Matt Yglesias

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.

Feckless Bloggers Evaluate Sonia Sotomayor By Reading Her Opinions

Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog reminds us why we need real journalists instead of amateur bloggers:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is an obviously serious candidate to serve on the Supreme Court. We have been struck by how the amount of commentary about Judge Sotomayor has ignored the most accessible and valuable source of information: her opinions as an appellate judge. Last year, I directed a project in which a team of Akin Gump summer associates extensively reviewed Judge Sotomayor’s opinions. Amy Howe subsequently revised and expanded their work, with contributions by me.

Here, we summarize what we regard as Judge Sotomayor’s principal opinions in civil cases. Our only goal is to identify and summarize the opinions, not evaluate them.

What follows is some kind of nutjob effort to summarize her opinions in the most important civil litigation she’s been involved with. The whole exercise is absurd. Why would you waste your time on some silly blog when you could read Jeffrey Rosen peddling anonymous gossip in a professional magazine like The New Republic? After all, by not wasting time doing research on people’s work, Rosen’s able to do stuff like presciently observe that John Roberts is a “principled . . . defender[] of judicial restraint” for whom liberals ought to express gratitude.

Why is Charles Krauthammer a New Republic Contributing Editor?

I’ve noted previously that many New Republic writers seem to have an appropriately low opinion of Charles Krauthammer. Jonathan Chait, for example, once wondered “why Obama didn’t pick some conservatives with a bit more intellectual integrity than, say, [Bill] Kristol and [Charles] Krauthammer” to have dinner with. Today, Christopher Orr refers to “characteristic lawyerly sophistries that Krauthammer tries to sneak past readers.”

The weird thing about this is that Krauthammer is on The New Republic’s masthead as a contributing editor.

Now everyone should understand that contributing editor titles don’t imply that the person bearing them plays any actual role in the production of the magazine. And I don’t think Krauthammer has contributed any pieces to TNR since 2002 or 2003. But these titles are honorific—magazines often bestow them upon people who used to work there, as Krauthammer did, with whom they wish to be associated. That’s why Ryan Lizza and Peter Beinart and Robert Wright are all there on the masthead. But if folks at the magazine understand that Krauthammer is dishonest, then why this interest in associated themselves with him? There are very few things that can be done in the world to hold prominent media celebrities accountable once they ensconce themselves firmly in the bosom of the conservative movement. But denying them “contributing editor” titles at magazines that aren’t part of the conservative movement is one of those things.

Jim Cramer Has All The Wrong Friends

Apparently Marty Peretz thinks Jim Cramer’s just great.

It’s worth noting that what Peretz calls “democratic capitalism” — the idea that ordinary people should speculate in the stock market — is just a fraud. There’s a strong case to be made that people saving for the long run ought to own some equities via an index or the like. But what Peretz and Cramer are selling is a lie designed to swindle people out of their money.

The Right Enemies

Shmuel Rosner slams George Mitchell in The New Republic. Another case of George Mitchell having the right enemies, and Barack Obama showing some guts and good sense.

Chait on Krauthammer

Jon Chait observes:

A separate issue is why Obama didn’t pick some conservatives with a bit more intellectual integrity than, say, [Bill] Kristol and [Charles] Krauthammer. The problem, of course, is conservatives like that tend not to rise to positions of high influence.

That inspired me to check if Krauthammer is still listed as a contributing editor on the New Republic masthead and it seems he is. He hasn’t actually contributed much of anything to TNR—I believe it’s been years since he’s written for them—but I assumed he stayed on the list as part of TNR’s pride at having played a role in launching his career.

Talking Trash

John Judis is a mensch:

I want to take issue with Martin Peretz’s description of my former colleague Spencer Ackerman’s articles as “trash.” Maybe I am sensitive because Spencer co-authored several with me, including a piece of the Bush administration’s deception about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (“The First Casualty”), which Marty praised at the time. Spencer also co-authored a terrific profile of Dick Cheney with current editor Frank Foer (“What Dick Cheney Really Believes,” November 20, 2003). But Spencer wrote much on his own, including regular commentary on the Iraq war for The New Republic’s website, during which he changed, like others at the magazine, from a supporter to opponent of the decision to go to war. I particularly remember an outstanding cover story Spencer wrote on American Muslims. I would like to link to it, but the links to our archives are broken. It was, called “Religious Protection: Why American Muslims haven’t turned to Terrorism,” and appeared Dec. 12, 2005.

Any editor worth his salt would consider having helped Spencer launch his career a proud accomplishment.

Built Wieseltier Tough

Leon Wieseltier laments the continued existence of mediocre music in a post-Mumbai universe:

On the second night of the atrocity in Mumbai I was hungry for news and turned on CNN. What I got was John Legend moving himself, and the audience, at something called “A Celebration of Heroes,” with a revoltingly sanguine song. It is called “If You’re Out There,” and it is one of those grandiose Quincy Jones-ish anthems to an easy eschatology. I expect to hear it a lot around January 20, when all will be put right. “If you’re out there/ Sing along with me/ If you’re out there . . ./No more broken promises/ No more call to war/ Unless it’s love and peace that/ We’re really fighting for/ We can destroy hunger/ We can conquer hate . . .”: that is what I heard while the Taj was burning. As dumb as the Youngbloods in my day, except for its groove. When trouble comes, these souls will be useless. I reflect now on the beautiful reliefs at Jaulian, which defeated the hordes of the White Huns in the fifth century when the heat of the fires that were set to destroy them turned clay into terracotta and preserved them. Toughness is the condition of a gentle world. There are all kinds of people out there, and a great quantity of fire.

