Lowry's statement in National Review.
Does anybody read National Review anymore? After my freshman year in high school, the school librarian called me in and said, "We have to throw out old magazines to make room, so, would you like the 1969-1971 issues of National Review?" I ecstatically read all of them in the summer of '73.
But that was a very long time ago. About a month ago, I realized that I had stopped visiting National Review's website in recent years. Not a conscious decision, just that as I scanned down all my links, I never felt an urge to click on the NR link. The last month or so I made a conscious effort to visit it a few times. But, the content proved forgettable.
The three editors of National Review have been William F. Buckley, John O'Sullivan, and Rich Lowry. That progression may explain much.
Posts
125 comments:
Lowry's a massive douche. Did you see his column defending Al Sharpton's take on the Trayvon Martin case? Super gay.
Robert Conquest's second law of politics is: "Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing."
I think that law needs a corollary: Any right-wing organization that becomes sufficiently mainstream sooner or later become left-wing as well.
I've been reading a book Called Buckley, the Rise of American Conservatism, and I find it ironic that WFB was considered every bit as "racist" as Derbyshire.
"About a month ago, I realized that I had stopped visiting National Review's website in recent years."
That's because there is better writing at CH, 1Stdv, FVR, GLP...
It seems to me that everyone in the HBD world who liked Derb knew this would eventually happen. I know I kept waiting for the ax to fall every time I listened to Radio Derb and he spoke about illegal immigration. The only drawback that I can see is that two strong patriotic voices, Buchanan and Derb, have recently been removed from mainstream debate, which can't help our side. Lou Dobbs is gone. Who do we have left with a megaphone?
Mickey Kaus?
They let other magazines tell them to fire someone and then do it?
I wouldn't have fired him just for that reason alone.
Foseti, I approvingly quoted of a couple of very harsh things a few bloggers wrote about Lowry, and then felt badly for piling on. Thanks for reminding me of Lowry's craven column about Sharpton. What a disgrace.
No, I quite admire Lowry. He isn't about histrionics; he's about articulating a consensus conservative position that can appeal to 51% (or more) of Americans, and that will alienate the minimum possible of Americans. It's not an easy thing to do--I can't think of anyone else who does it better. He shouldn't be the only voice in conservatism, but he doesn't aspire to be.
Has anyone met Lowery? Just lookin at him and reading what he writes, he seems effeminate. Just a spineless weasel.
Looks like a 29-year-old man from a sunny state should have a followed Derb's advice. Sadly, this one probably couldn't read, and ended up getting shot down by a dog, right next to his dog.
(This time the shooter was black. He also left the scene uninjured and police custody without being charged. His name has not been released.)
Take heed of Mr. Derbyshire's sage advice. It's going to be a long, hot summer.
John O'Sullivan was an excellent editor, but he was pushed out in the same purge which saw the end of Peter Brimlow, Steve Sailer and others.
I suppose in another few years the current staff at NRO will be purged and air-brushed out of history in their turn.
I'd occasionally scan their Corner blog for a Derbyshire post. Other than that, I only went to his Radio Derb page every Friday evening. So, this'll be the end of my limited exposure to that particular website.
Reihan Salam's wonkish blog The Agenda is worth reading. Other than that, yeah, NR's star has pretty well lost its luster.
Until today I had not been to NRO in at least three years. What jumped out were how many author's names I could not pronounce.
That's a clue right there.
Yes, Lowry is the posterboy for spineless with his jellyboy side kick Goldberg.
Happy Easter!
MDR
Open Firefox > Bookmarks > Show all Bookmarks > Bookmarks Menu > Select NRO Website > [Delete key]
I quite admire Lowry. He isn't about histrionics; he's about articulating a consensus conservative position that can appeal to 51% (or more) of Americans
That's not his job. The Republican party has to worry about appealing to 51% of Americans (and it does a poor job of it) but a journal of opinion does not have any such responsibility.
Lowery is a squish because NR's financial backers want him to be.
I'd occasionally scan their Corner blog for a Derbyshire post.
Mark Krikorian is good also.
But again, you have to wonder how long he will be permitted to post there. He's their token immigration guy - the rest of them are either pro-open borders or refuse to go near the topic.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
They let other magazines tell them to fire someone and then do it?
I wouldn't have fired him just for that reason alone.
It's worse than that. I suspect that they asked an occasional contributor to attack a respected columnist (who had just started cancer treatments) so that they could be rid of him.
Is it possible that they're just too cheap to pay his insurance? Cancer treatment is costly, and whenever I hear this sort of bluster, I assume that a money issue lies at the heart of it.
It's really hard not to believe that in some sense, as Lowry said, The Talk was a resignation letter from Derb.
"No, I quite admire Lowry. He isn't about histrionics; he's about articulating a consensus conservative position that can appeal to 51% (or more) of Americans"
In other words, the "conservatism" of the Bush Era. Fat lotta good that did us.
Presumably NRO will still carry Krikorian, VDH, and Steyn. Better than nothing. Will their actions cause the trio to more closely toe the neocon line, or will they be imboldened by a desire to defend Derb?
Lowry's statement avoids pointing out what was false and wrong about Derb's column.
And that would have been too easy:
As we all know, high crime rates are caused by a lack of population density.
Just ask Matt Yglesias.
For the record, Radio Derb appears to still be up at NRO. The transcripts are available at Derb's own site, but if you want the files - and have a QuickTime Pro license - you can save the actual files from NRO and listen to them.
