October 16, 2007

The coming demise of Commentary Magazine has just been announced

From the neocon vanity newspaper, the New York Sun:

Commentary's Transition

New York Sun Editorial

October 16, 2007

While the Republicans are arguing about the meaning of their party and their philosophy, one of the clearest-thinking journals in America, Commentary magazine, is signaling that its own transition will be true on matters of principle. It announced yesterday that its next editor will be John Podhoretz, who will take over the monthly in January 2009. Mr. Podhoretz will be only the fourth editor of Commentary in the magazine's 61-year history, succeeding one of the finest editors in journalism, Neal Kozodoy, who has been with Commentary since 1966, served as editor since 1995, and made the magazine the gold standard of what has come to be called neo-conservative thinking — and a showcase of enterprising journalism, offering scoop after scoop on the beat of ideas.

… Mr. Kozodoy also guided the magazine to its independent ownership in a new not-for-profit corporation, leaving its long-time home in the American Jewish Committee.

In John Podhoretz, who has been writing a brilliant column for the New York Post, Commentary is turning to a leading voice of the younger generation at the same time that it continues its connection to the intellectual tradition that has brought so much to our city and country. It's an inspiring transition for those of us who cover the battle of ideas, and who recognize the enormous impact that a relatively modest publication can have. It is something to think about for a Republican — or any — Party that is trying to find its footing in a turbulent time.

JPod is, of course, the son of former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz.

This tradition of giving magazines to the offspring of first generation neoconservatives is getting out of control. I mean, William Kristol, who runs The Weekly Standard, may not be quite right in the head, but he at least looks presentable. John Podhoretz, in contrast, is a notorious buffoon. If the younger Kristol is evidence for the theory of regression toward the mean, JPod represents regression below the mean.

Charles Murray, the last of the neoconservative data-crunchers, should begin looking for a new outlet.

So, who exactly made this decision? Didn't the Board watch "Gladiator," which teaches the usful lesson: Don't give power to malign oafs just because they are related to the old boss?

I wonder how Commentary's Managing Editor Gary Rosen feels today?

By the way, Podhoretz's brother-in-law is convicted criminal Elliott Abrams, who during the first term of the current President, "filled the post of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs." In other words, he was the President's adviser on Israel. "At the start of Bush's second term, Abrams was promoted to be his Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy" -- Wikipedia.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

You and JPod. Jesus.

Anonymous said...

It announced yesterday that its next editor will be John Podhoretz

OMG! The neoconservatives have truly lost it. I can taste the Podenfreude already.

Anonymous said...

We can only hope that his cadre of Nobel Laureates will be accompanying him to Commentary's editor's desk.

Steve Sailer said...

Don't forget the Academy Award-winning screenwriters who craft his Laureates ideas into the scintillating comebacks for which JPod is so famous.

Anonymous said...

Did Britney Spears turn the job down?

Anonymous said...

Steve,

JPod is just adhering to the timeless principle that has made neo-cons great.

When in trouble or doubt smear your opponents.

This is a winner anyway you slice it. Guilt or innocence need not be considered. Just throw mud. Wrecking the reputation of an innocent man is probably more productive than punishing an actual villain. When the truth is no defense it tends not to be bandied about much. And within that vacuum of truth, magic is possible…

ACE

Anonymous said...

Don't know about the resta yuz, but I'm a pretty regular reader of NRO's Corner and I can say with absolute certainty that Podhoretz has never, never, ever contributed anything witty or profound to the dialogue over there. Most of his posts are pretty shrill, if not just mean and petty.

I don't know what strings daddy pulled to get him the job, but I give him 2 years, tops - unless he's just a figurehead there because he bears the Podhoretz name.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the Academy Award-winning screenwriters who craft his Laureates ideas into the scintillating comebacks for which JPod is so famous.

Yes, I think the job should be a cakewalk for the man - assuming he can get over his excess melanin problem.

Anonymous said...

Who even reads Commentary anymore?

~ Risto

Anonymous said...

