Why is Charles Krauthammer on the TNR Masthead?
The New Republic’s Christopher Orr has a nice catch:
“[A]fter treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of ’some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.’ Where to begin? ‘Supreme Leader’? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator.” — Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, June 19
“And the president has said ‘I have seen in Iran’s initial reaction from the supreme leader.’ He is using an honorific to apply to a man whose minions out there are breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, arresting students, shutting the press down, and basically trying to suppress a popular democratic revolution.” — Charles Krauthammer, Fox News All Stars, June 16
“Look, these were sham elections from the beginning. In a real democracy, you can have a change of power as a result. That was not going to happen in Iran. The mullahs are in charge. Khamenei, the supreme leader, remains in charge.” — Charles Krauthammer, Fox News All Stars, June 12
It’s well-established at this point that Fred Hiatt and his superiors have contempt for the readers of the Washington Post and don’t mind using their editorial real estate to misinform the public. But as Brad DeLong points out it continues to be mysterious why Krauthammer is listed as a Contributing Editor on the TNR masthead. The title is, to be sure, merely an honorific. But that only further raises the question of why the magazine would want to honor a writer for whom the rest of the staff seems—appropriately—to have so little respect.
On the merits, I think there’s never before been a taboo against describing foreign leaders, even nasty ones, with their proper titles. Hitler was The Fuhrer, Mussolini was Il Duce.
38 Responses to “Why is Charles Krauthammer on the TNR Masthead?”
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June 22nd, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Yeah, but because Obama is a Muslim, it’s clear that by using the words Supreme Leader he is showing that he believes Khamenei to be his Supreme Leader. When Krauthammer uses the term, knowing that he’s a nutty Zionist, it shows contempt.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
My guess is that the Washington Post stays financially afloat by whoring for dollars — and Fred Hiatt is ..er.. Chief Pimp.
Or maybe Hiatt sees himself as divorced from all this — kinda like the Internet Hosting company that has child porn on its servers.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
The Führer/Duce comparison doesn’t really fit, becuase ‘Supreme Leader’ is an imperfect translation. It has become the standard English shorthand, though; the French style is ‘le guide suprême’. (Juan Cole prefers ‘Supreme Jurisprudent’.)
Krauthammer’s point appears to be that statesmanship is best expressed by calling people rude names. In which case: suits me, Cabbage-mallet.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Re lakefxdan at 1: “he [Obama] believes Khamenei to be his Supreme Leader”
————–
Yeah, right. As if the Executive of the world’s most powerful, nuclear-armed superpower would think that of the leader of some backwater shithole that’s not even on the SECOND tier of military power.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:53 pm
And Krauthammer is El Buzzardo Zioni Supremo
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Kraphammer forgot to mention that every time Obama says “Supreme Leader” he falls to his knees and puts his head down in prayer and then raises up and yells ‘Allahu Akbar!’ but the librul medja won’t report it because they know that ACORN will track them down and kill them.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Also, why do we call it the “Supreme Court” when other countries don’t even bring cases here?
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Does it really need to be pointed out that 1) Charles Krauthammer calling him the supreme leader during a talk show and potentially with some irony and 2) the POTUS making an official statement are two completely different things. When CK does it, it is for the purposes of of dicussion. When Obama does it, he is, to some degree, it is the POTUS adressing the man as the Supreme Leader of Iran.
CK could be wrong on the merits of the criticism, I don’t know, but it’s not inconsistent so chill the fuck out, yo.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
pseudonymous in nc:
“Krauthammer’s point appears to be that statesmanship is best expressed by calling people rude names. In which case: suits me, Cabbage-mallet.”
Krauthammer’s point is that Obama is being overly solicitous to the Iranian regime. Maybe so maybe not, but his history was good except he fails to mention Israel’s unhelpful behavior nor the Egyptian or Saudi authoritarian governments.
Krauthammer’s in the Post
In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 — the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, the first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt — was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.
Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception — Iraq and Lebanon — becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.
Hitchens in Slate
“Also try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed. (Hint: Don’t make your sole reference to Iranian dictatorship an allusion to a British-organized coup in 1953; the mullahs think that it proves their main point, and this generation has more immediate enemies to confront.)”
“I am sure that I was as impressed as anybody by our president’s decision to quote Martin Luther King—rather late in the week—on the arc of justice and the way in which it eventually bends. It was just that in a time of crisis and urgency he was citing the wrong King text (the right one is to be found in the “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”)
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
, and it was also as if he were speaking as the president of Iceland or Uruguay rather than as president of these United States. ”
MLK:
“But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Breaking news: Serious DC Metro accident
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Fact is Krauthammer wouldn’t be happy unless Obama called him Grand High Camel Humper, and dropped a few nukes to send home the message.
