Once the invasion and occupation took place, everything that followed has been more or less inevitable, including the sanctimony of the war's original opponents (myself included) and the ass-covering and sophistry of its original supporters. That plenty of liberal hawks (including Peter Beinart, the only contributor to "Were We Wrong" to suggest that he was, in fact, wrong) later came to the conclusion that supporting the invasion was a bad idea is fairly irrelevant. Liberals probably couldn't have stopped the war from happening, but that they didn't try is a big problem. It just can't be laid at the feet of The New Republic any more than at those of (off the top of my head) Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall, the Washington Post editors, most of the columnists at Slate, Ken Pollack, Richard Holbrooke and on, and on, and on.
It's this passage, though, that makes me wonder if Shafer reads TNR enough to really have a valid opinion, beyond his disdain for Peretz and the repetition of conventional wisdom:
It's not Beinart's fault that he was editor during the interval when long-time owner and editor-in-chief Martin Peretz winnowed his three obsessions—Israel, race, and Al Gore—to one: Israel. Had Beinart piloted the New Republic in an earlier era, when Michael Kinsley, Hendrik Hertzberg, Andrew Sullivan, and Michael Kelly thrived, his magazine might not have sounded so one-note. Had Peretz still been working through three obsessions instead of one, Beinart might have found the breathing room to put a more interesting brand of unorthodox into his unorthodoxy. It doesn't make much sense for a neoliberal publication to savage Democrats repeatedly, as Beinart's magazine has, when Republicans run all three branches of government.
First, that Peretz has stopped writing about race in TNR's pages strikes me as basically a blessing. Also, as a general rule, political magazines should concern themselves with politicians who are actually, like, active politically. Second, compared to either Mother Jones or The Nation or, for that matter, The Daily Kos, TNR can hardly be accused of "savag[ing] the Democrats repeatedly." The difference -- and one the determinedly libertarian Shafer might not be sensitive to -- is that TNR bashes from a highly partisan perspective, frustrated on one hand with the Democrats' failure to regain the power that is TNR liberalism's lifeblood, and on the other, that the Democratic doves supposedly have the upper hand again in intraparty battles (an extremely debatable point). The result is a bit schitzophrenic, sure, but it's fundamentally far more big-D Democratic than what you find in most of the journals to its left (The American Prospect and most of the frustrated liberal blogs excepted). Third, TNR is not at all a one-note magazine unless you only read Peretz' column and take it as representative. It's not. The editorials rarely concern Israel. I usually skip their zionist commnentary since it's so predictable and I don't learn much from it. Yet the magazine manages to keep me highly entertained.
My own take on the Foer editorship is mild disappointment. That's because Beinart was, in my view and based on my zealous reading of the mag over the past few years, a damn fine editor but a generally lousy columnist (currently turning this lousy column into a book). I have a soft spot for Foer since the first political essay I ever wrote, thrashing a hatchet-job he wrote on the Deaniacs, is presumably still floating out there somewhere on the internet. But he's generally an excellent, genuinely provocative writer, far less predictable than Beinart in his idiocyncrasies (though I've yet to read his book). Becoming editor might cut down his writing time, while freeing up Beinart, after his own book tour, to write more columns. Unless you agree with Shafer that TNR needs "revival", which I obviously don't, this seems a lousy tradeoff. Not that there's any chance I'll stop reading.
5 Comments:
Thanks, Dustin. I agree with you that Peretz is interesting because of his New Left days; he's sort of a cultural artifact. But interesting and sympathetic aren't the same thing; I guess Peretz sort of represents how the New Left turned sour, end of the liberal concensus and all that, and it's not pretty. His recent final split with the Democrats in the 2004 election read like the culmination of a long but depressingly predicatable process. Also, his virulent anti-Arab sentiments are, I think, really out of place in a liberal publication, if not offensive on their own merits. TNR wants to update muscular Cold War liberalism and confront the self-indulgence on the left: I can forgive them making the wrong call on a war that, at the time, wasn't a completely easy call. But Peretz' consistent, self-indulgent borderline zeonophobia (at least that's how it reads to me) undermines his publication's pluralistic, tolerant intentions. It's extremely illiberal.
As for Isreal and Palestine, like you I usually agree with the substance of the magazine's stance, but am often put off by the tone which, in my opinion, is pretty cold and underplays the human tragedy of the situation on the Palestinian side. The Palestinians are not just menaces to Isrealis, they're also one of the most liberal, eduated and democratic Muslim societies in the world, yet so entirely self-destructive. Isreali foreign policy sometimes passive-aggressively plays to that self-destructiveness. A less unblinkingly pro-Isreal magazine have more to say about that, might call Isreal out occassionally.