This means that Commentary will not be publishing any race realism stuff in the future. No more Charles Murray. No more Arthur Jensen.

Anonymous said...

Is JPod's career part of some affirmative action program for witless Jews?

Nicholas said...

'Tis a sad day for American letters.

Nicholas Stix

Anonymous said...

After reading somewhere that Commentary was an "important" source for conservative intellectualism, I decided to check out their website. I'll never forget the top article on the site, which described our current efforts in the middle east as "World War IV against islamo-fascism". I must have missed the third world war. The rest of the content at the site wasn't much better. After a couple of minutes of eye-rolls and chuckles, I clicked the back button on my browser. To me, the level of the rhetoric seemed about on par with what you would hear on Sean Hannity's radio show.

Anonymous said...

This is indeed pretty sad. Whatever you say about the neocons and their ideas - and I know most in this forum have plenty to say about that - Commentary magazine always managed to maintain a high level of writing. It's hard to see how this would not suffer under JPod's reign.

Anonymous said...

udolpho quipped:

Is JPod's career part of some affirmative action program for witless Jews?

What isn't? Look at the Administration.

Anonymous said...

Look on the bright side, next in line to J-Pod is Jonah Goldberg.

Nicholas said...

"David said...

"udolpho quipped:

'Is JPod's career part of some affirmative action program for witless Jews?'

"What isn't? Look at the Administration."

"10/17/2007 7:55 AM"

As the president and CEO of ZOG, my responsibilities include ensuring that all positions of power in America are filled with Jews, and recording all such placements. Where, pray tell, are all of these Jews hidden in the Bush II Administration? I thought I was falling down on the job, but apparently, I’ve been doing much better than I thought.

Please identify each name from the following two lists that is the child of a Jewish mother, or who has converted to Judaism. Thanks in advance, for your kind assistance.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Stix
President and CEO
ZOG


Bush II Cabinet Members (WH Web site, as of October 17, 2007)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
government/cabinet.html
Chuck Conner
Dirk Kempthorne
Carlos Gutierrez
Peter D. Keisler
Robert M. Gates
Elaine Chao
Margaret Spellings
Condoleezza Rice
Samuel W. Bodman
Mary E. Peters
Michael O. Leavitt
Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
Michael Chertoff
Gordon H. Mansfield
Alphonso Jackson

Cabinet Rank Members
Richard B. Cheney
Joshua B. Bolten
Jim Nussle
Susan Schwab
Stephen Johnson
John Walters

Anonymous said...

Nick, hon, it's not that the cabinet was filled with Jews, it's that the losers who duped us into the Iraq war were.

Of course the vast majority of American Jews were liberals who opposed the war. The neocons aren't too numerous, but they're close to the levers of power. Or at least were until this idiotic war.

Anonymous said...

Nicholas:

Wow: there was a time (namely the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations, and to some extent the first Bush 43 term) when I was a young nerd and could rattle off every Cabinet member and his department by heart. Now my skills in that area have atrophied quite a bit; I have no idea what departments Conner, Keisler, Bodman, Peters, and Mansfield head. I am clueless about many of the "Cabinet rank" people as well.

Anyway, back in 2001 Richard Cohen of the Washington Post complained that there were no Jews in the first Bush cabinet. Of course, it is true that have been a number of influential Jews of subcabinet rank (Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Abrams) in the Bush administration, but few of Cabinet rank. I believe Chertoff is Jewish, and Keisler (whoever that is) sounds as if he might be, but on the whole the Bush cabinet is certainly not dominated by Jewish persons (although I don't know if David was actually trying to imply that).

Anonymous said...

But on the whole the Bush cabinet is certainly not dominated by Jewish persons (although I don't know if David was actually trying to imply that).

The original 2001 Bush cabinet had no Jewish members (info thanks to the ADL). It was fun to see the ADL bitch about that one ("We Jews are pissed that we're not hugely disproportionately powerful even though, of course, we deserve to be.")

I'm sure most Jews are pretty proud that they've had little to do with most of this administration. They should be. Of course they did have disproportionate influence on by far the biggest failure - the Iraq War.