Krautie is Exhibit 1 for the GOP’s politics of rage over reason.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:15 pm
It’s by no means clear that the rest of the TNR staff have little respect for Krauthammer. Many TNR staff spend a lot of time ranting about Arabs and Muslims and obviously putting up with a lot of ranting about Arabs and Muslims is a necessary condition for being willing to work at TNR. So it’s far from clear that there’s any incompatibility at all.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:16 pm
The title is, to be sure, merely an honorific.
Honest question:Is this true, or does the honorific also usually include a regular check?
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Hitchens in Slate: “Also try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed.
I would remind Hitchens to bear in mind that one day he will have to face a young Iraqi who lost his family in the war and explain to him just what Hitchens was doing cheerleading for the man’s country to be invaded and a million of its people to be killed.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:40 pm
And that same Iranian could ask what Hitchens was doing, other than sitting on his ass in a safer country demanding that other people do things he preferred.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Also try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed.
“I was trying to keep you and your family from being hanged with piano wire. Is that okay?”
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Because it is Marty’s paper. Next question.
I mean, this explains the existence of Jamie Kirchick.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Hitler was The Fuhrer, Mussolini was Il Duce.
I believe Mussolini’s formal title was always just Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
The village isn’t just a village – it is a village of creeps. DC’s reactionary set is like some endless b teen movie about a town overrun by ghouls. Although, shut in their little monad, the village doesn’t get it. They still think Hitchens is thrillingly cultured. Thus, Hitchens, a super-creep, the advocate of the “killing fields” in Iraq – he was nobly willing to see any amount of blood shed for his glorious dream of a secular Iraq (and has dropped the subject now that we have the inglorious reality of a semi-theocratic Iraq, ruled by Ahmadinejad’s allies), is now nobly willing to fill Iran with blood. Well, how utterly of him. He’s the Uriah Heep of Vanity Fair moralistes.
But, thank God, he has nobody’s ear now, except maybe for his friend, the equally repulsive Wolfowitz.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
ps – just a stylistic note. It is rather pleasing that as Hitchens has become a rotter, his famous prose has turned into a Glen Beck-etian binge. Although in the longer scheme of things, I suppose it should make us shudder to see a man strangle his own genius. Anyway, what a frightful and dishonest column! The first sentence seems to have been gargled more than written: “I have twice had the privilege of sitting, poorly shaved, on the floor and attending the Friday prayers that the Iranian theocracy sponsors each week on the campus of Tehran University.” Trying to throw in as many rightwing cliches as possible, he finds that he lacks space for the “badly shaved” cliche, so he just tacks it in anywhere. The sentence sets you up for a very false experience. As there is not a shred of evidence that Hitchens understands Farsi, what went on was, no doubt, as incomprehensible to him as a ceremony in a foreign language would be to anybody. But dishonesty being his second nature, he instead uses the “I was a witness” tone to tell us all about it: “As everybody knows, this dreary, nasty ceremony is occasionally enlivened when the scrofulous preacher leads the crowd in a robotic chant of Marg Bar Amrika!—”Death to America!” As nobody will be surprised to learn, this is generally followed by a cry of Marg Bar Israel! And it’s by no means unknown for the three-beat bleat of this two-minute hate to have yet a third version: Marg Bar Ingilis!”
Since, of course, these were doubtless the only phonetic pieces he was able to attach any meaning to – for as everybody knows, even those who know no latin can understand Ave Maria – he proceeds to caste it in faux Waugh. And he ends up sounding just like Colonel Blimp.
What a farce. It is like a parody of the British Foreign Correspondent. A far better, intentional parody is found in Scoop. I suppose that Hitchens likes it so much in D.C. because the Americans haven’t heard this kind of schtick before.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Whoops, and now it’s Krauthammer’s turn (once again) to be subjected to the dread Yglesias TWO MINUTES OF HATE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_C992KPzKs
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Yes, because making fun of Charlie Kraphammer’s bullshittery on a blog is exactly like commanding a dystopian Stalinist state which engages in interactive public hate ceremonies against official enemies.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
It probably doesn’t hurt to point out that the “supreme” in “Supreme Leader” is not meant as a positive adjective (like, say, Taco Bell’s “soft taco supreme”), but rather as an accurate description of the position, as in he is legally the supreme leader of the nation and above all other officials, just as the Constitution is supposedly the supreme law of our raggedy-ass nation state.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:56 pm
My favorite honorific has long been Panamanian Strongman Noriega. I sometimes wondered if that was the name on his birth certificate, but all that stopped when it was revealed the CIA was tangled up in the cocaine business with him.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Yes, I don’t think either ‘Führer’ nor ‘Il Duce’ were ever formal titles. Did we ever call Franco ‘El Caudillo’? I don’t think the parallel is there.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:37 pm
And how can there be a King of Beers if we’ve outlawed monarchy?
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:27 pm
It is rather pleasing that as Hitchens has become a rotter, his famous prose has turned into a Glen Beck-etian binge.
