The New ‘New Republic’ (Marty Peretz Hates It Edition)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

imagesIn yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, former owner/editor-in-chief of The New Republic Martin Peretz sandblasted the refurbished edition now being published by new owner (and juice-box Facebook co-founder) Chris Hughes.

The first edition of The New New Republic was fat – 68 heavyweight glossy pages – and mildly controversial thanks to the fawning interview Hughes and editor Franklin Foer conducted with President Obama (see Reuters media critic Jack Shafer here and the redoubtable Dan Kennedy of Media Nation here).

Now comes the second edition of The New New Republic – and Peretz’s Journal strafing of it:

Like many readers of the New Republic, I didn’t at first recognize the most recent issue of the magazine. The stark white cover was unlike anything the New Republic ran during my 35 years as the owner. Having read the cover story, I still don’t recognize the magazine that I sold in 2012 to the Facebook zillionaire Chris Hughes.

“Original Sin,” by Sam Tanenhaus, purported to explain “Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people.” The provocative theme would not have been unthinkable in the magazine’s 99-year history, but the essay’s reliance on insinuations of GOP racism (“the inimical ‘they’ were being targeted by a spurious campaign to pass voter-identification laws, a throwback to Jim Crow”) and gross oversimplifications hardly reflected the intellectual traditions of a journal of ideas. What made the “Original Sin” issue unrecognizable to this former owner is that it established as fact what had only been suggested by the magazine in the early days of its new administration: The New Republic has abandoned its liberal but heterodox tradition and embraced a leftist outlook as predictable as that of Mother Jones or the Nation.

Mind you, this is from a man who fired TNR editor Michael Kelly in 1996 for not being sufficiently Al Gore-ish.

But why get technical about it.

P.S. Chris Hughes says he’s all about the web and mobile media. Problem is, the New New Republic website is a hot mess. See for yourself.

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Scott Brown Not The Brightest Bulb In The Vanity Mirror

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Subhead: He’s a bit of a stiff, too.

Former Sen. Scott Brown (R-$$$) made his Fox News debut on Sean Hannity’s show last night, and it has received decidedly mixed reviews in the local dailies.

Boston Globe:

Scott Brown_Fox NewsScott Brown makes his Fox debut

Former senator Scott Brown made a transition from potential comeback politician to pundit in just two weeks, making his debut as a contributor to Fox News on Wednesday night in an appearance also billed as an “exclusive” by host Sean Hannity.

Fans and skeptics alike saw the move as a plush landing pad for Brown, a telegenic former model who used his regular-guy appeal to great effect in his campaign for US Senate and whose upset win in 2010 was championed and chronicled on Fox . . .

Wearing a suit with an American flag on his lapel, Brown started off his appearance on the “Hannity” show smiling uncertainly, but he soon hit his stride with campaign- style talking points.

Translation for the Fox News-impaired: Bo-ring . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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The Quick Brown Fox (News)

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

No sooner had former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R-$$$) signed on the dotted line with the Fox News Channel than he was on-air discussing Barack Obama’s State of the Union address with Sean Hannity, who is to reasoned discourse what plaid is to Bermuda shorts.

(Watch here.)

Dialogue as described by Politico‘s Dylan Byers:

“Hey Sean, great to be on and hello to you and your viewers,” Brown said after Hannity welcomed him the show.

“Well, we appreciate you being here,” Hannity said. “I’ve got to get one political question out of the way, you knew I’d throw this in — why not run for Kerry’s seat?”

Brown noted that it isn’t Kerry’s seat — “it is the people’s seat, as you remember” — and said he decided he didn’t want to be involved in yet another race as well as a Congress that’s “really dysfunctional and extremely partisan.”

“To do five races in six years and raise another $30-$50 million and then and participate in a Congress that’s really dysfunctional and extremely partisan — I felt I could make a difference being on this show and doing other things,” Brown said. “I plan to stay involved certainly, but, you know, I’m going to continue to work and be part of the election process back home and other elections around the country.”

Whatever the hell that mean$.

Brown also managed to plug his insider trading moment with Obama at the 2012 SOTU. From Campaign Outsider’s Memory Lane Vault™:

 

Let’s see how long Brown can dine off moments like that in the Fox News canteen.

