There's been a lot of--deserved--piling on of Slate's "endorsements" column already. Matthew "who gave this guy a column?" Yglesias and Chad "tap dancing along the line between clever and stupid" Orzel and Kevin "where did they find these guys?" Drum. Let me join in:
Slate's Jacob Weisberg writes: "Today Slate continues a tradition initiated four years ago, when we asked our staff and contributors to tell us who they voted for on Election Day 2000.... Other than curiosity, we're conducting this voluntary poll again for two main reasons. The first is to do something in lieu of an official endorsement.... The second... is... to emphasize the distinction between opinion and bias.... A basic premise of our kind of journalism is that we can openly express what we think and still be fair."
It doesn't work. It doesn't demonstrate that their "kind of journalism" is opinionated but fair at all.
First, it draws attention to the alarmingly-large pure wingnut contingent at Slate--the people whose opinions seem to have no grounding in the reality-based community at all. This then raises the "Does Slate really think I should trust this person's judgment?" question:
Slate Votes: Paul Boutin, Technology Writer: I'll take a chance on Kerry, but if he wins I'll skip the victory party. Too many of his supporters have proven as divisive, dishonest, and hateful as they imagine their bogeyman Karl Rove to be. And they wonder why people vote for Nader?
Steven Landsburg, Economic Writer: If George Bush had chosen the racist David Duke as a running mate, I'd have voted against him, almost without regard to any other issue. Instead, John Kerry chose the xenophobe John Edwards as a running mate. I will therefore vote against John Kerry.
Timothy Noah, Senior Writer: Sen. John Kerry is the least appealing candidate the Democrats have nominated for president in my lifetime. I'm 46, so that covers Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, and Gore.
Lee Smith, Contributor: [M]any ordinary Arabs actually like George W. Bush. Without any social, economic, or political space to create their own lives, they see the world the way he does: Radical Arab politics and the regimes that nourish them have only produced despair and exported terror; if that doesn't change, both Americans and Arabs are in for worse. As for the other reasons Washington took us to war in Iraq, the bad WMD intelligence relayed to the U.N. doesn't bug me. A much more serious issue is that the president did not explain to the American electorate some of the other reasons we're there, which is one reason why it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to realize them, like: 1) rearrange the oil equation so that Saudi Arabia had less leverage against U.S. demands to take on their homegrown jihadists; 2) prove that the United States can sustain successful military operations in the Middle East; 3) establish a presence bordering Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
Second, it draws attention to the large number of people working for Slate who have checked out of real politics and this choosing-your-governors business and will as a result spend eternity chasing banners in Limbo:
Christopher Hitchens, Contributor: Kerry [but last week he told The Nation he was voting for Bush...]
Jon Katz, contributor: I do not like politics, and especially hate being squeezed by the left-right dichotomy—the Crossfire effect—that makes contemporary politics so obnoxious and contrary to Jefferson's idea of a real mixing of ideas. In and out of media, it seems we no longer talk to others but only to ourselves. Often, I simply do not vote.
Josh Payton, Interactive Designer: I'm going to vote for David Cobb. Let's face it. Both Kerry and Bush are liars and they're both on the take. Neither one of them have my best interests in mind. Why should I feel satisfied because I get to pick between one scumbag and another? Democracy in action! No thanks.
Jack Shafer, Editor at Large: Every since I became eligible to vote in 1972, I've cast my ballot for the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate. In 1972, the candidate was philosophy professor John Hospers, who I wrote in because he wasn't on the Michigan ballot.
And it draws attention to the special I-never-write-what-I-believe prize won by Mickey Kaus, who says here that:
I'm voting for Kerry, mainly because I think Bush is prosecuting the fight against terrorism in a way that will make us dramatically less safe unless we have a conspicuous change at the top. Even if you supported the war in Iraq, now is the time to a) try to preserve our gains in that country and Afghanistan while we b) let the world calm down so that fewer people hate us (and hence fewer people try to come and kill us).
If this is the truly important thing about the election, you would have expected Kaus to have written about it before at length, no? If he has, I missed it. In his normal columns, Kaus is much more likely not to condemn the strategic defeats Bush has inflicted on the United States but instead to praise the "revolutionary wisdom" of the Bush administration:
Mickey Kaus: The [Bush] aide... [is] talking about changing reality through worldly action (e.g. war). His point is less Christian than Marxist, a vulgar Bush corrolary to Marx's famous Theses on Feuerbach, the last of which is carved into his tombstone: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." The press and much of Washington studies the existing world in various ways, the "senior advisor" seems to be saying. "Meanwhile we're changing the world in ways that make your studies obsolete." As a macho pledge to create new facts on the ground, this boast may be arrogant (there are obvious Sharonist overtones). As a commentary on the reification at the core of the Washington world view--on the tendency of "many ... elected officials" to assume that the way the world is is the way it will stay and must stay--there's a certain amount of revolutionary wisdom in it.