Those souls will be useless, but the world will call for the assistance of literary critics with incomprehensible prose and pretensions to foreign policy expertise?

The Fairness Scare

Marin Cogan has a great piece on the right-wing’s mobilization against the phantom menace of the fairness doctrine:

On Election Day, conservatives found a new bogeyman in Senator Chuck Schumer, after Fox News host Bill Hemmer cornered him about the issue on the air. Schumer just smirked: “I think we should all try to be fair and balanced, don’t you?” Rush Limbaugh seized on Schumer’s comments as evidence that the Democrats would “do everything they can” to bring the doctrine back. Two days after the election, National Review’s Peter Kirsanow tried to rally the troops to preempt the return of the policy. “Waiting until Inauguration Day to get geared up is too late. By that time the Fairness Doctrine Express will be at full steam–wavering Democrats will be pressed to support the new Democratic president, weak-kneed Republicans will want to display comity, the mainstream media will not be saddened to see talk radio annihilated and much of the public will be too enraptured by Obama’s Camelot inauguration to notice or care.”

To figure out who was causing such agitation, I went searching for the proponents of the fairness doctrine. I looked at Obama’s position–and it turns out that he doesn’t want the policy reinstated. Then I called the array of Democratic congressmen who had been tagged by conservatives as doctrine proponents. But they all denied any intention to push for its reinstatement. As some of the world’s great egotists, it’s not surprising that Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly believe they would be the first political prisoners interred in an Obama administration. But, the more I searched for actual evidence of the doctrine’s return, the more I had to conclude that Schumer was just messing with their heads.

It’s very strange. Political movements mischaracterize the other side’s general goals all the time. But I’ve never heard of anything like the current conservative mania for blocking a particular legislative provision that nobody is trying to enact.

Wieseltier: Black President Is the End of Classical Music

These are the kind of thoughts that your editor is supposed to stop you from writing. Leon Wieseltier:

I woke up the next morning still under the spell of solidarity and love. I decided to make the spell last. I gave away my tickets to a performance of some late Shostakovich quartets, because for once I was not interested in the despair. Instead I spent the day listening to the Ebonys and the Chi-Lites and the Isley Brothers. For lunch I went to Georgia Brown’s for fried green tomatoes.

I was waiting for the next sentence to be about watermelons, but he spared us that at least.

Pre-Emptive Wanking

This is pretty impressive. Barack Obama could lose the election in November. And if he loses the election in November, it’s possible that some people will blame racism for his loss. So The New Republic decided to print a John McWhorter attack on those hypothetical people’s hypothetical argument about a hypothetical defeat. It seems those arguments, though they haven’t been made and are about events that haven’t occurred, are groundless.

See Ta-Nehisi Coates for more on this ridiculousness. Personally, I blame Whitey for letting this run.

Empty Sloganeering

David Greenberg has a weird article in The New Republic slamming various liberals, including myself, who didn’t go in for hard-core anti-Russian demagoguery as an immediate response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia:

When the right language happened to come from McCain–who declared, “We are all Georgians now”–the general response among liberal pundits was to scoff. Writing on The Washington Post’s website, Andres Martinez told the senator to speak for himself. “I am not a Georgian,” he insisted, deriding the “over-the-top rhetoric about democracy and liberty” from McCain and Bush. Blogger Matt Yglesias, writing under the aegis of the Center for American Progress, called the statement “empty political sloganeering,” “downright irresponsible,” and “mawkish sentimentality.”

My initial thought was to respond to this by saying that I was right. McCain was engaged in empty political sloganeering that substituted mawkish sentimentality for an actual policy response. But Greenberg, stunningly, doesn’t deny that I was right — he just thinks that being right is no defense!

Why should the statements of liberal pundits trouble us? It’s not because their criticisms are necessarily wrong.

The rest of the article goes on to posit a supposed divide between noble idealistic liberals like Greenberg and bad ol’ cynical realists like me. But I think the real divide is captured by Greenberg’s admission that the statements he objects to aren’t necessarily wrong. On the one hand, you have some people who think that the purpose of foreign policy commentary is to try to elucidate the issues and point the way to practical policy responses that will improve the world. On the other hand, you have some people who think that the role of foreign policy commentary is to demonstrate that you have an appropriate emotional orientation to the world. To me, this is “mawkish sentimentality” rather than a serious, responsible, approach. And Greenberg agrees! But somehow I’m wrong anyway. Well, fair enough then.

Even the Liberal New Republic…

… proclaims Karl Rove runner up as “rookie of the year” for their “Best of the Press” awards:

Runner-Up: Karl Rove as Fox commentator

After resigning from the Bush administration last summer, Rove has been dabbling in political commentary. He’s made dozens of appearances on Fox News, and he contributes to Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal on a fairly regular basis. As one of our participants wryly observed, “Everybody freaking loves him now. Go figure.”

I’m not quite sure what sense of “everybody” they’re using here; I don’t love Rove. It’s interesting that there’s nothing here about the merits of Rove’s commentary as opposed to its ubiquity. I would think that the runner-up rookie of the year would be someone knows for his or her insights not simply for showing up as a conservative hack.