Puerile Reflections

Puerile Reflections

More mediocrity from The Nation.

By Eric Adler

Victor Navasky, the publisher of the radical left-wing weekly The Nation, seems like a genial fellow. His newish memoir, A Matter of Opinion, is chock-a-block with folksy humor indebted to demonstrating that its author doesn't take himself too seriously. Although Navasky has penned his fair share of polemics in the course of his long career, his latest book aims at discussing his various trials and tribulations with a goodly amount of cheer.

Navasky has every reason to be content. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Yale Law School, he has led a strikingly successful life as a writer, publisher, and editor. As A Matter of Opinion makes clear, this has granted Navasky a number of desirable perquisites: A fancy gig as Delacorte Professor of Magazine Journalism at Columbia University; two abodes in New York; fellowships at various Ivy League universities, etc.

What's more, Navasky's memoir unwittingly attests that these enviable distinctions have been bestowed on a journalist of unfortunate mediocrity. To be sure, his lengthy stint at The Nation demonstrates that he knows how to run an opinion magazine; he has even proved capable of turning this inveterate money-loser into a modest financial success. In addition, as one of the brains behind the satirical magazine Monocle, he cooked up some genuinely humorous stunts. All the same, A Matter of Opinion is the work of a man who appears never to have thought very seriously about much of anything.

This is not merely a matter of politics. Truth be told, I do not share many of Navasky's views, and thus am not naturally inclined to concur with his partisan ruminations, with which his book is peppered. But A Matter of Opinion is not dedicated to detailed discussions of substantial political arguments, and treads over them lightly. Still, Navasky demonstrates an appallingly superficial understanding of sundry matters; his is the mind of a blind ideologue, a movement lapdog. For instance, take this representative passage from the book:

"It used to be that taking potshots at the media was a right-left thing. From Agnew-Safire we got 'nattering nabobs of negativism,' and from Chomsky-Herman we got the manufacturing of consent and 'the propaganda model.' (Read it, a lot still holds up.) On the right was 'Accuracy in Media' (AIM), and in the other corner is Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Go, FAIR!"

It goes without saying that these are not the deep thoughts of a careful intellectual; rather, they are the product of an unflagging partisan. In Navasky's world, everything with which he disagrees deserves sneering quotation marks-"Accuracy in Media"-and everything deemed suitably progressive earns his thoughtless cheerleading.

Indeed, Navasky's unthinking politics fit his magazine very well. Ever since the brilliant polemicist Christopher Hitchens walked away from The Nation, the weekly has been markedly bereft of regular columnists capable of sustained argument. Take, for example, Eric Alterman, the magazine's overheated media critic, who ceaselessly prattles on about the horrors of conservative media bias. Apparently, he hasn't noticed that this is all a matter of perspective: If one is suitably left-wing, one might very well find The Nation to be a bastion of knuckle-dragging reactionaries. The title of Patricia J. Williams' Nation column-"Diary of a Mad Law Professor"-gleefully announces that its author is unhinged.

It is for good reason, then, that thoughtful liberals would be better served by turning to Dissent, the democratic socialist quarterly run by Michael Walzer, the smartest man on the American Left. Whereas The Nation is replete with lazy, preaching-to-the-converted pieces, Dissent routinely presents clearheaded analyses of world affairs-including regular ruminations on the dead-ends and myopia of the American Left. Tellingly, Nation columnist-cum-conspiracy theorist Alexander Cockburn (a former New York Press columnist) dismissed Dissent as "an obscure journal." In short, Dissent is for thinkers, and The Nation is not.

It is unsurprising, then, that decades at The Nation do not appear to have served Navasky well. Throughout his memoir, he demonstrates an almost preternatural ability to remain steadfast in his opinions-even when they are most assuredly incorrect. He only begrudgingly and reluctantly admits, for instance, that Julius Rosenberg may have been guilty of low-level espionage; amazingly, he clings to the innocence of Alger Hiss.

More importantly, A Matter of Opinion demonstrates that its author views the entire history of the United States through the prism of McCarthyism. No matter how wrongheaded, naïve, and immoral progressive intellectuals have proved throughout the years, the witch-hunts of the Un-American Activities Committee always justify their mistakes. To Navasky, cheering for assorted Communist dictators may be a bit unfortunate, but can't hold a candle to the evil that was Senator Joe McCarthy. After all, McCarthy stalled a few careers; Stalin only killed 20 million.

To make matters worse, Navasky expends so much energy lauding his own inclinations-his is the movement of passionate dissent, of justice for the downtrodden, of stalwart anti-racism-that any political argument's over before it's even begun. Such self-righteousness is particularly irksome given Navasky's eerie tolerance for anti-Semitism: Whereas Navasky concludes that the advertisements of the pro-Israel group Facts and Logic About the Middle East are "disturbing," he blithely exonerates Gore Vidal for his obvious Jew-baiting.

Again, Victor Navasky has good reason to be happy. His puerile reflections on journalistic objectivity-to which he turns throughout A Matter of Opinion-were apparently suitably magnificent to warrant a position at the country's most prestigious school of journalism. His unreflective leftism has made him the insider's insider. All the same, his personal triumph isn't a good sign of intellectual health for the American Left.