What can you do with somebody who writes about everything--except that which he thinks is most important?
Now there are a number of very good contributions. I was especially impressed by:
Phillip Carter, Military and Legal Affairs Writer: I'm casting my vote as a referendum on the Bush national security policies since January 2001. When you pour billions into homeland security without achieving a significant net gain in security, I think there's a problem. When you mislead the country about our reasons for war in Iraq, and then fail to plan effectively for military and strategic victory, you simply don't get to keep your job. When you employ lawyers to eviscerate the rule of law and make America into the world's brigand instead of the world's leader, I don't think you should be allowed to keep your office. When you allow al-Qaida to mutate and evolve into a more lethal and survivable global terror network on your watch, you haven't done your job. Sen. Kerry hasn't fully shown that he will improve on all these fronts, but I do believe he will do better than President Bush.
Jim Holt, Contributor: Let me cite one relatively marginal reason: Kerry opposes the death penalty. In doing so, he passes a test of rationality and moral decency that every other Republican and Democratic presidential candidate has failed for at least the last three elections.
Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor: President Bush seems to have lost sight of the fact that what makes Americans both strong and free is the rule of law; not the rule of the president. Yet this administration has tended to treat both international and constitutional law as a set of polite suggestions to be ignored (at the best of times) and as an impediment to his policy goals (at the worst). From the insistence that the vice president's guest list at secret energy policy meetings could not be probed, to the unilateral decision to suspend the Geneva Conventions for some prisoners, to the (inevitable, at that point) memos from his staff suggesting that nothing is torture unless it leads to organ failure, to the events at Abu Ghraib, which could only have taken place under a president who had loosened the rules on torture, this administration has maintained two staggering legal stances throughout the War on Terror: (i) That it can and should stake out the most radical and extreme legal positions possible (the president's power to detain "enemy combatants" is utterly unchecked and unlimited; U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over anything that happens at Guantanamo Bay); and (ii) that laws are a luxury of peacetime, but by definition a hindrance to any war effort. There is a vitally important conversation to be had in this country, about balancing security against freedom. That conversation has happened in the courts, in the media, and in the academy. But it has never interested this president at all, who seems to be increasingly of the view that any freedoms—of speech, protest, or due process, make everyone less safe.
William Saletan, Chief Political Correspondent: Here's what I wrote about Bush when we disclosed our votes four years ago: "He's shallow, obtuse, and proud of it. He's disdainful of reflection and indifferent to work. ... Congress can restrain either of them, but a president can catastrophically botch a foreign policy crisis all by himself. I trust Gore in that situation. I don't trust Bush." Looks like I was wrong about Congress.
Eric Umansky, Contributor: Many of those who support President Bush talk about his "grand vision": The "transformational power of liberty," as the president says, which is the "the best antidote to terror." I support that vision. If only Bush did too. With the partial exceptions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the president has not taken strong stands for democracy. Not in Pakistan, not in Libya, not in Egypt, not in Tunisia, not in Uzbekistan, and definitely not in Russia. To be fair, there's only one country in which I'm confident Kerry would actually push to improve things like governance, transparency, and accountability: the United States. That's good enough for my vote.
But the overall impression left by the "endorsements" column is that the overall quality of thought and responsibility is disappointingly low.
Posted by DeLong at October 28, 2004 11:57 AM | TrackBackKaus isn't nearly as bad as Hitchens. That guy's "endorsement," if you want to call it that, was odd not because it was so dry or devoid of the notion of any human feeling, but because it almost made no sense. I respect good writing, but writing as if you have your head up your ass and as if ebeing as vague as possible is not good writing.
Posted by: Brian at October 28, 2004 04:15 PMThe banner is not in limbo ! Look I know you are a devotee of the black goat who howls shrilly at the dead uncaring stars not a long dead white Guelph, but in the Divine comedy the god semi-damned banner is not in the limbo of the virtuous unbaptised.
Double plus ungood Hitchens dares dream that he is of the same species as Orwell. Being a firm believer in liberty, I would not vaporise him, but, I admit I have been tempted. Chris, when Orwell talked about black-white he wasn't advocating it.
