Agreed Matt.

I've been a TNR subscriber since college (way back in the mid-90's) and have finally reached my breaking point.

What was once a magazine filled with great, original international reporting and decent wonkery (despite the Bell Curve and Stephen Glass follies) has descended into wankery.

I can't open the mag without being treated to an attack on the blogosphere within the first few pages, not to mention all of the space eaten up by great thinkers such as Lawrence Kraplan and other pro-Iraq war hawks.

This is one subscription that will not be renewed.

Somebody should tell Wanker Rob to go read Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, PoliPundit, RogerLSimon and RedState (!) and then tell us that Domenech is outside mainstream wingnut thought.

DISCLAIMER: All the above sites have banned me.

TNR is a piece of neo-con crud these days. They are relentless promoters of the Pretend War in Iraq. They have promoted off-shoring relentlessly.  Israel has never done a single thing wrong as far as TNR is concerned.

I dropped my subscription years ago.  They have lost thousands and thousands of subscribers.  Who are they writing for these days?

To me, the most ridiculous part of that TNR piece is slamming this excerpt from that post-election Prospect story:

In red states in 2001, there were 572,000 divorces ... Blue states recorded 340,000

As of 2000, 37 states had statewide policies or procedures to address domestic violence ... All 13 that didn't were red states

The 5 states with the highest rates of alcohol dependence or abuse among 12- to 17-year-olds are also red states

Residents of the all-red Mountain States are the most likely to have had 3 or more sexual partners in the previous year ... Residents of all-blue New England are the least likely to have had more than 1 partner in that span

The per capita rate of gonorrhea in red states was 140 per 100,000 ... In blue states, it was 99 per 100,000

The TNR piece calls this a "caricature" and a "stereotype". Jesus fucking christ. So now we can't even cite STATISTICS because they amount to a caricature? Perfect example of the facts having a liberal bias.

And even with the recent pseudo-shakeup, the name still applies.

They must be getting slush fund money from some Republican sugar daddy, because they sure aren't making any money.   I figure the GOP needs "FOX Democrats" like them around so they can use 'em as clubs against the real Democrats.

It's an online-only piece; they publish a lot of stupid crap like that.

If you still secretly love the macarena, I'm done with you.

Hilarious.  Shorter Anderson:

   1) Progressives are celebrating a blow to conservatives
   2) "Red America" means "Conservative America"
   3) conservatives are the mainstream of the Republican Party

None of these points merit the slightest mention, other than, "Man, that was funny."  Fact is, progressives, Anderson's so-called "Blue State elites," have respect for conservative principles, and eagerly await the opportunity to debate conservatives about the serious issues facing this country.  Unfortunately, conservatives have remained, until recent Repub Party stumbles, conveniently absent from the national debate.  I think it's because they calculated that a weakened Dem party would outweigh the damage Repubs might do to the popularity of conservative principles.  Indeed, you can take just about any conservative principle and show occasion after occasion of Republicans giving it the kind of treatment Napoli carefully described after much consideration, and conservatives never made peep one!  Conservatives have been eating and eating and eating anything Republicans dream up.  I'm thinking, pre-emptive war, deficit spending, separation of church and state, torture . . . F***ING TORTURE!  

Anderson can ask me to believe that conservatives stand for something nobler than the actions of Domenech.  He can ask me to believe that conservatives make up Red America.  But Anderson is the one likely to be dissappointed, because at last count, I'm a Conservative, and I am most definately a Progressive.

Because conservatives can never be wrong.  As soon as they are, we are told the AREN'T conservatives...

The New Republic? Isn't that just a bunch of dubya enabling stenographers?

The problem is that there aren't any real conservatives left anymore, only wingnuts.   Whatever happened to the conservative faction that used to believe in prudent fiscal management, keeping government out of our personal lives, sensible foreign policy, and wise stewardship of the natural resource base?

Well, I can say with some accuracy that I have never been called hyperwankerific. Does that make me, er, a hyperwanker?

One of the most repeated claims that critics of my article have made is that I "blame liberals" for the Domenech affair or that I think it's "liberals' fault" that Domenech is a shrill, right-wing pundit. I don't, and I didn't write that in my piece.

What I do say is that it's a shame that liberals 1) don't like to admit that some, if not most, conservatives are normal, rational human beings and 2) insist on perpetuating that stereotype.

My article is about conservatives in the media and what type of conservatives one boss at one blue-state media outlet is looking to hire to be his in-house right-winger (and, of course, how that boss isn't just an extreme-liberal outlier). The world needs less right-wing blowhard pundits. For that to happen, the media gatekeepers have to accept that there are conservative pundits out there who aren't shrill and who can write intelligently and politely (and who don't personally insult writers because of what they write...uh-hem).

If I had to pick one side of the political spectrum to blame for the state of right-wing punditry, I'd obviously pick the right. That's pretty intuitive. But what the Domenech affair has shown is that liberals buy into the stereotype--and even perpetuate it when they have the chance. And that's too bad. The state of political discourse in this country is worse off for it..

--Rob Anderson

From Rob Anderson's response upthread:

". . . there are conservative pundits out there who aren't shrill and who can write intelligently and politely . . . "

Okay, Rob:

1.  Name five such "conservative pundits" and explain your reasoning for picking each one, and;

2.  Name five "conservative pundits" who you believe are shrill and who cannot write intelligently and politely, explain your reasoning for picking each one and explain how the individuals you have identified in Group One differ from those you have identified in Group Two.

The hiring of Box Turtle Ben was in the first place a response to mau-mauing from conservatives. Hiring a house-broken, right-of-center voice would not have satisfied them, and they don't patronize such writers in any case. Conservatives identify with Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity, and their popularity says something about conservatives in general.

Needless to say, no one from the right side of the aisle had a problem with Domenech's hiring, or expressed the view that Domenech's writing was some kind of parody of genuine conservative concerns.

What I do say is that it's a shame that liberals 1) don't like to admit that some, if not most, conservatives are normal, rational human beings and 2) insist on perpetuating that stereotype

and you illustrate the point by pointing out that the Washington Post has unfairly perpetuated the stereotypical view of conservatives as crude, unserious and ignorant by - um - hiring not just an appointee of but a speechwriter for the current administration?

I'm sure it's been terribly embarrassing for your Serious conservative friends.

Not because they've been unfairly stereotyped, but because they've voted the people whose cronyism and lack of judgment gave this crude, strident, unqualified and irrational kid the job of helping to shape the national discourse into the White House twice.

Funny.  I thought the Ben/WP affair revealed an intellectually lazy plagarist who got a job by whining and cronyism.