A Bizarre Anti-TNR Missive Posted by Shadi Hamid

Some of you may have seen this rather bizarre anti-TNR rant from Kathy G. on Ezra's site. First off, can Kathy please find a synonym for "wanker"? More substantively, take a look at the following graf, and see if you can make any sense out of it:

The sexual and racial uniformity [of The New Republic's staff] is offensive on principal, of course. Moreover, in practice, it is one of the factors that has caused TNR to suck so hard. For example, there’s the classic TNR genre of pointless look-how-clever-I-am contrarianism. Only in a culture as insular, inbred, and out-of-touch as TNR’s could a style of argument as inane and precious as this one flourish. The obnoxious white boy entitlement complex probably also explains why TNR has harbored more than its share of frauds and fantasists. Because if you’re as special as we are who needs fact-checkers, right?

So, let me get this straight - lack of women and African-Americans on staff leads to contrarianism; contrarianism leads to entitlement; entitlement leads to bad fact-checking or, worse, no fact-checking. Hmm, right...

But then, later on in the post, we get to the heart of the matter:

It doesn’t matter if 19 out of 20 articles in a given issue are liberal; the one wingnutty one out of the 20 will, by virtue of its setting, be all the more influential.

Kathy G. apparently would like an enforced liberal orthodoxy where liberal magazines are required to toe the party line at all times. Even having 95% of your articles be "liberal" is not enough. She wants 20 out of 20 articles to fit her own conception of what "liberal" is. Well, that would be a pretty damn boring magazine to read. I know people like to have their own ideological biases confirmed by what they read. This is why you have magazines like the National Review and The Weekly Standard, which, as far as I can tell, serve only one purpose - to further pre-confirmed ideological agendas and advance purely partisan arguments. But perhaps there is a constituency out there that values at least some ideological diversity in their reading. God forbid.

Comments

[Atrios]

You really have no idea how political discourse works in this country do you?

[Ilan G]

Shadi,

I completely agree with Atrios on this one.

[IM]

What a surprise! Hamid the DLC Hack defends "even the liberal new republic". What an original and unorthodox thinker! Look, the New Republic is, at least on foreign politics and the national security state, utterly predictable. No opinion magazine is more orthodox on matters relating to Israel than the New Republic. I'm sometimes surprised by , say the economist. The New Republic never surprises me. And just repeating tired conservative talking poinst is to in any way challenging.

[Shadi Hamid]

IM, it would be nice if you could support your assertion that I'm a "DLC hack."

[Bob Narus]

Is it any surprise that someone who calls himself a "liberal interventionist" would not get the concept of giving cover to the enemy?

[Shadi Hamid]

Bob, who exactly is the "enemy" you're referring to?

[Ilan G]

Shadi,

I should have been more specific in my initial comment. Basically, my problem with TNR is that the one conservative article is the one that gets all the play. Plenty of liberals have been writing about how Iraq is a total disaster but the one article that gets picked up everywhere is O'hanlon/Pollack. There are plenty of other "bipartisan" and conservative journals that should publish conservative ideas. But if you are going to go out of your way to brand yourself liberal, which TNR does, it shouldn't be publishing that stuff.

[Dan Kervick]

I don't think I've actually purchased a copy of the New Republic since some time in the early eighties, and only read online TNR articles from time to time when they cause a splash and generate a lot of web discussion, but as far as I can tell the New Republic is a perfectly good magazine for the target audience it appears to seek. If you are a fan of the politics of the neoliberal era and the rise of the DLC; a somewhat hawkish liberal interventionist; a wistful center-left admirer of Reaganite and Thatcherite moral clarity, a devout American nationalist, an unapologetic liberal imperialist and a fervent supporter of Israel, then you are probably going to like the New Republic quite a bit.

If think it is interesting to note how many of TNR's past luminaries have gone on to careers as major neoconservative stars, and how much public admiration the magazine has received from figures on the right. It is clear that for many conservatives, the New Republic represents a sort of "safe liberalism". While the magazine is not neoconservative per se, it has certainly worked a lot of the same ground and given a platform to neoconservative writers, especially during the Sullivan and Beinart eras, and the movements of neoconservativism and TNR-style neoliberal centrism have cross-fertilized each other.