As Stefan Collini put it:
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:43 pm
“Supreme Leader” is the honorific of an evil guy in most movies.
Krauthammer thinks it sounds glorious.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Very good point, NickM. Only a right-wing authoritarian creep could possibly think the term “Supreme Leader” has positive connotations. To most liberals that title sounds ridiculous. You could make a far better case that Obama is being disrespectful by using such a snide translation of the Iranian title.
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Krauthammer: “He is using an honorific to apply to a man whose minions out there are breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, arresting students, shutting the press down, and basically trying to suppress a popular democratic revolution.”
In other words, he’s complaining we didn’t use the honorific for George Bush.
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:57 pm
First of all, what liberalization in Egypt? I just remember a crooked election.
Second, Mubarak, who squashed the opposition during the run-up to his faked reelection, was “led and funded by Iran?”
You know, it’s almost as if Krauthammer doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:26 am
In regards to DeLong, since I don’t keep up with his writing at this point – is he currently defending Yoo as a fellow tenured member of the faculty, or not?
Because in the past, DeLong defended the tenure of a law professor who helped create America’s torture regime, and DeLong is wondering about who is or who isn’t on a masthead? Sounds about right for the man that defended the necessity for free inquiry of those that played a major role in laying the foundation for America’s use of torture as a policy, and then turned around and threw his defense of Yoo (simply stated, Yoo hasn’t been convicted of any crime) out the window when it became clear that Yoo was not going to meekly fade into the woodwork, thus making DeLong uncomfortably aware that one of his fellow faculty members was a proud defender of torture as a tool of the American government. So much for defending free inquiry, as Yoo remains unconvicted.
DeLong is a hypocrite – Yoo was and remains a man undeserving of any respect apart from the due process in a courtroom accorded anyone who has committed crimes (a process that Yoo has defended as unnecessary), and yet DeLong defended his place on the proverbial masthead of a college.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:54 am
Matt – Who gives a shit? More policy analysis, less intra-political-opinion-journalist nyah nyah’ing, please.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:02 am
Vanya,
Huh? I’m not a conservative, but it just seems obvious to me that ‘Supreme Leader’ connotes respect. Not that it’s a bad thing- to deny Supreme Leader Khamenei his due title would be childish and silly, at least in this context.
I suppose I must be out of the liberal loop, but when you refer to a Cardinal as “His Eminence” are you full of hipster irony too??
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:59 am
On the merits, I think there’s never before been a taboo against describing foreign leaders, even nasty ones, with their proper titles. Hitler was The Fuhrer, Mussolini was Il Duce.
Mussolini was frequently referred to as Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministeri, as opposed to il Duce. The former was the title of the Prime Minister of the old Kingdom of Italy and remains the title of the Prime Minister of the Italian Republic. But yeah, a title is just a title and its use is hardly “abject solicitousness.”
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:25 am
In other words, he’s complaining we didn’t use the honorific for George Bush.
Conservatives at the time frequently used “Commander in Chief”, which besides being inaccurate (the PotUS is C-in-C of the *military*, not the country) sounds nearly as vainglorious as “Supreme Leader”, especially to someone who knows that it’s being used beyond its Constitutional meaning.
It’s just something in their psychology about displays of submission, I think. Kowtows are out of fashion, but using an elaborate title to refer to someone demonstrates (in the conservative mind) their superiority to you – which is why the PotUS (again in the conservative mind) shouldn’t do it.
Liberals don’t always really get this because we think of respect as something earned by someone’s personal character or deeds, which is displayed by giving serious consideration to that person’s opinions or judgment on the subject for which they are respected. (This last part is important – a respected general is respected *as a general*, and doesn’t necessarily know jack about diplomacy or human rights, let alone gay marriage or climate change. Conservatives have a less context-oriented view of leadership, which explains their decontextualization of C-in-C as a title.)
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:00 am
Maybe it’s my age, but remembering the way people who were around when Hitler and Mussolini were the coming thing I’ve always assumed that “Supreme Leader” was used with the same sneer that those people used Fuehrer and Duce.
Both the Fascist leaders made a big point out of their leadership not being limited by the constraints of bourgeois/traditional parliamentary or constitutional structures and their power stemming from a direct relationship between their charismatic selves and the German or Italian people, even if the latter case was mostly a poor joke. The assumption is that a title of this kind is a lie told to mask the attempt to hold unconstrained power by force, that it inevitably leads to evil, and ultimately destroys those who would be exalted by it. All of which makes it hard for me to take seriously that “Supreme Leader” is showing much respect, especially if (as suggested above) that’s a mistranslation. But then the words for law in Hebrew and Sanskrit, and I presume Farsi or Old Persian, always produce funny translations.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Perhaps because like Marty Peretz, he puts the interests of Israel before those of the U.S.