John Podhoretz
My John Podhoretz Problem—and Ours
By Nicholas Stix on March 31, 2013 at 11:49pm
Full disclosure: During the late 1990s, I freelanced for John Podhoretz at the New York Post, where he was the Editorial Page editor. We even shook hands once. However, he can honestly deny this, seeing as I wrote under a pseudonym (“Robert Berman”) and never told anyone. [“How to Make Change Real,” New York Post, June 28, 1998] Being “me” would have been professional suicide in my day job. And in those days, before the current Cultural Marxist internet-facilitated Reign of Terror, stuffy editors insisted on writers using their own names.
However, that business with the Post isn’t my John Podhoretz problem.
In 2007, Commentary magazine, a once-brilliant, once-conservative, Jewish periodical which used to stand for meritocracy, announced that in January, 2009, Podhoretz would take over as editor-in-chief. Podhoretz was hired solely due to his being the son of the magazine’s longtime editor, Norman Podhoretz. Commentary had thus replaced meritocracy with nepotism as the guiding notion of neo-conservatism....
[Read the rest here.]
3 comments:
I'm glad somebody on the right finally revisited Norman Podhoretz's brilliant essay on its 50th anniversary. I've been lobbying in various comment threads this month for revisiting that column, and your name was one of those I mentioned among those who ought to be talking about that essay. Podhoretz's essay shouldn't be forgotten.
Beginning in the late 1980's, I was a regular Commentary reader. Back then, the magazine was pretty aggressive in fighting the Culture War, especially Richard Grenier's articles.
Commentary had a lot of pieces about high crime rates and social breakdown. Black on white violence was included.
I began to notice Commentary's support of open borders. Have they ever realized that this causes the very crime and social ills they supposedly opposed?
Nowadays, the neocons say everything is wonderful and "the culture war is over." They have forgotten what they wrote not that long ago, or have they?
David In TN
Under the category of "giving the devil his due," I thought I would bring to your attention a review (https://www.weeklystandard.com/john-podhoretz/chappaquiddick-the-grim-record-of-a-kennedy-cover-up) of "Chappaquiddick" by your former boss, John Podhoretz in the Weekly Standard.
It is one of the better reviews out there. John Podhoretz writes in part:
"Rereading Damore's book after seeing the movie, I was struck by something that hadn't made an impression on me 30 years ago. Damore shows how the media of the day--with the shameful exception of the slavering Boston Globe--were overwhelmingly skeptical about Kennedy's tale and deeply critical of his conduct. In fact, what makes the cover-up so starting in retrospect is that it took place in the teeth of this nationwide media skepticism. It was a raw power play. Teddy and his henchmen felt free to flex their muscles in any way necessary. That is how completely their home state had become a vassal state. You gt only a taste of this from the movie."
In his last paragraph, Podhoretz wrote:
"The Kennedy mythologizers are still out in force. The day the movie opened, the New York Times published an assault on it by the film historian Neal Gabler, who suggested it was beyond the pale because'by the end of his life...the then white-maned senator had managed to transcend celebrity and emotional paralysis and become what he had long aspired to be: an indispensable legislator.' Kennedy's indispensability is a matter of opinion. Mary Jo Kopechne's dispensability for Edward M. Kennedy was not. He lived for four decades and five weeks after the night he drove off Dike Bridge. Kopechne died in agony in mere hours and probably could have been saved if he'd cared enough to give a thought to her saving. She was 28 years old. Gabler claims the accident 'haunted' Ted, as though that is somehow exculpatory. For the Kennedys, there will always be those progressives in thrall to a bizarre dynastic delusion and ready to proffer their excuses in a staggeringly inappropriate tone of moral offense. For them, it is an offense that 'Chappaquiddick' exists. For those who long ago threw out their original-cast album of 'Camelot,' the existence of 'Chappaquiddick' is a welcome moment of American cultural sanity."
Incidentally, CNN has been running a six-part documentary on the Kennedys. It's the usual gauzy hagiography we've seen forever. Tonight, at 9 pm ET, repeating at 1 am ET, is the final episode on how "Ted Kennedy must overcome scandal and misfortune to continue the family legacy and pass the baton to the next generation."
We'll see how CNN treats the "scandal and misfortune" relating to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
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