Jim Holt wrote "at least the past 3 elections" which suggests that he doesn't remember if Dukakis was for or against the death penalty. Let me refresh your memory Jim. Remember a debate in which Bernard Shaw asked the first question and Dukakis looked straight at the camera and kissed the White House goodbye ?
Posted by: Robert Waldmann at October 28, 2004 04:51 PMHitchens is a Brit, isn't he? Has he become a US citizen? I hope not- I'd rather let the brits keep him. Once he started writing about how great Ted Olson and his wife were over in The Nation I knew he'd totally flipped. He's now no longer even worth reading.
Posted by: Matt at October 28, 2004 04:55 PMThe good essays are very very good. I don't read Slate, but I think you could make it a very good web magazine in a day by firing the people you criticise here and working real hard for a week while you hired replacements.
Oh Noah has a strange opinion of Kerry, but he might be right. The others you criticise are really dismal.
Posted by: Robert Waldmann at October 28, 2004 05:02 PMI would like to say a word in defense of Timothy Noah, who after the snarky bit Brad quoted, went on to make a clear, analytical case against Bush. Noah is one of the good guys -- that is, one of the smart, reality-based commentators.
In fact, the Kaus extract that Brad uses is part of a bizarre screed -- two weeks after Ron Suskind's NYT article, Kaus finally gets around to some pushback on it, his critique essentially being that Suskind is wrong to say that Bush is a Christian fundamentalist because he's actually a crypto-fascist (but even so, Kerry is hardly any better).
Posted by: P O'Neill at October 28, 2004 05:05 PMI would like to say a word in defense of Timothy Noah, who after the snarky bit Brad quoted, went on to make a clear, analytical case against Bush. Noah is one of the good guys -- that is, one of the smart, reality-based commentators.
The good essays are very very good. I don't read Slate, but I think you could make it a very good web magazine in a day by firing the people you criticise here and working real hard for a week while you hired replacements.
Oh Noah has a strange opinion of Kerry, but he might be right. The others you criticise are really dismal.
Posted by: Robert Waldmann at October 28, 2004 05:19 PMNot an endorsement. They are voting for best political performance by a presidential candidate in 2004.
Posted by: bakho at October 28, 2004 05:26 PMsorry for double post. Like kaus (and Matt Yglesias) I was reminded of Marx on Fuerbach by the reality based community quote. I did not post this observation, because the full quote does not maintain a Marx like level of rational humility.
Suskind's source definitely does say that Suskind merely studies reality while the Bush administration changes it, but he also explicitely says that over in the Bush administration they don't see the need to study reality, in order to decide how to change it.
The claim was that they are so powerful that they can ignore the facts, the way the world is, because they need only decide what they want it to be. The source proudly called this imperialism. It is not. It is meglomania.
There can be no revolution without empirical investigation.
Posted by: Robert Waldmann at October 28, 2004 05:42 PMSlate has become the employer of last resort for washed up, navel-gazing hacks.
If I were Bill Gates I would pull the plug on this travesty, or at least sell it to Murdoch.
Posted by: Kuas at October 28, 2004 06:02 PMyou know, i'm troubled by the way the media has started demanding to know who people are voting for (or voted for)--ostensibly as a way of revealing bias. and i'm troubled that w and his little helpers are more than happy to out disgruntled ex-employees on their votes. in fact, it creeps me out.
it creeps me out even more that weisberg can so perkily burble about slate's little tradition. so to all of you at slate--thanks for helping make everybody else's ballot that much less secret!
imp
Posted by: imp at October 28, 2004 06:04 PMI gave up on Slate a while ago when it was clear that they were suffering from "The New Republican" disease: overly clever, pointlessly contrarian, and bored by domestic policy. To some degree we see this here. The good bits are polluted by an irrational disappointment that Kerry hasn't promised world peace. They don't seem to get Kerry has a realistic view of what American can accomplish, and that Bush's promises to the change the world are, like everything else that passes his lips, lies.
And Landsburg? John Edwards a xenophobe? That's quite possibly the stupidest thing Slate has published, excepting anything Kaus has written. Gads.
Posted by: Tom DC/VA at October 28, 2004 06:08 PMWhat Tom DC/VA said.
You Missed Fred Kaplan on Kerry:
I'm voting for Kerry. Bush has done too much damage to America's reputation in the world. His view of the world is naive and, too often, wrong. His victory would mean a victory for the most cynical politics practiced by any president in my memory. I also generally admire Kerry.