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Newseum’s Top Ten Pope-a-Lope Front Pages Skips the Best One

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Every day The Newseum posts its Today’s Top Ten Front Pages, which featured this on Tuesday:

Caught Off Guard

Monday’s shocking news of Pope Benedict XVI’s impending resignation caught the world, and the media, off guard. Today, newspapers around the globe caught up, with front-page coverage of the first papal abdication in 600 years. Our favorite: “Bolt from the blue” in London’s Guardian, illustrated with a dramatic photo of St. Peter’s being struck by lightning yesterday

Said Guardian front page:

UK_TG

But that can’t hold a (votive) candle to Page One of Tuesday’s New York Post (via, of all places, the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages) . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Four-Daily Town.

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Tom Menino’s Snow Job

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

The Boston Herald nails Mistah Mayah on Page One today.

Picture 1

Columnist Joe Battenfeld’s piece has the damning details. (As with snowflakes, no two campaign contributions are alike.) . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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Blog New World at the Boston Herald

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Tuesday’s Boston Herald front page:

Note the announcement top left:

The feisty local tabloid’s new State of the Arts blog appears to be the paper’s entry into the commerce journalism racket . . .

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.

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Dead Blogging The #SOTU

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Call it Barack Obama’s State of the Younion.

“You” being the GOP.

There were more bucks passed last night inside the House chamber than at a three-card monte game in Times Square.

(If you chose “get it done” for your drinking game, you were knee-walking by 9:30.)

Obama laid it all on the GOP in his State of the Union address, essentially saying “I’m the solution, the Republicans are the problem.”

Video (via the New York Times):

 

Transcript (via NPR).

Part that’s likeliest to drive the GOP crazy:

The greatest nation on Earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next. Let’s agree, right here, right now, to keep the people’s government open, pay our bills on time, and always uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America. The American people have worked too hard, for too long, rebuilding from one crisis to see their elected officials cause another.

Your bitter recriminations go here.

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Boston Dailies Are Papal Tigers

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

In this most Cathaholic of towns, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald are on Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation like Brown on Williamson.

For starters, the old Pontifox owns both front pages.

Picture 2
Picture 1

From there he gets Vatican-size chunks of the newshole – three full pages in each . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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Quote o’ the Day (2012 BoSox Edition)

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

From the redoubtable Jason Gay’s latest column in the Wall Street Journal:

MK-CA803_GAY_DV_20130210171416The Loopy Mess of LakerFail

The Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Miami Heat on Sunday. This is not wildly important. What’s important is that the Lakers continue to be a mess. Barring a shocking turnabout, they will not win the NBA title. It’s quite possible they may not make the playoffs; as it stands right now, they wouldn’t even qualify. They have lost more than 50% of their games. They are inhaling their second coach. They have been playing a little better lately, including Sunday in Miami. But that’s not important, either. What’s important is that they usually play like strangers who met on an airport shuttle bus. What’s important is that they bicker. That is the role they are playing.

The Lakers have made a huge deal out of being a Big Mess.

As Gay says, “LakerFail is treated with the instant-update gusto of an international war zone or an election night.”

But that’s not what’s earned him Quote o’ the Day accolades. Rather, it’s this:

The interest in these Lakers is not very different than the obsession in the recent iterations of the Boston Red Sox, a baseball team that plummeted spectacularly from contention in September 2011, fired its manager and then spent most of 2012 walking around the AL East with an aluminum pail over its head.

Full disclosure: The hardworking staff has been a Made Yankee Fan in Boston since 1974.

Still, you have to admit “walking around the AL East with an aluminum pail over its head” is flat-out funny.

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Throwing The Book(s) At Whitey Bulger

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Dueling book plugs in the local dailies the past two days, starting with this Boston Sunday Globe Page One pompom:

Picture 3A window into Whitey’s brutal life and mind

New biography traces Bulger’s rise, reign, and the reckoning ahead

As he sits brooding in his drab cell awaiting trial, South Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger is telling friends that while he feels tortured by his cramped captivity, with its isolation, strip searches, and dismal food, he is ready and eager for “the big show” — the trial where he will defend his sense of honor if not exactly his innocence.

But however defiant he remains, Bulger was prepared to give prosecutors an easy way out, saying he offered himself up for execution if the government would let the woman he loves walk free . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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