Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Fair and balanced book reviews at the New York Times
Regular readers know that I love bashing on the New York Times as much as any conservative. Its editorial page editors in particular skulk in the borderlands of intellectual dishonesty (see, e.g., the first sentence in this morning's first unsigned editorial: "The news out of Iraq just keeps getting worse."). However, fairness -- which flows through my veins right along with the milk of human kindness -- compels me to admit that the editor who assigns book reviews does a reasonably creditable job of locating reviewers who hammer on lefties, often in very uncharitable language.
On Sunday, for example, David Kennedy carpet-bombed the new book of uber-lefty Times columnist Paul Krugman. Kennedy describes Krugman's view of the economic and social implications of purported income inequality in the United States, which Krugman blames not on exogenous factors but the Republican party. Kennedy's reply is almost painful to read:
For this dismal state of affairs the Democratic Party is held to be blameless. Never mind the Democrats’ embrace of inherently divisive identity politics, or Democratic condescension toward the ungrammatical yokels who consider their spiritual and moral commitments no less important than the minimum wage or the Endangered Species Act, nor even the Democrats’ vulnerable post-Vietnam record on national security. As Krugman sees it, the modern Republican Party has been taken over by radicals. “There hasn’t been any corresponding radicalization of the Democratic Party, so the right-wing takeover of the G.O.P. is the underlying cause of today’s bitter partisanship.” No two to tango for him. The ascendancy of modern conservatism is “an almost embarrassingly simple story,” he says, and race is the key. “Much of the whole phenomenon can be summed up in just five words: Southern whites started voting Republican. ... End of story.”
A fuller and more nuanced story might at least gesture toward the role that environmental and natural-resource issues have played in making red-state country out of the interior West, not to mention the unsettling effects of the “value issues” on voters well beyond Dixie. And as for national security — well, as Krugman sees things, it was not Democratic bungling in the Iranian hostage crisis or humiliation in Somalia or feeble responses to the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center or the assault on the U.S.S. Cole, but the runaway popularity of the Rambo films (I’m not making this up) that hoodwinked the public into believing that the party of Carter and Clinton (not to mention McGovern and Kucinich) might not be the most steadfast guardian of the Republic’s safety.
Ouch, to coin a phrase. And Kennedy missed a few things, such as the impact of the Clinton administration's misguided regulation of executive compensation on, er, executive compensation.
Unfortunately for Susan Faludi, Kennedy's treatment of Krugman at the behest of the Times simply pales in comparison to Michiko Kakutani's scorn-dripping review of Faludi's new feminist screed, The Terror Dream. First sentence: "This, sadly, is the sort of tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned book that gives feminism a bad name."
"Sadly," "tendentious," and "self-important" are pretty much the bad book review trifecta, and to score them in the first sentence is truly amazing.
The upshot of this fair-and-balanced book reviewing is -- probably -- that the Times hurts the prospects for bad lefty books more than bad righty books. Why? Because it reviews more lefty books than righty books by some margin, and if the Grey Lady trashes the latest from conservative publisher Regnery it probably helps sales at least as much as it hurts. Not so for Susan Faludi, who would have been better off if Fox News had said such things about her book.
6 Comments:
By 
David M, at
Tue Oct 23, 11:17:00 AM:
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 10/23/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Oct 23, 11:25:00 AM:
NYT opinion pieces read like the Onion these days. The rag has become a self parodying entity.
By antithaca, at
Tue Oct 23, 11:41:00 AM:
This bit "sums up" my feeling about so much of today's excuse for dialog.
"Krugman’s shrill polemic may hearten the faithful, but it will do little to persuade the unconvinced or to advance the national discussion of the important issues it addresses. It may even deepen the very partisan divide he denounces. Where is the distinguished economist when we need him?"
A professor of history of mine claimed that books like this, polemical, have a use/purpose. Well, they may. But I don't think it's a constructive one.
I think they're incediary and destructive...ultimately stifling discourse.
By 
, at
Tue Oct 23, 11:53:00 AM:
The Sunday Book Review section indeed has a mind of its own. But the NYT daily reviews are something else -- Monday's Janet Maslin review of Plame's propaganda effort is numbingly uncritical.
-- wm. tyroler
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Oct 23, 08:48:00 PM:
A professor of history of mine claimed that books like this, polemical, have a use/purpose.
They hold up windows with broken sash cords very well.
By , at
Wed Oct 24, 01:21:00 AM:
The liberal NYTs went wild for HILLARY CLINTONS book IT TAKES A VILLAGE and MICHEAL BELLEILES book ARMING AMERICA when both book were fakes and then they went gaga for BILL CLINTONS book MY LIFE or MY LIES but when conservatives write a book they dont say a thing
