Yes, Not The New Yorker

by tristero

I'm sure David Remnick et al thought this was great, a dramatic endorsement of Obama in an intellectually robust language. I don't, I find it turgid and overwritten, but some of it is ok:
Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.
UPDATE: Contrast this leaden prose with Anne Lamott's exquisite, perfectly modulated appreciation of Molly Ivins to get a sense of what nonfiction English is capable of. Yes, the subject is very different, but the goal is the same: to persuade an audience of the greatness of the subject's character. I have no doubt Lamott could make the same points as the "editors" of the New Yorker and easily avoid sounding like some lumbering elephant trumpeting its own importance in the forest.

Regardless, I cannot let the following slide without comment:
There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime...
Sorry, Mr. and Ms. New Yorker, but among people with working brains and souls, there is no - zero, zip, nada - disagreement. It was a screaming yellow bonkers idea. More importantly, it was an insane idea back in '02 and it was still irredeemably crazy in '03 when you shamefully endorsed it.

And no, I won't forget about it. And no, I won't get over it. Ever.

But look, I know my unrelenting anger at liberal hawks doesn't matter in the slightest. It is the dead that matter, and the mutilated, and the tortured. And they are all that matter.

So, dammit, the least the New Yorker could do is not try to finesse things. Not "over 4000" American troops as the New Yorker so roundly puts it, but close to 4200 troops have died because of this insane war, a war enabled by the support of folks like The New Yorker's editor, not to mention the silence of most of the rest of the liberals/moderates cowering in the interstices of the Bush-licking mass media. And not "tens of thousands" Iraqis, but nearly 100,000 confirmed pointless Iraqi deaths, and if you think that's even close to the real total you're being unreasonably optimistic. And let's not forget: While Bush had a few foolish partners in all this murderous stupidity, the blame is all America's.

It was unimaginable, unspeakable back in '03? Nonsense. It was easily imagined and many spoke up. In fact, the great majority of the world foresaw this awful tragedy, including millions upon millions of sensible Americans, including - to his everlasting credit - Barack Obama.

But not the New Yorker.

Yes, not the New Yorker, which employs, among others who were so easily fooled, George Packer - a talented reporter but an immature man who was so narcissistic ("Let's do some good!"), he actually fell for Kanan Makiya's primo quality bullshit to put "hope before experience" and "liberate" Iraq for democracy. Some fucking liberation for democracy, watching your child get all his limbs blown off by American bombs. As if you actually have to see such horrors, as Packer had to, before you know with perfect assurance they would occur again and again with ghastly, sickening repetition.

Of course, there are others at the magazine, like the indispensable Sy Hersh and the great Jane Mayer, who have done extraordinary work reporting and writing about the Bush catastrophe. However, the liberal hawks at the New Yorker, like other otherwise sensible people who fought with the worst parts of their character and lost, literally have blood on their hands.

An apology, which, I believe Remnick once gave for his own bad judgment, really is pretty meaningless if you then try to perfume the continuing bad judgment of some on your reporters with conciliatory vapors. To assert, "There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime.." is far worse than a grave insult to all those who have died and suffered. It is an ominous warning that the same intellectual and moral mediocrities who initially supported the Bush/Iraq war have, most likely, learned absolutely nothing. This is not "nuance." This is the intolerable language of moral equivocation; it makes a mockery of the serious discourse to which The New Yorker aspires to contribute. Quite simply, it is shameful.

So, thank you, editors of the New Yorker for endorsing Obama. Now, don't bother opining on war and peace until you're prepared to address these solemn issues in the solemn manner they deserve: by placing the horror of the dead and maimed front and center and ignoring the oh so tender feelings of those amongst you who still excuse the carnage.


Special note for Republicans and others with dysfunctional moral compasses: I never needed Kanan Makiya or George Packer to tell me that Saddam Hussein was a vicious dictator who perpetrated dreadful crimes. On the contrary: Both men need to be reminded repeatedly that the murderous, senseless rampage Bush unleashed upon Iraq - a country which never attacked us - was, and is, both uniquely horrific and entirely predictable.