Very good point about the departure of the Weekly Standard types from TNR's pages -- something I meant to put in there. I'm not actually sure what the cirulation numbers mean. Does it include their online readership? I don't get their dead tree version, so I don't know if I even count in their circulation figure. But since the 2004 election was very partisan and very much about the war, it doesn't surprise me that antiwar publications saw their circulation rise. (Also, I'm happy that the American Prospect saw its numbers go up since it used to be in financial trouble and is a damn fine journal itself.)
Thanks for your interest, and I'm glad to hear from another afficiondo. I look forward to reading more of your comments.
I've been a 20-year subscriber to TNR because it's always been an energetic brain-worker-outer. I have tremendous admiration for the way they routinely bash about all sides of an issue, disagreeing agreeably. An intellectual model for all of society, a model the American right has studiously demolished.
There's much to love. TNR published Mike Kelly's Gulf War pieces, some of the greatest reporting ever. James Wood takes my breath away. Leon W, the craftiest crank alive, assembles ingenious and hilarious takedowns of christianists and their ilk. (I think his Dennett faceplant was a conscious attempt to be hyper-liberal. Interesting experiment, and silly, but he was playing to the Times crowd.)
I stuck with TNR through Andrew Sullivan's overdosing on gay issues, legitimate but over-the-top in terms of overall space budget.
I read everything they posited re: the Iraq invasion -- and never bought the idea. I am considerably dimmer than every writer who ever appeared in TNR but nothing made me think that the invasion would be anything but exactly what it has turned out to be: the most disastrous stunt in American history, a clusterfuck, criminally stupid.
Yet I re-up ever year. But you know what? I'm ready to let my sub lapse for a cheap and emotional reason. Their humorless TV writer, Lee Siegel, weirdly obsesses over Jon Stewart. He hates Stewart rather like a mad stalker. Contrarianism should be fun, not outright creepy.
Hope Foer can put a better taste back in my mouth.
'heterodox Democrat Mickey Kaus'
More like Republican Mickey Kaus;
it's been a long time since he's had that right.
One of the things to loathe about TNR is that massive number of really bad people who edited it: Kelly, Kaus, Barnes, Krauthamer, Sullivan. The place seems to cultivate a very cynical sucking up to power. Which explains Lee Siegel's crusade against John Stewart - John is somebody who tells truth to power, so people like in TNR dislike him. They'd like to be the only ones doing so, an attitude that I wouldnt' mind, if they actually would.
Laura: "is pretty cold and underplays the human tragedy of the situation on the Palestinian side. The Palestinians are not just menaces to Isrealis, they're also one of the most liberal, eduated and democratic Muslim societies in the world, yet so entirely self-destructive."
If you were in their position, what would you do? Non-violent protest hasn't worked, so forget that. You've been conquered by a country who wants to ethnically cleanse you from your land, and has the force and backing to do so.
dustin -- thanks, I am really flattered. Please keep reading.
dswift -- I really love your take here, especially being so much dimmer than all the TNR masthead and yet never buying it on the war. Ditto. Also, I personally really like Lee Siegal, and his totally humourless liberalism. But his John Stewart obsession is, I agree, pretty offputting (and I'm not that big a fan of the Daily Show).
barry -- I don't know what I'd do if I were Palestinian, and their options in the last election was pretty awful. But what would you do if you were Israeli?
Laura,
Well, during the late 1990's I wouldn't have increased the rate of settlement building in areas which were theoretically supposed to be handed over to the Palestinians in a few years. My Oslo offer wouldn't have been the bantustan that was offered (the '97%' figure is, shall we say, misleading). I'd prosecute any people who advocated ethnic cleansing very quickly (I'm assuming here that Israel has such laws).
But what brought me back here today was your quote about The New Republic: "If I had to limit myself to one single criticism of the TNR approach it would be the magazine's over-reliance on irreverance.", which you used to oppose the idea that they write like a bunch of 'old farts'.
I think that it actually does hurt them - it's the sort of fake PJ O'Rourke irreverancy that got old pretty fast; it's the attitude of preferring to be wrong, rather than in the majority; it's the fake 'contrarianism' of PC-bashing in support of power, while pretending to be brave.
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