At 04:05 PM 11/4/98 -0400 Victor Navasky wrote: >Dear LP: > >Thanks for your past support and your report on why you have "stopped" >supporting The Nation. 1) My assumption is that the editorial writer >was using the term "statesman" in a generic rather than an honorific >sense; perhaps we shd have used another term, but given the repeated and >harsh Nation critiques of Clinton and Clintonism over the years, if >that's your beef, I think you should resubscribe. Unless as the result >of recent traumas he has reformed his DLC ways, I suspect you won't be >disappointed. I'm sorry, Victor. This does not hold water. The editorial also states that Clinton has "shown himself to be a skilled and effective leader on foreign policy." This is news to me. The Clinton presidency has not departed in any substantial way from what has preceded it. It is about coercing the Palestinians to live in bantus, shoring up the Colombian and Mexican ruling elites in their war against campesinos, backing Yeltsin to the hilt, pushing for NAFTA and GATT, etc. Just because he is a Democrat, this does not mean that he is one of us. Well, maybe that depends on how you define "us". And, yes, you have been harsh with Clinton in the same way that American Spectator was harsh with Bush. When Bush veered slightly to the left, the American Spectator let him have it. You have the same kind of relationship with Clinton. 2) Re Alterman: He couldn't write it for The New Republic >since his devastating critiques of that mag in this mag have, one >assumes, made him persona non grata. I guess you didn't understand me. It is not his politics, but his snotty attitude. Ex-NY Times editor John Hess is somebody whose integrity I value highly. I got to know him through his contacts with the Central American solidarity movement. When Alterman, who seems barely old enough to shave, tells Hess, who appears to be in his 80s, that he writes "factually challenged" articles, I cringe. It is the same sophomoric voice that predominates in the New Republic. 3) Alex is nobody's sop, but I >still can't make the connection -- you read something by AC which >offended you in the New York Press and therefore you have stopped buying >The Nation which now runs an every other weekly Cockburn page? I don't >get it. > It's really quite simple. Cockburn is the house radical at the Nation. I was getting fed up with his Nation articles--including that ridiculous article celebrating hunting--but the straw that broke the camel's back appeared elsewhere. NY Press is free, but the Nation costs me $52 per year. If Cockburn is supposed to be a concession to us radicals, then I'd prefer to read his crap in the NY Press, where at least it is free. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
