Letters
Letters On the Mark Richard Blow’s article on The New Republic was just great (“Liberalism’s Flagship Adrift at Sea,” Dec. 1997). I happen to be one of the many, many subscribers who...
...KENT E. ERICKSON Glen Mills, PA A Career Critic Giving a Monthly Journalism Award to Anthony Lewis for his “evenhanded approach” about the Middle East (Nov...
...Blow should be ashamed of writing such drivel...
...I worked at TNR under Michael Kelly, and I now find myself struggling to recall anything “repellent” about the magazine’s vigorous, indeed bellicose, defense of the liberal tradition...
...To see Blow’s misapprehension of these ideas, one only has to read one of his sentences: ‘‘If Michael Kelly’s liberalism could have taken human form, it would have been an Irish cop from the 1950s, swinging his nightstick and looking out for any fairies or long-hairs who might like to mix it up a little...
...TNR treats African-Americans like undisciplined children and Arabs like rats, adding a dose of ugliness to an already unpleasant mix...
...They all supported the simple step of delaying retirement to 67 or later-gradually, of course...
...Legalizing the use of alcohol may be appropriate, but what is to be gained by legalizing the use of crack...
...If the publisher cannot find editors or writers to restore the magazine to its old self, he should discontinue publication...
...It was personal in nature, often singling out not the left’s ideas, but its types...
...Also, Blow regrt:tfully notes that TNR published acid items about a former presidential speechwriter, a current presidential adviser, the hype and hokum of the White House conference on volunteerisrn, and the glib assertion of one influential mass-circulation magazine that it had discovered “20 Ways to Save the World...
...At dinner with my inlaws and other seniors, I asked how we might reduce social security costs over the long term...
...Upon reading your item, I thought immediately of a recent experience at my in-laws’ retirement community...
...Susan Ellingwood is certainly right that dw-ing Kelly’s tenwe The New Republic pnblished some fine work by fine writers...
...JERRY STEINMAN West Nyack, NY...
...1997) is akin to giving the Ku Klux Klan an award for lack of bias...
...LEAH GREENWALD Cambridge, MA In Defense of Cap'n Kelly In his analysis of The New Republic, Richard Blow writes that Michael Kelly contributed to the magazine’s decline by propagating a kind of liberalism that “was, in the most literal sense of the word, repellent...
...BERNICE GLICK Reston, VA As a New Republic subscriber from 1988 through early 1997, thanks ever so much for Richard Blow’s dissection of why reading the nastily cynical magazine “leaves one with a bad taste in the mouth...
...After 17 years, I decided I just couldn’t renew my subscription...
...GARY K. KLAUMINZER Lexington, MA A Weak Case Charles Peters is a lawyer at heart...
...Michael Kelly is one of the most principled journalists in the business today...
...Blow, though, skips over one important reason why TNR is such a turn-off...
...MATTHEW BUDMAN Highlnd Park, NJ The piece by Richard Blow about The New Repzdblic articulated beautifully the inchoate sinking feeling I’ve had about that magazine for the past several years...
...Blow doesn’t provide his own definition of liberalism, but from the above list of sins one woiild have to conclude he believes that, above all, liberals should never attack the powerful...
...Any reporter who claims to know about cheese and talks about “runny Stiltons” deserves to be fired...
...To understand his “TRB” columns, you have to realize that at heart he is a moralist with an appreciation for the beauty of words and an incredible sense of humor-traits Mr...
...Peters simply hasn’t made the case that drawing a somewhat arbitrary line is such a threat to individual freedom as to be worse than drawing none...
...Yet no politician will touch this one...
...Stiltons might be creamy but they would never be runny and certainly not at Dean & Deluca...
...Blow obviously lacks...
...Richard Blow replies: I did choose the Irish cop canard for a reason-to demonstratejust how offensive Michael Kelly’s habit of stereotyping others was by using his own technique...
...And Michael Kelly was clearly a hands-on editor who inspiredand inspired loyalty from-the people whom he h i i d . But not knowing Kelly, I wrote about his published work, and nothing I’ve seen or heard since has caused me to change my opinion of it...
