Category Archives: Readings

I don't know if this essay by John Holbo [link corrected] deconstructing David Frum's book is right, because I haven't read the book it attacks. (And, if truth be told, I'm especially unwilling to jump to conclusions because I used to know David Frum in college, long ago.) But I will say the Holbo essay is an elegant and very readable piece of writing in itself. Often people who write clearly think clearly too, so I'd bet that if it's wrong, then odds are it is wrong in an interesting way.

“Radical sartorauthoritarianism”? Gotta love it.

Gary Wills has a sharp and somber honesty that produces a sometimes contrarian clarity of vision and constantly acute prose. His Nixon Agonistes was one of the first serious political books I ever read as a child, and is still, I think, one of the best books on the man who later authored our 'long national nightmare'. His current article in the NYRB is about Jefferson — but unlike the celebratory stuff he's written on Jefferson in the past, this is about Jefferson's dark side. It's about the three-fifths clause, which Wills locates at the center of Jefferson's political strategy and career: lynchpin of the South's power, it was also the but-for cause of the supposed Great Democrat's election, and gave the Southern white establishment enough extra votes to distort national politics until the Civil War.

Wills has written a wonderful essay, again. But this time, instead of shaking my head in awed agreement, I find I have two reactions that he may not have intended.

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National Treasure Russel Baker discusses National Treasure Paul Krugman and the The Awful Truth in the current issue of the The New York Review of Books. A great read, as Russel Baker always is. I miss his weekly columns.

Since Brad has been so kind as to mention this very young blog as a candidate for his project to subvert the dominant internet link hierarchy, (and what better candidate given my BlogShares market share of either 0.00109649638077873 % or 0.00441336872434729 %!) it's time to dust off and commit to finishing my post on Brad's long-running and no doubt never-ending series on 'Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?' (See, e.g., Part CCCCLXXVI). My thoughts are also influenced by a steady diet of the incomparable Daily Howler.

On and off I've been thinking a lot about the press question, maybe because I used to love reading the newspaper, maybe because reporting was one of the careers I (very) briefly considered while in college. I was an active student journalist, news editor of the campus paper, and both my mother and brother are journalists. I agree that the state of mass media reporting is terrible—although it bears mention that specialty journalism is flourishing. Not only is the Economist selling well, but so are a plethora of smart high-price, low-circulation publications like the National Journal.

The problem or problems is with the mass media. What explains the cowardice of major newspapers, their focus on the trivial at the expense of the significant, their weird idea that one has to give 'both sides' even if one is demonstrably false and believed by almost no one, and their failure to communicate (to understand?) basic social scientific concepts?

The changes in Big Newspapers seem to me to be driven by the unfortunate coincidence of four factors: economic, sociological, technical and ideological. I'll address the first the two today and the other two in Part Two, which I'll put up Real Soon Now™.

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