Why TNR

The Netroots did ultimately come to TNR's defense on the Beauchamp controversy. Good for them. My belief is basically that if the right had directed this sort of venom at The American Prospect or The Nation or Mother Jones, there would have been a massive and immediate pushback. That may well be in part because the Netroots are more familiar with those magazines and their staffs, but I think it's also in part because of TNR's difficult relationship with the Netroots going back months and months now.

But I also don't really think that (for instance) The Nation would ever have born the brunt of a tantrum like this in the first place, even if it had run an identical, pseudonymous article. Matt writes:

All these people need to stop. They need to take a deep breath. They need to apologize to the people at TNR who've wasted huge amounts of time dealing with their nonsense. And they need to think a bit about the epistemic situation they're creating where information about Iraq that they don't want to hear -- even when published in a pro-war publication -- can just be immediately dismissed as fraudulent even though the misconduct it described was far, far less severe than all sorts of other well-document misconduct in Iraq.

I think it's pretty clear, though, that TNR is being pummeled right now precisely because it was--and in many ways still is--a pro-war publication. This is how the right treats its apostates. It's happened, over and over again, to both individual hawks and groups of them, who have lost their taste for the war and broken from the line. To them, it's OK to ignore basically all of the other liberal magazines because their treason is a foregone conclusion. But TNR! TNR was the one magazine out there put together by the elusive species of liberal that many on the right still thought of as a fellow traveler. To the right this is a capital crime. A heresy. And while it's appalling to see how relentlessly and effectively they've managed to tar TNR and Beauchamp and his defenders, this is exactly what everybody involved should have expected.

Comments

[JimPortlandOR]

Brian: you have an improper closing italics tag in this post and it propagating to other posts below it.

The item, as is:

class="module-list-item">Why TNR

should be:

class="module-list-item">Why TNR

[JimPortlandOR]

damn, I shouldn't have posted raw html:

here's the item in error, with square brackets substituted for < and >.

Why TNR[/a][/li]

change the [/li] to [/i]

[Brian]

Thanks Jim. You're always a great help.

[Warren Terra]

Why is this post written in the subjunctive? After all, it's not a hypothetical, it is in fact the case. While the current issue of TNR includes a piece recounting mistreatment of Iraqi civilians based on comments from an American soldier, the current issue of The Nation has as its only article (first time I remember seeing that) a piece by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian on the same subject, based on interviews of American soldiers.

One difference is that the wingers may not expect different of the Nation; they probably think Nation writers all hate the troops, etc. This is, of course, nonsense - although, loyal Nation subscriber though I am, I'd believe about anything said against Alexander Cockburn or Daniel Lazare.

But there is another difference: the Nation article is extremely careful to report methodology and to use named sources. So the particular attack against used to smear the TNR piece - ridiculous though it was - could not be attempted against the Nation article. Maybe the Nation's writers and editors are more familiar with the tactics of the wingers than are those of TNR; certainly they'll have had more firsthand experience weathering them.

I have seen some nasty comments from wingers, mostly about Hedges's anti-war book and about Laila Al-Arian's father. I agree that Sami Al-Arian sounds like a piece of work, but he didn't co-write the piece.