...His obsessive hatred of President Clinton dominated his every word, so he had nothing to say except to spew out his unbearable viciousness...
...The niagazine was drifting far afield from liberalism before Kelly, but Kelly managed to ruin it completely...
...Blow the kill fee he so rightly deserved...
...Your giving the award also shows your bias...
...But since Michael Kinsley’s departure, it has become a haven for the most vitriolic anti-black and antiArab rhetoric of perhaps any magazine not on the right-wing fringe...
...it satirized the government’s war on smoking...
...In a continuum from the socially innocuous to the socially harmful, can society not attempt to draw any lines whatsoever...
...Nothing that ugly ever appeared in Kelly’s New Republic...
...The AARP often behaves like the NRA-blinders keep both from seeing the illogic behind their positions...
...He knows that “legalizing drugs” (“Tilting at Windmills,” Nov...
...He is a man of integrity who appreciates intellectual honesty...
...While grumbling about taxing social security payments, all understood the logic and need, so none really objected...
...A Cheese Pretender It may be that Pilar Guzman was fired by Dean & Deluca because she did not meet the high standards they require at what is one of the finest cheese counters in America (“Edible Complex,” Dec...
...The president is particularly off-limits: Kelly’s insistence on holding Bill Clinton to the highest ethical standards disgusts Blow, for whom the fortunes of the most powerful man in the world are apparently inseparable from liberalisrn itself...
...JAMES ADAMS, CEO UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Washington, DC An AARP Reality Check There may be some meat for a story about what seniors and nearseniors like me really think versus what the AARP and politicians believe we think (“Tilting at Windmills,” Nov...
...Kelly’s tenure by such writers as Peter Beinart, Stephen Glass, William Powers, Hanna Rosin, and Margaret Talbot...
...The last time I checked, that tradition was still rooted in suspicion of power and the powerful, and opposition to all forms of bigotry and intolerance...
...What started out as a thoughtprovoking article quickly turned into one of the worst pieces of journalism I’ve read in a long time...
...Moreover, to assume that “TRB” is all The New Republic has to offer is ridiculous and ignores some of the outstanding cover stories that were produced under Mr...
...I guess he was trying to make his argument more “personal in nature,” Kelly being an Irish name...
...it mocked the former campus radicals who have grown prosperous and powerful, their leftism reduced to a Ben &Jerry’s lifestyle pose...
...However, they are well past retirement, while I have retirement “on niy radar screen” nine years out...
...1997) is commonly taken to mean legalizing all drugs for adult use...
...And The Washington Monthly should be embarrassed for not giving Mr...
...So I asked my contemporaries about later retirement, and they were also supportive, albeit a bit mare wary...
...It is repellent, in the most literal sense of the word, and it’s not liberalism...
...I happen to be one of the many, many subscribers who canceled my subscription to the magazine because I could not bear to read one more word by Michael Kelly...
...Lewis has always found fault with the Israeli position and has scarcely ever criticized any position of the PLO or any of its terrorist actions...
...Why, with so many ethnic “types” available to him, did Blow single out the violent, homophobic Irish cop...
...I had thought the unbearably snide tone was a British import, but I see it’s infected the natives too...
...Perhaps now Powers might feel a little more empathy for the people stereotyped and, as Powen puts it, “mocked” in Kelly’s colr~nzns, who might not have realized that Kelly was promoting “opposition to all forms of bigotq and intolerance...
...For his entire career as a columnist, Mr...
...SUSAN ELLINGWOOD washington, DC The writer is a former assistant editor of The New Republic...
...Sure, the magazine (despite its claims to ideological unpredictability) is staunchly pro-Israel and anti-affirmative action...
...Blow’s evidence...
...Under Kelly, TNR was highly critical of the president, calling him a liar, a cynic, an opportunist, and quite a few other things...
...Letters On the Mark Richard Blow’s article on The New Republic was just great (“Liberalism’s Flagship Adrift at Sea,” Dec...
...WILLIAM POWERS Washington, DC The writer is a former senior editor of The New Republic...
Vol. 30 • January 1998 • No. 1