Yes, people still read it. Derb was one of the main reasons. NRO at any rate has about 15x the readership of takimag, according to Alexa. (daily reach of ~0.03% vs ~0.002%)
I look at NRO at lot since it is the most important GOP magazine so I know the party line. It shows the party is in poor shape and has not learned much from the Bush years.
Salam has a lot of good writing on domestic policy. Krikorian is good on immigration. Other than those two and Derb you get a lot of mindless spouting of talking points : Cut taxes, the USA is exceptional so lets dominate the world, Reagan is the greatest thing since Jesus, etc.
Say what you will about Lowry, right or wrong (and of course he was wrong) he did it the right way.
Lowry knew that Buckley suffered by equivocating in the Sobran affair. He looked weak and guilty. Buckley had a greater burden in that his magazine's original mission was to repeal Vatican II and to combat godless communism, and he had to fire its' most ardent Catholic apologist and anti-communist.
NR, now, could probably survive without subscribers, it no longer needs the widow's pence, it is no longer a source of hope for traditionalist; it is now a neocon voice and the people who like it have plenty of money to sustain it as long as it suits them.
The magazine is now a vehicle for Zionist apologetics; Derbyshire made the mistake of presuming it was anything else. The Sobran affair should have been sign enough. His strong, and I think correct, opinions on race threatened the bipartisan consensus on Israel - he had to go. I just can't see how such a perceptive man failed to recognize the interest of his employers, or maybe he did and he just didn't care anymore.
"Sadly, this one probably couldn't read, and ended up getting shot down by a dog, right next to his dog. "An independent witness did say Adkins swung his fists in the driver's direction."
Now that's amusing!
Per you link:
"An independent witness did say Adkins swung his fists in the driver's direction."
“He swung his fist towards the driver window, and at some point the driver shot him,”
If you check out the NR at alexa.com, it appears to be fairly popular but its audience is heavily weighted to the 45+ age group.
You can't fault Lowry for canning him, he wrote a blatantly racist column. Believe it or not, racist screeds from right-wing sources do great damage to movement conservatism.
Kind of ironic, that a man who talks about nuking Mecca would fire someone for hate speech:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/03/13/national-review-editor-suggests-nuking-mecca/
But I guess hate speech is only bad if it doesn't serve Jewish interests.
Who?
Its been bad for a long time. I often wonder how much power Lowrey actually has - he seems like such a total mediocrity. The man never writes/says anything interesting.
I wonder who really runs the show at NR. Goldberg? Chris Buckley? Where does NR get its money from?
Like many, the chance of a Derb post was about the only reason I hit the Corner any more.
Just for fun, I intend to let the door hit me on the ass on the way out.
I'll also stop visiting NRO. I was a subscriber until the death of Buckley. First the purge the race realists, next, I predict, they will purge the marriage realists. How long until the many Catholics who write there will be pushed out for their "outlandish", "nasty" views? Seems impossible now, but the wind is certainly blowing that way and the Editors certainly no longer stand athwart history yelling "Stop!"
Ironically, NRO suffered the fate of the USSR. Though ruthless sons of bitches, Lenin and Trotsky were first rate radicals. And Stalin was a master player. But then, the leadership got lousier and lousier.
TNR remained a first rate mag despite loopy views because it took chances with new people. Buckley could have done that for the right, but he sought neocons and so he clamped down on the most creative and original thinkers on the right, and what NRO attracted were safe partisan hacks.
Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson are worth reading at The Corner. Will miss Derb there.
Olave,
Of course, no "role reversal" here. No one will march for Adkins. No one will send the suspect death threats. No ethnic groups will howl for blood. And most importantly, the media won't make a circus out of it. It will be contained in the local media. Hell, we might not ever get the guy's name.
"You killed a mentaaaalllyyy chaaaallleeenged man with the mind of a chiiiillllld!!!! For walking his dog!!!!! Nooooooo Juuuuustiiiiiceeee nooo peeeeeeeaaacceeee!!!"
Nope.
I guess what the Derb said of intelligent black guy applies to Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell too. NRO is so eager to be hip and black-friendly that it's still under the delusion that GOP can be the black party.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/gop-is-the-new-black-billboard
NRO, still thinking Jews will turn conservative and still thinking blacks will ditch Obama for Romney. Ah, the power of delusion.
NRO is the new stupid.
But I must say... when Scott McConnell of American Conservative endorsed Obama, I thought I'd puke.
Does anyone read NR?
Er,
www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nationalreview.com#
Website numbers still very high. Clobbers any other right of center magazine's website, except Newsmax or maybe the Weekly Standard.
Demolishes the numbers on The American Conservative (which can't even beat Commentary).
Buckley himself was the problem. In the end, principles mattered less with him than 'respectability'. With rise of Reagan, Buckley ditched some of the more 'radical' views of NR and went mainstream. That meant winning over the neocons and not offending the liberal mainstream. And so NR got tamer. Buckley was smart but not really a thinker. And he was vain. He wanted to be invited to cocktail parties and raised his son to be likewise, which is why Christopher turned into an Obama-supporting dweeb. He grew up under the social vanity of his parents. If Buckley had to choose between truth and his place in the haute crowd, he would have gone with the latter. He got addicted to being the GOOD conservative that even liberals like. He too became afraid of offending conventional wisdom. And so, Lowry was the logical choice. Lowry was a running dog, a lackey, a hack. If Buckley had chosen his heir based on intelligence and talent, it would have been some Jewish neocon at NR or even Sowell, but Buckley wanted to keep it gentile-controlled. Problem is Lowry is a pet doggy. And so the head of NR is now a pet dog sucking up to Jews, blacks, and gays. So, NR went from flame to tame to lame.
