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hahaha wait
Oct. 26th, 2008 08:04 amReading up on Chris Buckley resigning from the National Review (his dad's rag! holy crap?) after his 'Bam endorsement over on Tina Brown's blogsite. Buckley was brilliant on the Daily Show, must say. But uh. Resigning? Obviously if reader reaction was half as harsh as he says then it was the calm and cool-headed thing to do, yes. But!
"Were his pup still alive, Buckley said, "what my dear old dad probably would have done is taken out two pages and had me roundly denounced, carcass tossed out on the sidewalk. It would have been journalism. It would have been interesting." "
– WaPo article
And it would have been something I would actually want to read. Honestly, what does it say when the news ABOUT the writing is more interesting than the news IN the writing? If NR wanted readership, why not have sparkling, sparking writership? Journalistic segregation only makes the entire exercise boring. I don't want to read the NR. I want to read about the way the NR reacted to dissent in its ranks.
(Come to think of it, Joe Lieberman and John McCain, in days gone by, were interesting for just the same reason. Of course, this was before either of them sold out, sacrificing the actual dissent for the chance to leverage their newfound appeal into ultimately cheap political capital.)
Maybe after this election we can have a rag or a show with legitimately different voices again, maybe even engaged in actual productive debate. The NYT's barely cut it for the former, and just doesn't have the space or inclination to manage the latter. As well it shouldn't: it's supposed to be largely about the actual news.
"Were his pup still alive, Buckley said, "what my dear old dad probably would have done is taken out two pages and had me roundly denounced, carcass tossed out on the sidewalk. It would have been journalism. It would have been interesting." "
– WaPo article
And it would have been something I would actually want to read. Honestly, what does it say when the news ABOUT the writing is more interesting than the news IN the writing? If NR wanted readership, why not have sparkling, sparking writership? Journalistic segregation only makes the entire exercise boring. I don't want to read the NR. I want to read about the way the NR reacted to dissent in its ranks.
(Come to think of it, Joe Lieberman and John McCain, in days gone by, were interesting for just the same reason. Of course, this was before either of them sold out, sacrificing the actual dissent for the chance to leverage their newfound appeal into ultimately cheap political capital.)
Maybe after this election we can have a rag or a show with legitimately different voices again, maybe even engaged in actual productive debate. The NYT's barely cut it for the former, and just doesn't have the space or inclination to manage the latter. As well it shouldn't: it's supposed to be largely about the actual news.