As for right now, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff is Jewish, as is his new Attorney General nominee Mukasey, as well as Fed Chief Ben Bernanke.

The Clinton Admin had lots of Jews in the Cabinet. At one point the three biggest were all Jewish: Cohen at Defense, Albright at State, Rubin and then Summers at Treasury. Also Glickman at Agriculture, Kantor at Commerce, and Reich at Labor. And of course BOTH his Supreme Court nominees were Jewish.

I am no anti-Semite, but what completely amazes me is that you can have that many Jews dominating a presidential administration and have NO discussion of it in the mainstream media. What if there had been that many Mormons? Or Pentecostals? Good heavens, we'd never hear the end of it.

What's makes it even more interesting is that, leave out the Jews, and the number of white men in the Clinton Cabinet was almost nil. Of the 28 different people who served in Clinton's Cabinet, only 8, or 28%, were white non-Jewish men. At the start of the Clinton Admin we were - what? - 40% of the citizen population? (Of course he made great strides in driving down that number, didn't he).

Do you think that relates to why white men don't vote for Democrats anymore? Do you think white men should be more concerned about our increasing minority status?

Anonymous said...

Mark: Don't know about the resta yuz, but I'm a pretty regular reader of NRO's Corner and I can say with absolute certainty that Podhoretz has never, never, ever contributed anything witty or profound to the dialogue over there. Most of his posts are pretty shrill, if not just mean and petty.

No joke.

They've got a back and forth right now on immigration - the Derb just pointed out that there are troubles brewing in Storm Lake, Iowa, if the elementary schools are now 60%+ Hispanic.

And then JPod gets on there and tries to call The Derb a hypocrite?

God in Heaven, it makes you want to grab JPod by the collar and scream at the guy - to compare an accomplished, award-winning writer [on a wide variety of subjects], with a degree in mathematics from a major British university - WHO CAME HERE LEGALLY - with a veritable army of subliterate, third-world peasants, who might be able to muster an average IQ in the upper 80's [on a good day] - WHO CAME HERE ILLEGALLY?!?

Not to mention the fact the The Derb is, at least onstensibly, supposed to be the guy's colleague at National Review?

WTF?!?

God, the very thought of that little creep Podhoretz makes my skin crawl.

Anonymous said...

"God in Heaven, it makes you want to grab JPod by the collar and scream at the guy - to compare an accomplished, award-winning writer [on a wide variety of subjects], with a degree in mathematics from a major British university - WHO CAME HERE LEGALLY - with a veritable army of subliterate, third-world peasants, who might be able to muster an average IQ in the upper 80's [on a good day] - WHO CAME HERE ILLEGALLY?!?"

You aren't the only one.

I realize that JPod is high on ideology but can anything other than racial animus or morbid paranoia explain his position on immigration? I used to accept the "Ellis Island sentimentality" explanation but it's not sufficiant to justify his brand of idiotic immigration-at-any-cost advocacy.

Nicholas said...

The anonymous poster calling himself “Nicholas Stix” said…

David said...

"udolpho quipped:

'Is JPod's career part of some affirmative action program for witless Jews?'

"What isn't? Look at the Administration."

"10/17/2007 7:55 AM"

SFG said...

“Nick, hon, it's not that the cabinet was filled with Jews, it's that the losers who duped us into the Iraq war were.

”Of course the vast majority of American Jews were liberals who opposed the war. The neocons aren't too numerous, but they're close to the levers of power. Or at least were until this idiotic war.

“10/17/2007 4:31 PM”

James Kabala said...

“Nicholas:

“Wow: there was a time (namely the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations, and to some extent the first Bush 43 term) when I was a young nerd and could rattle off every Cabinet member and his department by heart. Now my skills in that area have atrophied quite a bit; I have no idea what departments Conner, Keisler, Bodman, Peters, and Mansfield head. I am clueless about many of the ‘Cabinet rank’ people as well.