Rumor has it that Derbyshire might soon be replaced by Günter Grass.
Another THE TALK for all would be reporters.
"Son, if you wanna work in journalism, even as a conzo, always be shhhhhhhhhh about Negroes cuz the editorial cops will shoot you down."
I am no longer a fan of NRO, though I do like some of Jonah's stuff.
Regarding the Derb article. There is a tone issue I think his defenders are overlooking. The content of what he says is defensible, and many of his critics would be as enraged no matter how he put it. But my reading of the controversial essay included some tsking and saying "You could have put that differently. You're a professional writer and you know that. Therefore I conclude that you are slyly pushing people's buttons for conscious reasons." Those reasons may in themselves be defensible: Derb may wish to be dramatic as a splash of icy water to the face. Or he may simply be tiring of even minor rewordings for politeness sake. In the end, the reasons do not get around a central difficulty: he knew what his tone was and he takes the consequences of that. It has both advantages and disadvantages as a persuasive tool.
At least they've still got Jonah "the reason to oppose illegal immigration is that it might lead to an increase in White Nationalism" Goldberg.
Whether one disagrees or agrees with Lowry, that was a condescendingly, vapid corporate-speak riddled public dismissal. The only thing missing was that odious phrase "going forward."
Lowry could have written, "Going forward, we at NRO will continue to 'articulate a consensus conservative position', in doing so we feel that by being everything to everyone we will be nothing to nobody. We will continue to persevering in serving the Internationalist wealthy, because Global plutocracy is really all that serious Conservatism is about, and we will never, ever do anything that the neoconservatives might find distasteful. Much as we will miss 'Derb's' LOL-filled columns, that zany guy, he's just gone too far for corporate milksops like ourselves."
"No, I quite admire Lowry. He isn't about histrionics; he's about articulating a consensus conservative position that can appeal to 51% (or more) of Americans, and that will alienate the minimum possible of Americans. It's not an easy thing to do--I can't think of anyone else who does it better. He shouldn't be the only voice in conservatism, but he doesn't aspire to be."
This is one of the most singularly idiotic things I've seen written on here in a while, including the usual drivel posted by "Whiskey" and "Truth."
So Rich Lowry is deathly, morbidly afraid of alienating the public by taking the "conservative" positions on affirmative action, immigration, and crime despite the fact that 60-70% of the public firmly agrees with those stances, but he had absolutely no fear whatsoever of being an abject toady to Bush on foreign policy for the last six years of his term, when only 20-30% of the public agreed with Bush, and when it utterly destroyed the party electorally in 2006 and 2008.
Here's an explanation that actually comports with reality: Lowry is employee of the American political establishment and does its bidding accordingly. Furthermore, it's much more likely than not the mainstream "right" called in this hit on Derbyshire, who never was anything more than a marginal figure on mainstream "left," but who was taking increasingly heretical stances on certain issues near and dear to the hearts of the neocon cabal.
Here's a Gedankenexperiment for those here who think: what do all the people on the "left" and "right" who've been dogpiled over the last ten or so years have in common with each other, and what do all the "left" and "right" inquisitors have in common? There's your obvious answer.
radio derb is about the only talk radio worth listening to.
Right wing politics is doomed in america so long as it aligns with conservatives; life's losers and the Republican party which is beyond corrupt and closer to kleptocratic.
I bet Lowry wishes he had the guts to write the article. SInce he doesn't, he is going to have to settle for being the one who fires the person who did.
Derb, Sailer, and Sobran were the best writers the NR ever had (excepting WFB). Lowery is the worst.
Strangely, NRO's Phi Beta Cons blog has just published a very Sailerish post, "Academic Crimethink," by Rober Weissberg, author of Bad Students, Not Bad Schools:
Academic Crimethink
I guess the censorship isn't perfect yet.
Lowry could have used Derb's piece as a teaching moment .... Atty General Eric Holder said that we are a nation of Cowards regarding the discussion of Race.
By discussing differences amongst the races frankly, Derb loses his job ... which makes most others become cowardly while discussing race.
Lowry is half a sissy
This is not the first time the libs demanded Derb's head. About 8-9 years ago he'd become a target of the homosexual thought police but he weathered it fine. Which is why I suspect that this time he quit rather than was fired.
I think Derb will be okay (financially that is; health is another matter). At least no worse than before. I can't imagine he made all that much money writing for NR anyway. Lately, he hardly wrote anything for them.
My advice, he should pull a Michael Lind or an Arianna Huffington Claim that you made a career out of giving the animals the meat they wanted. Out anybody with a recognizable name for using the N word or the J word. You know, just claim you never meant what you said until right now.
It will solve a lot of problems. A guaranteed best seller, and guaranteed employment until you no longer need the work. The wife and kids won't have to change their names. Every college will lay out the welcome mat.
I knew the Derb was going to get fired when the column he wrote went public.
Nothing was wrong, or even incorrect, about his article. Hell, a lot of people have "The Talk" about blacks (and how best to avoid them) in private, so anyone who cides him for being a racist is full of shit.
But in today's multi-racial America, I guess there are just somethings you don't say in public. Kind of like the "don't make insensitive jokes in mixed company" truism.