Short, simple, nice. It reenforced my respect for Kaplan, who is one of the few reasons I ever stop by at Slate. The others (save the few exceptions you noted) reflected thinking patterns that best capture why I think Slate sucks now, and why their program "Day to Day" with NPR is a symbionic exercise is pure suckiness; pompous worthless dreck.
Posted by: Ty Lookwell at October 28, 2004 06:47 PMSlate hasn't been the same since Kinsley (a proud member of the reality-based community) left.
And that Landsburg guy's really gone off the deep end. Loved him on BARNEY MILLER though.
Posted by: Lewis Carroll at October 28, 2004 07:05 PMSteven Landsburg: If George Bush had chosen the racist David Duke as a running mate, I'd have voted against him...
Nobody would choose Duke or the likes of him as a running mate in America though someone did choose the immaculate liar Saddam-did-have-links-to-Al-Qaeda Cheney. Landsburg is essentially saying come what may I will vote Republican, just that I had to cloak my choice with some excuse and wanted distraction from how bad the candidate for president himself is.
Posted by: sainlob at October 28, 2004 09:46 PMFair**ly Im** Balanced, and a Proud Member of
the Reality-**Biased** Community, OK, Brad?
The only "reality-based" communities are the
quick, and the dead. Academics and journalists are neither, hobbiting instead in Middle Earth.
One thing I've always hated about Democrats was
when they got into power, they started swinging
their butch-dicks over everyone's heads. There
are no more Democrat farmers left, and Democrat
trade workers are outsourced overseas, leaving
a Democratic community of professional servants, and public servants and ivory-tower academics.
God help President Kerry!
Where in M.E. will he find a "reality" Cabinet?
Zbigniew Brzezinski for Secretary of State??
Urie Bronfenbrenner for Secretary of Education?
Tom Weisskopf for Secretary of Commerce?
Gerd Leipold for Secretary of Interior?
Cornel West for National Security Advisor?
Col. John Boyd (deceased) Secretary of Defense?
Can you imagine Earth in 2006? Jesus H. Christ!
Izzat "Jon Katz" formerly the dude who used to haunt Slashdot with his "geeks are oppressed, but I am one of you!" pieces? (Does he still?)
Posted by: ArC at October 28, 2004 10:24 PMIzzat "Jon Katz" formerly the dude who used to haunt Slashdot with his "geeks are oppressed, but I am one of you!" pieces? (Does he still?)
Posted by: ArC at October 28, 2004 10:38 PMUpon further review, the net Slate endorsement sounds a lot like the Economist's lame endorsment a few posts back. Its like both have been high on Bush's fumes for the past 4 years. Now they're coming down and they just don't like it all. And, boy, are they going to be cranky for the next 4 years. Never mind that they emptied the piggy bank, wrecked the car, and shot the family dog while they were high. They don't want to think about how it was their fault. They just want to sit on the toilet and complain about how Kerry is talking too loud about various facts that need attending to. About 6 months from now they are both going to start jonesying for JEB's fumes.
Too bad the cops won't come and haul them away in real life.
Posted by: Tom DC/VA at October 28, 2004 10:42 PMpointlessly contrarian
This perfectly sums up my problems with Slate. I also hate their assumption that because I'm reading an article in their magazine, that we come from the same economic background. Perhaps I should just their snobbery. Seriously, what the fuck is the point of Kausfiles? I also hate their smug headlines on the featured articles. "What Dick Cheney doesn't know about Black Women" or "How Kerry is blowing Wisconsin." Blow me and the 100,000 people who showed for the Kerry rally in Madison.
Fred Kaplan is a seriously good writer, though. One of the few who seems to actually know their subject matter and are not just flying fumes of attitude. I used to check Slate daily and find a few articles to read. Now 3 out of every 5 times I go there, I look at the front page, but surf away without reading anything. Mickey Kaus may be the worst writer I have ever seen.
Posted by: KevinNYC at October 29, 2004 12:04 AMCome on, if you polled the entire econ department at Berkeley, including secretaries and graduate students, I predict the proportion of wing-nuts, confused responses, and lame opt-outs would be at least as high.
I have to confess I still find a lot to enjoy at Slate. I like Saletan, I enjoy some of their reporting, and as others have mentioned Kaplan is great. I often find interesting thoughts in Daniel Gross' moneybox column.
Slate faces a natural challenge that their best finds get picked up quickly by top publications, like NYT and the New Yorker. They've launched the careers of a number of fine writers, but Steven Landsburg isn't going anywhere because he's such a remarkable hack. Maybe they need to get more active about cutting writers as well as finding them.
