« Bureaucracy on Film | Main | Your World in Charts: Pharma Edition »
July 02, 2007
God Bless TNR
Awhile back, Marty Peretz wrote a fundraising letter offering this stirring encomium to the magazine he was methodically ruining:
You may want clear opinions from The New Republic or from any magazine of political commentary. But you certainly don’t want predictable opinions or simple opinions, which, alas, is what you get from The Nation and the National Review, The Weekly Standard or The American Prospect. Why, I bet that you could write their articles in advance. No challenge, no mystery, no surprise, no puzzling through of argument. Not like The New Republic.
In today's edition of The New Republic online, mini-Peretz Jamie Kirchick goes to a gay pride parade in Israel and realizes that "in a region of the world where homosexuality can be met with state-sanctioned death, Jerusalem's sixth annual gay pride event is yet another testament to the freedom, openness, and diversity of the Jewish State."
Such challenge! Such mystery! Such surprise! Such puzzling through of argument! There's no way I could have intuited the conclusion of this column in advance.
July 2, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Wait, this is the same Jerusalem gay pride parade that has to be guarded by hundreds of police to prevent ultra-orthodox terrorists from killing people?
Posted by: Christmas | Jul 2, 2007 11:12:24 AM
Anti-semite. Typical for a Dhimicrat.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Jul 2, 2007 11:16:25 AM
The Haredi are obnoxious and a problem, but they are not representative of the official stance towards gays in Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_rights_in_Israel
Posted by: fiat lux | Jul 2, 2007 11:20:55 AM
ezra,
looks like the moniker "mini" is picking up steam...
Posted by: thepersianslipper | Jul 2, 2007 11:50:22 AM
On the money Ezra. Nothing quite like the "militantly non ideological" and "contrarian" whose opinions can be predicted with clockwork precision.
Posted by: W.B. Reeves | Jul 2, 2007 11:53:06 AM
What W.B. said. Likewise the Economist. (Stopped reading about when I abandoned TNR.)
Posted by: Marshall | Jul 2, 2007 12:01:44 PM
“It’s very hard to put your finger on the magazine’s ideological pulse, and that drives people up the wall, especially in this day and age,” Mr. Foer said
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/books/24repu.html?ex=1183176000&en=df3fe014b0d75d2e&ei=5070
Posted by: otto | Jul 2, 2007 12:58:13 PM
But you certainly don’t want predictable opinions or simple opinions
You know I believe that our failure in Iraq is directly related to the decline in onion comsumption in the US. How's that for a surprizing opinion!
Posted by: Fledermaus | Jul 2, 2007 1:58:33 PM
But you certainly don’t want predictable opinions or simple opinions
Even if you couldn't set your watch by TNR's Middle East commentary, there's no relation whatsoever between the contrariness of an opinion, and its soundness.
Posted by: kth | Jul 2, 2007 2:00:11 PM