Shame.
Radio Derb was the only reason to visit NRO. Hope the Derb can continue make it as writer.
" I quite admire Lowry. He isn't about histrionics; he's about articulating a consensus conservative position that can appeal to 51% (or more) of Americans, "
More tax cuts for the wealthy and more Asian wars do not appeal to 51% of Americans. It maybe what NR donors want. If he wanted to appeal to 51% of Americans he would call for a Hamiltonian trade policy instead of war with Iran.
Let my sub lapse some 10 yrs ago. Stopped visiting the web site I reckon about '05. I agreed with VDH on immigration and the utter waste and shame of California, but KJL got on my nerves and her sensibilty seemed to infect the rest of the content. They were obviously GOP first, conservative ideals second. I decided it wasn't worth keeping up with, stopped going, and have never felt I missed anything from it.
Funny that they try claiming Derb is using their banner to build an audience. I follow Derb everywhere ~but~ NR.
I'm a bit concerned about the hit to Derb's income stream. He talks a good bit about his (genteel) relative poverty on his own blog.
I imagine Taki's Mag pays a good deal less than the National Review, though I'm not sure. Has a lot less readers and no paid subscriptions. Though Taki is rich so he may kick in a lot.
Strangely, NRO's Phi Beta Cons blog has just published a very Sailerish post, "Academic Crimethink," by Rober Weissberg, author of Bad Students, Not Bad Schools:
Academic Crimethink
I guess the censorship isn't perfect yet.
I kept trying to leave a comment there, but it kept disappearing. The author is referring to crimestop, not crimethink, as you can easily see for yourself in the definition he provides:
"The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [English Socialism], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short . . . protective stupidity."
Crimethink was simply the Newspeak word for Thought Crime, which the habit of crimestop was meant to avoid.
Another strike against NRO!
AllanF: "They were obviously GOP first, conservative ideals second."
It seems to me that there is something else which National Review values even above the GOP. I'll give you a hint: it's a country.
(No, not America. Don't be ridiculous)
for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise.
They won't publicly associate with those views, they just live by them. Derbyshire has provided a real teachable moment, an opportunity to point out how so many on the left and the right, particularly in the upper classes, who are pretending to be shocked, shocked by Derbyshire's column in fact follow it virtually to a T. How could we have a Detroit or Camden is Liberals really believed what they pretend to believe about blacks? Why isn't the population of Detroit 40-50% Liberals, where did they go and why? Where does Mr. Lowry live, where did his kids go to school, how black is the staff at NR? Enquiring minds want to know.
God KJL is pretty much everything that is wrong with mainstream Republicans.
Yes, America is a hard-left nation. One with a Black radical President, gay marriage, and gays in the military. Hard to argue otherwise. What Romney has to do is get 51%. I fully approve of THAT.
But NR is not Romney. Its mission should be to push back, hard, or as Obama said "punch back twice as hard." Any spine-possessing person would have RUN Derbyshire's stuff, in reaction to the Liberals at the Atlantic and Forbes, and approved of it. BECAUSE ITS TRUE.
Romney has to be "safe" against White women's dreamboat Obama, and make Obama look like a "nice guy." But thats his job. The job of the conservative press is to push the issues of truth, past the fantasy addiction of the public and the elites. Why, just today I saw off Drudge the Breitbart TV showing of a White guy given a beat down and stripped of his clothes by a Black mob in Inner Harbor Baltimore. This from a local Charm City newscast.
And yeah, this will HURT NR. Yes their Alexa rankings are high, but that means nothing to people browsing with smartphones and such. Collectively, places like Larry Auster, this place, SBDL, even Ace of Spades will eat their lunch. The place is like a collection of Peggy Noonan, Nancy De Wolf Smith, and KJL plus Rich Lowery (is he twelve?) ... the spineless, "I want to be invited to Capitol Hill Cocktail parties" bunch. Krauthammer too. Spineless elites in solidarity.
The truth is the truth. I wish it wasn't -- if I could wave a magic wand, every Black person in America would have a middle/working class job, own their own home, and be happily married. They would not have to love me, just have the same incentives. But that is not the truth. I don't have any magic wand. Harry Potter is just a story.
America is addicted to fantasy, and no one less than the spineless elites at NR, which don't matter to anyone but their fellow echo-chamber (and note well, they don't like Romney much either, which speaks well of him). A man is judged by the company he keeps. Derbyshire chose US. Over them. I think that speaks volumes about him and about Lowry (who is about as weak and spineless as it gets).
Derby: a guy I'd want with me in a foxhole. Lowry: wouldn't trust him with a penny.
This Saturday Night Massacre was probably at the behest of donors, but I'd prefer to think it was Katherine Jean Lopez who told Lowry that unless Derb was gone, she couldn't show her face at Easter Mass.
Under her watch, The Corner was turning into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Vatican. Someone must have told her to cool it with her religious revival and all the guest bloggers in dog collars, because she recently announced a new site for Catholics
What's most outrageous about Derb's termination is Lowry's claim that Derb was simply free-riding on NR's reputation, and that its good name would be sullied by Derb's further presence. Derb must have seen this coming, and reluctantly endorsing Romney wasn't going to save him.
So why did Derb write such an astringent piece? My theory at the moment is that all-Trayvon-all-the-time finally pushed him over the edge. So he wrote a resignation column.
"Buckley had a greater burden in that his magazine's original mission was to repeal Vatican II and to combat godless communism..."
