Eminentoes/Jude the Semi-Obscure
Shiflett, Dave
EMINENTOES JUDE THE SEMI-OBSCURE Jude Wanniski's hacked off at the nation's hacks. He says they love to read and gossip about his MediaGuide,1 but when it comes to writing about the 372-page...
...According to Wanniski, the Journal actually commissioned a review, then refused to run it because it was negative...
...Essential for anyone interested in the cutting edge of liberal thought in anthropology / economics / history / law linguistics / literature / psychology I sociology...
...Obviously, he wants to make a profit, and if he can prosper by writing about people who refuse to write about him, he has scored an ironic victory of the first order...
...So did Charles Krauthammer...
...The truth of the matter is that two newspapers generally set the tone for the entire media...
...It's almost as if he wanted you to think he's been bought...
...Taken together the MediaGuides tell us that the Spectator was delightful and leaden simultaneously...
...Kinsley's snub has to hurt, just like taking someone to the Ritz for dinner and having her slam the door in your face at payoff time...
...As for sharpening senses, read the last justification three times fast and see if your head doesn't crash to your desk like the Hindenburg...
...His column, 'The Continuing Crisis,' suffered...
...The alternative is to admit that Wanniski could have a real clunker on his hands...
...Tell them that 24,000 hands will hold their message, and that 24,000 eyes will read it...
...Institutions: add $14...
...Perennial Library/Harper & Row, $19.95/$9.95 paper...
...Outside U.S.: add $5...
...25% off regular rate...
...In fact, until the New York Times Book Review finally reviewed the guide on July 12, Wanniski had a non-book on his hands...
...Vauent I riUrlIbt• I SOCIALISM: DEAD OR ALIVE...
...Forthcoming in CRITICAL REVIEW: The Revolt Against Liberalism • The Fate of the Western Self • Austrian-School Economics • Liberalism & the Third World • Critical Legal Studies • Industrial Democracy • Hermeneutics • Unions & the State • Rethinking Historical Liberalism • The End of Neo-Classical Economics • Post-Modern Individualism • Evolutionary Epistemology • The Discourse of the French Revolution • Technology • Anthropology as Cultural Critique • Buchanan • Chomsky • Derrida • Gadamer • Habermas • Hayek • Lachmann • Lukács • Marx • Mises • Nozick • Polanyi • Popper • Sowell • Szasz • VoloSinov • Wittgenstein...
...Fair enough...
...People may still say, "Hey Jude, who really needs a media guide...
...Has he birthed a cur so nondescript that it's not even worth a hug or a good kick...
...The author hopes to make at least several hundred thousand when the deal is finally closed...
...12.95...
...I understand you're a Scorpio...
...The AIM Report...
...And Pruden got two stars...
...fied as anyone to criticize the media...
...A couple of papers is too much...
...Wanniski knows he's torturing his conservative friends by buffing those left-wing haloes...
...The eighty-four-page biographical section at the back of the book—in which the hacks list their job titles, birthdates, education, kudos, and suchlike`will be used by journalists to help identify each other for career or social purposes...
...Who says man cannot tickle himself...
...The subtle humor, the pathos and bathos—all was run down by an apparent speed-reader...
...Wanniski, of course, knows this as well...
...Then again, what isn't idiosyncratic and flawed...
...He's as quali'The 1987 MediaGuide: A Critical Review of the News Media's Recent Coverage of the World Political Economy, edited by Jude Wanniski...
...There's a little bit of Torquemada in every satirist...
...The Wall Street Journal has no comment," a spokesman responds...
...212) 925-9134 tor Visa/MasterCard...
...All that talk about the 40,000-circulation Spectator and not a word about the 25 million-plus Digest...
...W ho, after all, really needs a media guide...
...27 for two years (8 issues...
...You know Wanniski was laughing when he thought that one up...
...PLUS imt Croy& 'num on anlinwpologaul Met .mder Mot .1thttler tm the „noun...
...Once established, the MediaGuide probably will get the critical attention it really deserves...
...Morristown, N.J...
...Is this Wanniski's fault...
...Simile...
...What's he care...
...Wanniski's fun might not be over yet...
...This relativism upsets Irvine...
...Besides Kinsley, Wanniski has had high marks for other liberal writers, notably Mary McGrory, Richard Cohen, Sidney Blumenthal, Anthony Lewis, and his "favorite Marxist" Alexander Cockburn...
...rn n moms theory and nownvenr by the down Announcing Critical Review, the international forum where the new liberalism—the turn toward individualistic social theory—is developed, challenged, and tested in rigorous debate...
...After all, book reviewers love to destroy other people's work, and Wanniski painted a big target on his belly, lashed himself to a post, and gave the order to fire...
...dollars only to CRITICAL REVIEW, 532 Broadway, 7th floor...