[Tim]

"So, let me get this straight - lack of women and African-Americans on staff leads to contrarianism; contrarianism leads to entitlement; entitlement leads to bad fact-checking or, worse, no fact-checking. Hmm, right..."
If I understand properly, her point is that the homogenous culture of white male upper class writers at TNR leads to stupid contrarianism which would be challenged before it got out of hand if there was some diversity in the ranks. You've never heard of some stupid frat boys at a private college thinking how hilarious and funny it would be to light a cross on fire, though they themselves are not actually racist? Obviously TNR is not just frat boys, but groupthink is groupthink. Heterogenaity has it's advantages.

Secondly, as Atrios points you towards, but in classic "you can lead a hprse to water but you can't make him drink," you appear to miss the point. Here's my re-iteration Ilan G, and everyone else:
When a 'liberal' newspaper/magzine/oraganization/columnist takes an 'unorthodox' stand (almost always a conservative stand), it gets amplified by the conservatives.
"See! Even the liberal [fill in the blank] agrees with us about [fill in the blank]! We must be right!" they shout.
This logic ignores the 19 other liberals disagreeing with them. Thus why a 'liberal' magazine like TNR gets a bunch of slag from liberals when it publishes this type of junk. Conservatives learned long ago that the appearance of unity was valuable in and of itself. Thus even if they disagree with a policy, there is tremendously successful pressure to keep quiet, lest they give liberals some ammunition to work with. If TNR would just quit claiming to be 'liberal,' then the conservatives wouldn't be able to use it's right-wing articles for ammunition.

[Bob Narus]

The enemy would be the neocons, Shadi. Thought you could have figured that out, but maybe I was presuming too much.

Of course, TNR deserves to be thought of as a neocon publication, given its pro-war stance vis-a-vis not just Iraq but Iran. And you do realize that Martin Peretz is an anti-Arab bigot, don't you? I mean, do you really not mind reading a magazine whose long-time publisher has compared people like you to animals?

[Mike M.]

Hmmm... I followed your link and was surprised to see that Kathy's argument is longer and more complex than you made it out to be. She's talking about the culture of the magazine leading the people who write for it to make bad judgments far more than she's talking about the need for liberal uniformity. And, she didn't use the word "wanker" too much. It accurately described every person she applied the term to.

[Shadi Hamid]

Ilan and others, one of your criticisms is that the one conservative article out of 20 gets all the play and republicans use that to justify their positions. It seems to me, then, that the problem isn't the act of TNR publishing that article, but rather how it gets amplified in the media, and how the Republicans use it to further an agenda which is likely different from what the original author had in mind. the problem is a structural one that has to do with how the media operates.

Second point, just because that one article gets all the play, and gets misused by Republicans, doesn't mean it shouldn't be written. We can disagree with the article, but that's sort of the point of reading an interesting magazine. You want to be provoked, challenged, and forced to reassess your positions. What's the point if all 20 articles fit within a pre-defined ideological rubric? TNR is interesting and engaging precisely because it doesn't do that

Moreover, as far as I can tell, TNR's mission as a magazine is not necessarily to advance liberal agendas, or to serve the interests of the Democratic party, or to move the electorate to the Left, so to hold TNR to those objectives - and their contributions in meeting those objectives - seems at least a little bit off the mark.

[Mike M.]

Shadi, that's fair. I don't think any magazine or blog site that identifies itself as left of center should feel obligated to help Democrats or that people should censor their thoughts out of fear of the political consequences. But part of Kathy's criticism that I don't think you're addressing is that the culture of the magazine has led to a kind of insidery-contrarian bias that leads the magazine's writers to stupid conclusions. The political implications of that are debatable. But is it hurting the quality of the magazine? As a TNR reader, I havwe to say yes.

[Ilan G]

Shadi,

I have no problem with presenting various views. Just don't market yourself as liberal because it ends up totally screwing us.

Brookings also markets itself as liberal but then it has crazy Peter Rodman on its site and guys like Pollack and O'hanlon saying the surge is working. CFR doesn't market itself as liberal and neither does CSIS, and when they have people righting material that is in line with the President it makes a lot less news.

[IM]

But on foreign politics TNR is not challenging or surprising but utterly predictable. It is not left-wing orthodox but right-wing orthodox in this area, but that has been known now for about twenty years.
TNR may be able to surprise on domestic politics, but that is another matter.