First issue of National Review: 1955.
Vatican II opens: 1962.
The genius of iSteve readers shines forth once again.
Worse than a crime.
The Derb now has to count on the generosity of strangers - people like us. How likely is it that a crew like us, who are afraid to use our real names, is going to start a paper trail of financial support to a controversial figure? Does anyone remember somebody saying they can't afford cable?
The day of the Gifford shooting, Fox News said American Renaissance was on a government watch list. I saw a look of instant dread on my spouse's face. And I've never posted or sent any money to them.
You can survive sending 50G to the Rev. Wright, but if a $1 cancelled check to Steve was found with Mitt's name on it, he'd be doomed.
Steve has a seemingly limitless number of tales from California, the area which has defined America since WW 2. Derb's anecdotes about England just don't resonate with me the same way. Everyone here will understand; it's a shared culture thing.
He will struggle to find a niche.
Presumably NRO will still carry Krikorian, VDH, and Steyn.
If these guys have any spine, they should protest the firing. That's a good test, actually. "First, they came for Derb..."
Revising and extending my remarks: the truth is that there is still plenty of able, conservative talent associated with NRO: Mark Steyn, Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Krikorian, Heather Mac Donald, Andrew Stuttaford, and Andrew McCarthy. All of them are more or less pro-enforcement on immigration.
But while that may sound like a lot of names, the fact is that they aren't setting the tone of the magazine. Lowry, Goldberg, Ponnuru, Nordlinger, and other assorted neocons are.
Has Derbyshire ever written a column without mentioning his chinese connections: wife, relatives-in-law, friends, children?
I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up in China...
"First issue of National Review: 1955.
Vatican II opens: 1962.
The genius of iSteve readers shines forth once again."
That stung. Glad I'm anonymous.
It was a Catholic mag though. The nuns loved Buckley.
I'm a bit concerned about the hit to Derb's income stream. He talks a good bit about his (genteel) relative poverty on his own blog.
I suspect Derb is OK financially. As you note, his poverty is relative. He seemed to be extremely tight fisted with a a dollar more than anything, e.g. he never took out a mortgage to buy a home.
I'm curious about NR's finances as well. Buckley got in a bit of trouble trying to sell securities of some sort during the 70s, and the magazine apparently had to hawk cruises with the editors(shudder) as a fundraising effort.
And like everyone else, I quit reading NR years ago.
Rich "The Godfather" Lowry: "It's not personal, Derb. It's just business."
What will become of Mandy, Candy and Brandy?
Just go buy one of Derb's books. We are doomed was really good.
I kinda think his will work out well for him in that he could start an Isteve like site and make some good cash via PayPal.
Or is it a possibility Steve and Derb will join forces?
I came upon Steve's site 12 years ago afterDerb referenced him as "the smartest gink I know"
Stopped reading NR (except for Derb) 7 years ago- Coulter was right as she often is- they're a bunch of p#ssies. Except for maybe McCarthy, vdh, and steyn.
Dan in DC
I wouldn't fault Lowry here. He did exactly what he had to do. It is debatable what National Review should be, but right now it wants to remain relevant to the national conversation, and being labeled racist is not going to help.
My theory to what happened is that, while Derb's views are obvious to anyone who reads his columns, he has been artful enough not to be this provocative. He has said that his cancer treatments have left him mentally sluggish, and it's pretty likely that he was temporarily too stupid to see how provocative his column actually was.
It looks like he just followed his regular pattern, reacting to the stupidity of the day. He saw all these columns about 'the Talk' about how teenage blacks have to be careful not to be stereotyped by racists and responded with a resounding 'Duh!'. But as factual as it may be, his column was a poorly written, poorly argued screed.
>If you check out the NR at alexa.com, it appears to be fairly popular but its audience is heavily weighted to the 45+ age group.<
Unfortunately, older people tend to regard things as having not much changed during the past 5, 10, 15, even 30 years. When you refer to X, an older person tends to call up an image of X from decades ago. Example: say the words "American car" and older people think of the muscle car of their youth, the first sedan they and their spouses bought, the American vs. Japanese auto dispute of the 1980s, et al. They seldom respond by thinking of a present-day model.
Say "National Review" and older people think "William F. Buckley," "conservative," "right-wing." They are thinking of their college days, when the NR could accurately be associated with those things.
Their understanding of the world tends to remain the understanding that they achieved in their heyday (age 20 to age 40). Everything that happens since then is somehow an anomaly.
So you have many people 45 and over who call themselves politically conservative but who still regard the National Review as the nation's premier conservative magazine (and rather controversial, too - that Buckley is a firebrand, eh?).
It's a good bet that these are the same people who feel that every POTUS since Reagan somehow wasn't or isn't a "real" POTUS and that, therefore, the past 30 years either didn't happen or are just irrelevant to American history, even though that period constitutes about 13% of American history.
The onset of this form of mental calcification seems to be between ages 40 and 45. Exceptional people seem to escape many of its effects.
"but right now it wants to remain relevant to the national conversation"
How the hell is it supposed to "remain relevant to the national conversation" if it can't be blunt about problems in the black community that perpetually disrupt and destroy middle class white communities, making them flee ever further into the burbs with each passing year?
How is NR supposed to "remain relevant to the national conversation" if it can't b blunt about the harmful consequences of mass Third World immigration?
Sure, they need to be tactful about it, but they're not even addressing it, and don't really want to. The battle lines need to be drawn, soon, and NRO has decided to claim conscientious objector status.