“Anyway, back in 2001 Richard Cohen of the Washington Post complained that there were no Jews in the first Bush cabinet. Of course, it is true that have been a number of influential Jews of subcabinet rank (Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Abrams) in the Bush administration, but few of Cabinet rank. I believe Chertoff is Jewish, and Keisler (whoever that is) sounds as if he might be, but on the whole the Bush cabinet is certainly not dominated by Jewish persons (although I don't know if David was actually trying to imply that).

“10/17/2007 4:31 PM”

SFG and James,

Thanks for your responses.

SFG (10/17/2007 4:31 PM) opens, “Nick, hon, it's not that the cabinet was filled with Jews, it's that the losers who duped us into the Iraq war were.”

Wrong answer!

And James says (10/17/2007 4:31 PM), among other things, “Anyway, back in 2001 Richard Cohen of the Washington Post complained that there were no Jews in the first Bush cabinet. [Did I ever catch Hell for that, among my fellow global conspirators!] Of course, it is true that have been a number of influential Jews of subcabinet rank (Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Abrams) in the Bush administration, but few of Cabinet rank. I believe Chertoff is Jewish, and Keisler (whoever that is) sounds as if he might be, but on the whole the Bush cabinet is certainly not dominated by Jewish persons (although I don't know if David was actually trying to imply that).”

That’s better, but still wrong.

David said that everything (“what isn’t”) — including the Bush II Administration — is an affirmative action program for witless Jews. That means that the Administration is lousy with stupid Jews NOW, not just five years ago.

Now, I need to know the facts. My position as the head of ZOG requires that I convince my brethren that I am maintaining total Jewish control of the world, and at the same time extending Jewish control (“But if you’re already totally in control, how can you extend your control?” I don’t know, SFG, dear, go ask “Dr.” David Duke, who claims expertise in such matters.)

That Podhoretz Jr. has been gifted one job after another beyond his limited abilities supports Udolpho’s limited observation. David, however, suffered a bout of premature self-congratulation having nothing to do with Udolpho’s statement. SFG and James tried to save him from himself, but alas, it was too late.

David’s thinking went something like this: ‘Udolpho agrees with me! He said all Jews are morons who don’t deserve their jobs!’

James cites “Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Abrams.”

Well, according to Bob Woodward, Tommy Franks says that Doug Feith is “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” As member #20,521,489 of the Tommy Franks Fan Club, I’ll take Franks’ word for it, even if he does have an even worse thyroid condition than Steve Sailer.

(Franks on Feith, according to Woodward: “I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day." http://slate.com/id/2099277/)

Conversely, Wolfowitz isn’t witless; he’s in thrall to humanitarianism, and in love with an Arab, either one of which alone could drive a man insane, but taken together …

I didn’t know until now that Libby was a member of the tribe. I have to update my register! In any event, no one ever called Libby stupid, though on this matter, David may know better. He is apparently the world’s reigning expert on stupid Jews.

All I know about Abrams is that he’s a Jew, a neocon, and Podhoretz Jr.’s brother-in-law. (He’s Podhoretz Jr.’s brother-in-law?!)

David,

Since I am still promoting the mutually contradictory notions that: 1. Through ZOG, I am the cause of all Jewish success (that one is for my global co-conspirators); and 2. Ashkenazi Jews’ success is due to their having an IQ that is on average one standard deviation higher than white gentiles (that story is obviously for gentile consumption), I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t go public with your insight that Jews are actually an intellectually inferior group, whose success has been entirely manufactured via affirmative action. I’d lose my role as head of the international conspiracy, and Jews everywhere would be demoted to servile tasks. Let’s just keep it our secret, eh?

David,

Jews are best at putting down other Jews (is Tommy Franks perhaps a brother Jew?); you, on the other hand, are a perfect illustration of the principle, “Don’t send a gentile to a Jew’s job.”

TAPCHNS

Anonymous said...

A Vegas bookie has promised to post the Over/Under, in months, on the tenure of John P. Normanson at Commentary.

Anyone care to offer an estimate?

John P. Normanson at Commentary, one more example of Neoconservative Nepotism and the decline and fall of American meritocracy.