My Marty Peretz Problem -- And Ours
He bought The New Republic in 1974 and sold it this February. In between, he transformed America's most influential liberal weekly: Today, it is no longer as influential, or liberal, or even weekly.
Eric Alterman | June 18, 2007
American Prospect
"A magazine," a friend once observed to me over too many glasses of wine, "is by definition a problem." But like Tolstoy's unhappy families, each magazine is its own peculiar problem. And for the past 34 years, the name of The New Republic's problem has been "Martin H. Peretz."
My Marty Peretz problem -- and ours, if you happen to care about the respective fates of American liberalism, Judaism, or journalism -- is nothing if not complicated. When, in early 2007, Peretz finished what he had begun five years earlier, selling off what had long been America's most influential independent liberal weekly magazine, TNR was no longer any of these things. Now owned by the Canadian CanWest corporation, the magazine was obviously no longer independent -- in fact, it was the first time in the magazine's history it was not owned by someone married to a wealthy heiress (or his widow or descendants). Nor, with the sale to CanWest, was it any longer weekly, the frequency it had maintained since its founding in 1914. As for TNR's influence, such a thing is not easy to measure. But circulation is. TNR's 60,000 or so readers today are barely more than half of what the magazine enjoyed in its heyday. Hence the sale.
And whether TNR can still sensibly be called liberal -- well, that's another long and complicated story, one that I intend to address in the pages that follow.
What's more, during his reign, Peretz has also done lasting damage to the cause of American liberalism. By turning TNR into a kind of ideological police dog, Peretz enjoyed the ability -- at least for a while -- to play a key role in defining the borders of "responsible" liberal discourse, thereby tarring anyone who disagreed as irresponsible or untrustworthy. But he did so on the basis of a politics simultaneously so narrow and idiosyncratic -- in thrall almost entirely to an Israel-centric neoconservatism -- that it's difficult to understand how the magazine's politics might be considered liberal anymore. Ironically Peretz's stance ultimately turned out to be not only out of step with most liberals but also most American Jews, who consistently cling to views far more dovish, both on Israel and on U.S. foreign policy generally, than those espoused in TNR.
(Continued here.)
Eric Alterman | June 18, 2007
American Prospect
"A magazine," a friend once observed to me over too many glasses of wine, "is by definition a problem." But like Tolstoy's unhappy families, each magazine is its own peculiar problem. And for the past 34 years, the name of The New Republic's problem has been "Martin H. Peretz."
My Marty Peretz problem -- and ours, if you happen to care about the respective fates of American liberalism, Judaism, or journalism -- is nothing if not complicated. When, in early 2007, Peretz finished what he had begun five years earlier, selling off what had long been America's most influential independent liberal weekly magazine, TNR was no longer any of these things. Now owned by the Canadian CanWest corporation, the magazine was obviously no longer independent -- in fact, it was the first time in the magazine's history it was not owned by someone married to a wealthy heiress (or his widow or descendants). Nor, with the sale to CanWest, was it any longer weekly, the frequency it had maintained since its founding in 1914. As for TNR's influence, such a thing is not easy to measure. But circulation is. TNR's 60,000 or so readers today are barely more than half of what the magazine enjoyed in its heyday. Hence the sale.
And whether TNR can still sensibly be called liberal -- well, that's another long and complicated story, one that I intend to address in the pages that follow.
What's more, during his reign, Peretz has also done lasting damage to the cause of American liberalism. By turning TNR into a kind of ideological police dog, Peretz enjoyed the ability -- at least for a while -- to play a key role in defining the borders of "responsible" liberal discourse, thereby tarring anyone who disagreed as irresponsible or untrustworthy. But he did so on the basis of a politics simultaneously so narrow and idiosyncratic -- in thrall almost entirely to an Israel-centric neoconservatism -- that it's difficult to understand how the magazine's politics might be considered liberal anymore. Ironically Peretz's stance ultimately turned out to be not only out of step with most liberals but also most American Jews, who consistently cling to views far more dovish, both on Israel and on U.S. foreign policy generally, than those espoused in TNR.
(Continued here.)
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