>his column was a poorly written, poorly argued screed.<
What? Did you read the links?
The article was impeccably written and referenced.
Neocons continue to be among the least impressive people in the USA.
I stopped reading NRO several years ago. I got tired of the de facto feminism and the warmongering.
When I was a kid- I'm a few years younger than Steve- I used to love to read NR at the library. It was so dirty- and at a public library! The indecency! It has been years since I read it though. Its time has passed.
Perhaps Lopez was worried it'd cost her the gig on The Tavis Smiley Show which may be a prime source of income. Her Zazzle store distributing relics and T-shirts w/ the pope on them could have presented a shortfall from FY'11 projections
Imagine if Derb wrote about "the Talk" to his daughters, warning them about men:
"(7) Of most importance to your personal safety are the very different means for antisocial behavior, which you will see reflected in, for instance, school disciplinary measures, political corruption, and criminal convictions."
"A small cohort of men—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to women and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm them."
"(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of young males.
(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of young males suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible."
I don't think any of the above advice is controversial. Neither is it controversial that men are much more likely to go to prison than women, to be murdered, to murder, etc, etc. Apparently it is fine to be aware of statistical trends when involving men, but not blacks.
Derb's "Talk" article at Taki has gotten all the attention, but I find the one on multiculturalism to be far more interesting, in particular this quote by former Democratic presidential candidate and then SACEUR General Wesley Clark as he was bombing Serbia:
"There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states."
Note that Clark only demands that European countries be multi-ethnic. Note the inplication that they aren't even allowed a choice in the matter.
After throwing Derb out, I don't think I will ever again visit NRO's webpage.
Whenever the most extreme black activist0 calls them racist, these neocons soil their pants, run and cry for mercy, and still live in the illusion that this kind of attitude will not affect their manhood image.
"You can't fault Lowry for canning him, he wrote a blatantly racist column. Believe it or not, racist screeds from right-wing sources do great damage to movement conservatism."
Guffaw. You don't say. And how well is "movement conservatism" doing, pray tell?
Either Barro or his Forbes.com web op is pruning comments on that earlier post btw. Having only yesterday learned who he is I am figuring him for a chip off the old Brock for sure. Unfortunately judging by a preliminary Google search with auto image results, I'd be much more wary of this roided-up enforcer on the street than the average lil' pundit from Dupont Circle. He and "Jamie" Kirchick ought to co-host a bloggingheads show where they excommunicate someone new every week
O.K. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their brother. How do I send $ to the Derb? I know Steve knows him personally- if Steve could set up a PO Box or a PayPal link, I'll send the first $500 bucks.
Jonah Goldberg dumped on him too. I'm letting everyone at NRO and Forbes know how I feel. This anti-White Political Correctness has to stop.
Its made the front page of the Guardian, and guess what? A huge pic of 12 year-old Trayvon as the lead to the story. The left is utterly, utterly without integrity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/08/john-derbyshire-fired-article-african-americans
""And how well is "movement conservatism" doing, pray tell?""
Indeed. The ninnies are running around in circles wringing their hands.
"Revising and extending my remarks: the truth is that there is still plenty of able, conservative talent associated with NRO: Mark Steyn, Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Krikorian, Heather Mac Donald, Andrew Stuttaford, and Andrew McCarthy. All of them are more or less pro-enforcement on immigration."
Fresh meat for the chopping block, then.
"It is debatable what National Review should be, but right now it wants to remain relevant to the national conversation"
Apparently, by discussing nothing relevant. But I sympathize. After all, the Derbyshire affair might distract attention from their more important goals of reprealing the minimum wage and bombing Iran into the Stone Age.
I read a couple of the black versions of the "talk" and was mildly offended. But I could never imagine ostracizing the authors for their point of view.
Screw Rich (Ann Coulter was right about him) and screw Jonah and Ramesh for dancing on JD's grave. I'm done with NR and NRO.
I stopped reading NR and NRO in 2006, just around the time I started reading VDare. One seemed authentic and insigntful while the other seemed too accommodating to liberalism's damaging social agenda out of a desire to be mainstream. For a long time now the only writers worth reading at NRO have been Florence King and John Derbyshire. By the way, didn't Ann Coulter once call Rich Lowry a pussy; I may have imagined this, but the moniker fits. I believe John Derbyshire knew he was going to be fired by the NR's pussy of an editor but acted courageously in writing this piece.
The dangerous disconnect between pronouncements by the Obama regime about implicit and institutional white racism and its turning a blind eye toward the homocidal, racist, and antisocial reality of the black culture of failure cries out for someone with gravitas to articulate the truth. Too many whites (and Asian immigrants) have died at the hands of blacks because they didn't appreciate the dangers of heedless contact with blacks: from Nicole Simpson, to the the victims of the Knoxville Horror and the Hopenchange Massacre in Manchester CT. And white victims of lesser assaults and crimes can only hope for begrudging justice from the courts, where they are made to feel racist by judges and prosecutors merely for being angry at their victimizers. As John points out, better to avoid contact with large groups of strange blacks to avoid the likelihood of eventually becoming a target.
Like this poor guy,
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2e4_1333470460
Looks like a lynching to me.
Been having trouble with Taki links ever since Derb's piece. Did Spike Lee twitter their IP address?
I'm curious about NR's finances as well. Buckley got in a bit of trouble trying to sell securities of some sort during the 70s, and the magazine apparently had to hawk cruises with the editors(shudder) as a fundraising effort.