Come on, if you polled the entire econ department at Berkeley, including secretaries and graduate students, I predict the proportion of wing-nuts, confused responses, and lame opt-outs would be at least as high.
I have to confess I still find a lot to enjoy at Slate. I like Saletan, I enjoy some of their reporting, and as others have mentioned Kaplan is great. I often find interesting thoughts in Daniel Gross' moneybox column.
Slate faces a natural challenge that their best finds get picked up quickly by top publications, like NYT and the New Yorker. They've launched the careers of a number of fine writers, but Steven Landsburg isn't going anywhere because he's such a remarkable hack. Maybe they need to get more active about cutting writers as well as finding them.
sainlob is right about Landsburg. Hardly a proud moment for economic thinking there. Protecting your own job may not be in the best interests of the country, but it is at least personally rational. Refusing to trade with someone based on the color of their skin isn't --so the decision must be based on bigotry (http://adamsmithee.blogs.com/blog/2004/10/keep_morality_o.html has more on this).
Posted by: ck at October 29, 2004 07:16 AMAgree with what CW says. Slate can be a little bit patchy at times but the key writers are still very good (with the exception of Mickey Kaus -- he had stopped making any sense long ago). The poll is basically polling every Tom, Dick and Harry who happens to have written something for Slate in the past year or just came by the office for a cup of coffee. People like Dhalia Lithwick, Jacob Weisenbrg, Kaplan and Saletan (whom Brad noted as good contributors) are still putting out top notch stuff week after week. After all, the magazine that discovered the commercial and comic value of Bushisms before everyone else can't be all bad.
Slate is staffed by a bunch of self-interested, careerist, opportunistic, yuppie weasels. There is almost nothing worth reading in Slate anymore, and there's plenty that's worth NOT reading.
Fuck Slate.
Posted by: The Wildeyed Fool at October 29, 2004 09:19 AMSome of Slate's contributors reminded me of some of the people who answer their doors when I canvass for the Kerry campaign. These are people who feel compelled to tell you their feelings about the candidates. They say Kerry disappoints them, that they don't feel enthusiastic about him. These days, I'm just trying to get solid Kerry supporters to the polls, so I don't take any time to persuade them. But what I'm tempted to tell these narcissists is: "Get over yourself!"
This election isn't about your feelings! You're not getting married, you're hiring someone!
Now, the people whom Brad approvingly quotes don't suffer from this narcissistic disorder. They write of rationality, of moral decency, of truth-telling, of the rule of law. They're not looking for a miracle worker. Phillip Carter: "Sen. Kerry hasn't fully shown that he will improve on all these fronts, but I do believe he will do better than President Bush." Those are the words of a mature, thinking grown-up.
A lot of the contributors, though, sound like childish narcissits who base their voting decision on how they feel about their daddies.
Posted by: Holden Lewis at October 29, 2004 09:42 AMSome of Slate's contributors reminded me of some of the people who answer their doors when I canvass for the Kerry campaign. These are people who feel compelled to tell you their feelings about the candidates. They say Kerry disappoints them, that they don't feel enthusiastic about him. These days, I'm just trying to get solid Kerry supporters to the polls, so I don't take any time to persuade them. But what I'm tempted to tell these narcissists is: "Get over yourself!"
This election isn't about your feelings! You're not getting married, you're hiring someone!
Now, the people whom Brad approvingly quotes don't suffer from this narcissistic disorder. They write of rationality, of moral decency, of truth-telling, of the rule of law. They're not looking for a miracle worker. Phillip Carter: "Sen. Kerry hasn't fully shown that he will improve on all these fronts, but I do believe he will do better than President Bush." Those are the words of a mature, thinking grown-up.
A lot of the contributors, though, sound like childish narcissits who base their voting decision on how they feel about their daddies.
Posted by: Holden Lewis at October 29, 2004 09:44 AMBerube says what I first said, only much better.
http://tinyurl.com/5jnwr
Posted by: Tom DC/VA at October 29, 2004 05:50 PMWhich publication has done a better job? The Economist? The New York Times? They asked interns, technology writers, some possibly to give Steven Landsburg company.
Not that the criticisms are wrong but come on guys, 47-5 for Kerry and they are not being pro-Kerry enough?
Also the Berube piece is very good:
http://tinyurl.com/5jnwr
Posted by: Jack at October 30, 2004 06:17 PM