...Rm 21A, New York, NY 10012, USA...
...the new one, he says, has sold two or three times that many —and Wanniski is 90 percent sure that a large paper company is going to buy the guide...
...T he competition illusion isn't the 1 Great Wanniski's only trick...
...It isn't as if Wanniski didn't say something nice about Kinsley's New Republic, either...
...Outside U.S.: add $8...
...For instance, the reviewer completely overlooked the prominent place given the Washington Times and Insight magazine...
...Other examples: Of four possible stars, George Will got one and a half...
...WP is credited in 1987 with saving the magazine from a disease that went undiagnosed in '86...
...SPECIAL DEBUT SUBSCRIPTION RATES • $15 for one year (4 issues...
...members of the Washington press corps will know each other for years without realizing they're from the same town or college...
...The Times review, while certainly welcome, did not appear to be the result of an in-depth reading...
...It isn't as if there were fifteen newspapers in Washington or New York to choose from...
...In the 1987 edition, the Digest is not mentioned...
...What he's doing here is employing an old trick, similar to one some small town newspapers use to snag advertisers...
...We no longer have only a few publications to deal with, but a multitude of writers...
...So why do we need a guide...
...Just to make sure the list is long enough, Wanniski includes a division of writers from the regional Los Angeles Times...
...That a man as bright as Wanniski can write such nonsense only speaks to his genius, much as it takes a true prodigy to play out of tune...
...As for reporters asking biographical questions: no group is more interested in where its members are from and where they went to school...
...Now things open up a bit...
...Now you need a guide, don't you...
...Institutions: add $31...
...A common trait of journalists is that they rarely ask biographical questions of each other...
...POPPER AND MARX F A. HAYEK, INCORRIGIBLE SKEPTIC: HOW AFAR 111111) BEGAN nom m non - on belt &mks on Moran'', awl S.+minm Hememed by Tom Iterrommt 1Nttt leteme lturtmul Aldo...
...Because, Wanniski says, we have too much to read...
...The next year, Wanniski hails the "dazzling critical success" of Insight and the generosity of the "Unification Angels...
...If this seems like an extreme measure, think how you'd feel if you had written a book about writers that the writers refused to write about...
...And it makes for goodreading...
...Even reporter-trainees on the obit desk would raise eyebrows over this coincidence, whether or not they agreed with the analysis...
...Goodman, whose prose has more wind in it than Gargantua's bowels, obviously isn't in the same class as Will...
...The sometimes savvy Reed Irvine speaks for the mob when he dismisses the book as "idiosyncratic," a "flawed effort," nothing more than "the opinion of Jude Wanniski and a couple of people who work for him...
...He almost makes you think there's a lot of competition...
...Tell them that each paper is read by all four members of the family and the dog...
...The paper company that's supposed to buy the MediaGuide—a "billion dollar company," according to Wanniskiisn't doing so to shred it, but to nourish it, put money into it, make it into an institution...
...Obviously, he writes with the assumption that anyone who actually takes these ratings seriously has a double load of pig iron where his brains ought to be...
...Disappeared...
...But Wanniski gets more than mere money for his trouble...
...Here is a journalist who stares in the eye of credibility and guffaws...
...But don't tell them 24,000, because attached to those 24,000 eyes are ten fingers...
...But hand it to Wanniski...
...Now that the Times has flown off the wire, other papers may follow...
...What is it about the MediaGuide that inspires such thunderous nonchalance...
...He gets to hear journalists say that writing about the MediaGuide would be self-serving, even as this July the trend-setting Washington Post ran an encyclopedic story about Katharine Graham's 70th Birthday Party, one of the biggest pieces of self-promotion since Bokassa the Magnificent got himself coronated...
...Yet a question still remains...
...What satisfaction he must get from putting into motion a process whose final result is to make him laugh...
...He nearly makes you forget that a power-broker can devour the pertinent fruits of the free press on the way to the office...
...But you really can't peg a cronyism rap on Wanniski, for his blessings fall equally on World Media Association traveling companion Richard Grenier (four stars) and Michael Kinsley (four stars), and Mr...
...He is, after all, a journalist who has made a difference, having pushed supply-side economics —he named the stuff—right into the national consciousness...
...As for opinions, Wanniski's are as good as anyone's...
...Every nuance went unnoticed...
...Neither is Wesley Pruden, whose general prose style is pen to paper, tongue to boot...
...Ellen Goodman, for one...
...Wanniski, by supplying birthdays and the like, has enabled readers to greet interviewers with "Good morning...
...But what are the most significant journalistic developments of the last two years...
...15% off regular rate...
...C o why has Wanniski gone to all the 1.3 trouble to produce this book...
...Here's how it was taught to me: "Don't tell them we have 3,000 subscribers," the boss explains...
...He says they love to read and gossip about his MediaGuide,1 but when it comes to writing about the 372-page "gourmet guide to the news," most of them clam up...