I've seen a snip of a TV interview in which Buckley said that NR never made a profit, implying that his magazine of "respectable" conservation was or is dependent on patrons.
And there's also the old gossip that the CIA funded National Review in its early days as a response to the John Birch Society.
Some of you have mentioned giving money to the Derb. He has a paypal link on his site and I'm sure would welcome donations.
http://www.johnderbyshire.com/
I also think it's very odd that NRO has not enabled a comments thread on this situation--probably because it would reveal how much unhappiness Rich Lowry's (probably inevitable) decision has caused. Maybe some other blogger should put together a link on that? The press has all been about the outrage, but there's quite a bit of support that isn't being discussed (or dismissed as Stormfront).
I agree with Charlesz Martel
(of 4/8/12 1:37 AM )
Respectfully, Florida resident.
The Derb should write a book called "The Talk," based on his famous article. It would sell like crazy, guaranteed.
This could be one of his best career moves.
He wouldn't even have to do much new writing. Just footnoting and quoting.
He could put a lot of stuff about black crime and cowardly liberals, etc. in it. The material isn't hard to muster. The thing only needs a bit of packaging.
It should have two points of purchase: I wrote that article you're talking about, and here is a big book about it; and you need to protect your children in 2012/3.
"THE TALK: Advice from a White Parent - by John Derbyshire" I'm not even a publisher, and I'm getting weak in the knees thinking of this title.
I love both iSteve and NRO. Some of you posters are nonsensical. Derb just went way over the top. He could have made many of the same points more artfully. Isn't he supposed to be trying to persuade people who are in the middle on various issues?
I still read the Corner, but none of the long articles.
National Review and Weekly Standard's main influence is getting key members on FoxNews and other political opinion chat shows.
If the Left can successfully label NR as racist then FoxNews will have drop Jonah Goldberg and anyone from NR. That's reality.
Look how much influence Beck has lost now that's he's not on FoxNews. Beck used to drive the debate. Now I have no idea what Beck is saying every day. (Same thing happened when Howard Stern left radio for satellite.)
Mass media drives the debate.
The cruise thing is something all the big opinion mags (left, right, ultra-left) do these days. It's actually very profitable. It's not just opinion mags, it's anything people want to affiliate with -- colleges, sports teams, politics, hobbies, etc, etc
Derb was always one of their main draws for the cruises. NR would heavily advertise Derb's presence.
Cruises are great because each magazine only costs a couple bucks. A cruise lets you get hundreds or thousands of dollars out of your richer fans.
From Derb's "The Talk":
"10(a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally."
"10(c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date..."
"10(d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks."
"10(e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible."
All of these points may directly apply to this current event, still unfolding in Houston.
"David said...
Unfortunately, older people tend to regard things as having not much changed during the past 5, 10, 15, even 30 years. When you refer to X, an older person tends to call up an image of X from decades ago."
Quite true often, I think.
"Anonymous said...
Whether one disagrees or agrees with Lowry, that was a condescendingly, vapid corporate-speak riddled public dismissal. The only thing missing was that odious phrase "going forward.""
Agreed. I loathe that phrase: "going forward". As opposed to what? Going backward? Turning back the hands of time? B-schools should never be forgiven for their abasement of the English language.
"Anonymous said...
You can't fault Lowry for canning him, he wrote a blatantly racist column."
No, he wrote a demonstrably true column. Isn't the truth kind of important?
The National Review: Cowering behind history with its' hands over its' ears.
I stopped reading NR and NRO in 2006, just around the time I started reading VDare. One seemed authentic and insigntful...
I discovered Sobran because of the Shakespeare/Oxford authorship question.
I discovered Steve because of his piece on fertility rates.
Charlesz,
I spoke with John Derbyshire and he said that he'd GREATLY appreciate any financial show of support you would be willing to help him out with now. He is indeed going through a difficult time (cancer, public vilification and firings can do that to ya) and whatever assistance he gets would truly be useful.
He put up a paypal button on his personal homepage here http://www.johnderbyshire.com/ and along with your financial donation he's really appreciative and touched by your concern and would love to hear from you personally as well.
There's a lot of guilt by association going around...saw someone on Twitter calling for Steven Pinker to be fired for mentioning Derb in his latest book...
"[Lowry] shouldn't be the only voice in conservatism, but he doesn't aspire to be."
Good point.
Lowry isn't the villain here, he did what he had to in order to keep the cash flowing. GLPiggy and Lowry himself are right, Derbyshire effectively penned a resignation letter; he knew what the consequences would be.
The villains are the quisling conservatives (Roissy's phrasing) who delighted and demanded Derbyshire's termination or vilification or both. Their hands weren't forced as Lowry's was, rather they took the opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the enemy.
Lowry deserves credit for publishing Derbyshire for this long, unless some contractual stipulation forced him to.
>Derb just went way over the top. He could have made many of the same points more artfully.<
I don't know how much more artfully they could have been made. Do you have any suggestions?
A lot of bananas get ripe quick. Now let's phrase that like the Derb would. As you travel through life, you will have culinary encounters with many fruits and vegetables of various states of fermentation and taste. According to the latest inquiries of the chemical sciences, a tendency one may observe is that some instances of some fruit of the genus Musa, also known as bananas, can ripen at a certain speed somewhat different from that of some other fruits. Advice (a) watch your bananas for evidence of this; (b) buy no more bananas than you or your family can consume within a reasonable amount of time.
That is pretty artful.
He gets a little more direct on page 2, after many paragraphs of artfulness.
Again, I would be interested to know what suggestions you have for being even more artful when making all the points that he made (without sacrificing any part of the points).
>Quite true often, I think<
I may have been harsh. Apologies to any struggling oldsters who read the comment. I'm pushing 45, and "I feel your pain."
"David said...
I may have been harsh. Apologies to any struggling oldsters who read the comment. I'm pushing 45, and "I feel your pain.""
Not at all. I'm a few years north of 45, and I've seen this myself. Of course, I don't believe I'm that way - I think I'm pretty plugged-in to the modern world, but then I could be wrong. And certainly among those in the 55-65 age range, people who still vote and are involved in life and the world of affairs, but not so internet-savvy as we are, I see just the thing you are talking about: an assumption that things are pretty much as they always have been, plus-or-minus a little. They don't seem to realize that, in many ways, this nation has changed in drastic ways since their formative years.
Again, I would be interested to know what suggestions you have for being even more artful
They mean don't mention Blacks.
I can remember when National Review boldly told the truth about many issues of the day. Those days are long gone and were ended by Buckley long before the present crew of courtiers and neo-cons took over.
"[Lowry] shouldn't be the only voice in conservatism, but he doesn't aspire to be."
I'd be happy if Lowery was a voice in conservatism. But he's not. Perhaps he could aspire to be a conservative writer. Everybody needs a goal in life.
I wonder if this being election yr had something to do with the Derb's firing. It's like Obama threw Wright under the bus in 2008 but not before.
NR wants to be a player in the 2012 election and so maybe got rid of something with wrong image.
Anon (near the top) - No, I quite admire Lowry. He isn't about histrionics; he's about articulating a consensus conservative position that can appeal to 51% (or more) of Americans, and that will alienate the minimum possible of Americans. It's not an easy thing to do--I can't think of anyone else who does it better. He shouldn't be the only voice in conservatism, but he doesn't aspire to be.
Thats what we have already, hence the endless retreat.
You can't fault Lowry for canning him, he wrote a blatantly racist column. Believe it or not, racist screeds from right-wing sources do great damage to movement conservatism.
Comedy gold!
Movement conservatism? - No, Ive got nothing, sorry, words fail me.
That ever-so-hopeful last line of the Guardian article made me literally laugh out loudwise: "Theodoracopulos, no stranger to controversy over race and perhaps less likely to bow to the demands to sack Derbyshire"
Why not also ban the Dr. Who theme music because I think her last name was Derbyshire, too... If this escalates to a demand for Steven Pinker's show-trial recantation I might have to move off the grid to upper Wyoming to avoid dying from laughter.
I followed the link to Academic Crimethink posted by an Anon above. For once, my eye strayed to the ads. There was an ad for something called the National Review cruise, with a list of names which were billed as "the 36 best reasons to join the NR cruise".
Lo and behold: John Derbyshire is still listed. When I followed the link, http://www.nrcruise.com/ I saw that his name - and photo - are still listed among the guest speakers.
Make of that what you will.
Good at NR/NRO: Steyn, Goldberg, VDH, Kevin Williamson, Michael Walsh, Dennis Prager
The rest, meh.
Let us console ourselves with a slightly longer view of this affair.
National Review needs and wants to present itself as a forum for the arguments that Republican candidates might reasonably espouse in public debate. Derbyshire's essay is not that, Mitt Romney is not going say what Derb said and we can fulminate about it all we want.
However, as the devotees of Steve's blog are well aware, changes are afoot, literally. Within two to three (at most) presidential electoral cycles (including this one), the electoral votes from the state of Texas will be lost to any and all Republican candidates, just like California was lost (and for the same reasons), at which point the GOP will cease to exist as a national party. Whatever political organization on the nationalist and patriotic Right that arises thereafter shall pay heed to what John Derbyshire, Steve Sailer and others like them have written about race in America.
Rich Lowry's National Review will not be a part of that conversation.
Derbyshire is one of the few courageous conservatives. Conservatives claim they stand for liberty and want limited government but Derbyshire was one of the few conservatives with the courage of his convictions. He called for women's right to be revoked since women are behind the proliferation of welfare programs and the uncontrolled growth of government. The national review eunuchs have brought disgrace on themselves by this act of unparalleled cowardice.
I am unable to use Paypal due to security concerns. Is there a P.O. Box I can send a Money Order to?
I know nothing of Lowry beyond what I've read here. But the absence from his open letter of dismissal to JD of even the feeblest attempt to rebut hus actual arguments is SO conspicuous that I could be persuaded that it's a tacit nod of agreement with them. "I'm throwing you under the bus, John, but it's business, not pleasure. I acknowledge that every word you wrote was accurate."
I am unable to use Paypal due to security concerns. Is there a P.O. Box I can send a Money Order to?
Well, you can just pay with a credit card, bypassing Paypal - it's all there. Or is it the case that are a Luddite refusing to do any money transaction online? In that case, email Derb and he will give you an address to send the money order. But then, why not just a cheque? Are you that afraid of the police state tracking every minute detail? It's not like you are funding terrorist organization, you know...
The polically correct Quora Police wants me banned from Quora for putting a link to this post, enjoy...
http://www.quora.com/redphone/This-user-should-be-considered-to-be-banned-for-his-malicious-comments-which-work-against-the-the-community-we-are-tr?__snids__=41813940
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