...Makes your temples throb, doesn't it...
...But don't tell them 12,000...
...Last year, for example, he said this about the humble American Spectator: "A delightfully irreverent monthly with a neo-conservative bent, edited by the neo-Menckenesque Bob Tyrrell...
...According to the Media-Guide, in the inaugural 1986 edition, it was Arnaud de Borchgrave's assumption of the editorship of the Washington Times...
...Krauthammer, a deserving Pulitzer winner, could sue, and no doubt would if he didn't know Wanniski was just kidding around...
...continued on page 34) 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987 We'll throw the dog in for free, and that still gives us a readership of 12,000...
...It's fine to take expense paid trips...
...Maybe Wanniski didn't really set out to produce "A Critical Review of the News Media's Recent Coverage of the World Political Economy...
...And he's not alone...
...Other publications, he says, are basically regional, even the Los Angeles Times...
...THE NEW LIBERALISM A JOURNAL OF ti )014 a' AND 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987...
...Maybe book review editors who think he did are the same types who thought Swift was really proposing to eat the children of the poor...
...to which the ermine-trussed genius will respond, "Who needed a pet rock...
...But this time around, Wanniski complained that in the eighties, "all had become leaden...
...Sales are up a bit—the first guide sold 3,000 copies...
...The genetic researchers for all-white country clubs ask fewer questions, even of applicants with tight curls and names like Thomas by Dave Shiflett Jefferson Washington DuBois...
...And at the MediaGuide's tenth birthday party, maybe Katharine Graham will jump out of the cake...
...Friend and foe alike have been mum, even the Wall Street Journal, where Wanniski distinguished himself as an editorial writer...
...Wanniski became so perplexed that he sent a letter to major editors requesting at least a mention of his brainchild...
...The material is designed to sharpen the reader's sense of the news flow, the process of news communication, how it is being altered to adapt to the fast-changing national and political economy...
...Few have bothered...
...Dave Shiflett is a writer living in Virginia...
...The list is short, and probably longer than it needs to be: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and a few magazines...
...Who else got such a low rating...
...This might all be true...
...The problem, of course, is that there may be a bunch of chefs, but not many restaurants...
...It's almost as if Wanniski wanted us to question his judgment...
...This might be an overly optimistic view...
...Wanniski knows this...
...Tyrrell himself spent most of '85 trying to figure out where to live, finally moving to Washington from the periodical's home in Bloomington, Indiana...
...See also Wanniski's 1986 MediaGuide: A Critical Review of the Print Media, Polyconomics, Inc...
...He charges...
...Only by 1986 had "managing editor Wladyslaw Pleszczynski found some livelier material than we'd become used to seeing...
...For instance, Wanniski has traveled the world with the World Media Association, which is financed by the same people who underwrite the Washington Times and Insight magazine...
...Clearly, he has fun playing games with the reader's memory...
...How Jude must roar when he sees his handiwork produce such hypocritical babbling...
...Hundreds and hundreds of names stare off the page...
...Wanniski's answer: Don't think publications, THINK BYLINES...
...Send payment in U.S...
...He tells the reader that his guide will basically confine itself to publications read by the power-brokers in Washington and New York...
...Or are reviewers ignoring a work of genius, a supreme act of the imagination...
...And the dance is just beginning...
...You take whatever hash Cannon, Edsall, or Gwertzman want to sling at you, or you starve...
...W anniski shows the satirist's hand from the start, when he rolls out the justification for this pulpwood repackaging project: "To a businessman about to be interviewed by a reporter from Business-Week or the Wall Street Journal, or a political candidate about to be interviewed by the reporter for the Times or Post, it's always useful to have a bit of background on the interviewer, if only for opening small talk to break the ice...
...Does he retreat...
...Included among its contributors are some of the best crop of emerging journalists...
...Kinsley won't write a word in his magazine about Wanniski's book...
...That's nothing compared to what Wanniski did to the Reader's Digest, the largest magazine in the world and hailed in the first MediaGuide as "the only major publication that enthusiastically embraces the Reagan Administration's growth-oriented policies...
...It's fun, fun, fun," exclaimed Wanniski, "and we hope it goes on, on, on...
...Wanniski's book cannot be said to reflect a right-wing bias, necessarily, and when the Washington Post's Stephanie Mansfield (also a four-star journalist) dismissed Wanniski as a "conservative" media critic in her one-paragraph appreciation of the guide (that one must have hurt, too), she did him a disservice...
...That should provide a nice lead for that Washington Post profile...
...And even if you think the Media-Guide is a stupid book with little or no merit, that doesn't justify ignoring it...
...Tell them you can give them 240,000, and if they can do better for the price of 3,000 they ought to go elsewhere...
Vol. 20 • September 1987 • No. 9
