How did we miss this? The New Republic gave a blog to Howard Wolfson! Wolfson is Hillary Clinton's reviled old flack. He's known for his terrible sweaters, terrible NPR-schmindie taste in white people music, and for being a big loser like everyone else who is blamed for the mismanaged Clinton campaign. TNR editor (and …
John McCain made a pair of not-bad ads mocking the schoolgirlish moments of pundits talking about Barack Obama. Sure, it was hypocritical since McCain's no stranger to favorable press — he famously joked that reporters constituted his "base." Also politically dangerous for the same reason. But if he gets away with…
In a piece ostensibly about how terrible Damien Hirst is (breaking!), New Republic literary editor and noted crank Leon Wieseltier declares that there is no such thing as "rock bottom," that there is never a point at which things can't get worse, and offers as proof of this maxim the existence of Christopher Hitchens.…
New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier is unhappy that the New York Times printed an article about how sharia isn't so bad but they'd never print an article about how awesome the Torah is. We weren't crazy about the New York Times running that Styles piece about hipster farmers but you don't see us writing 1,000…
The New Republic's story-of-the-story of the New York Times' story of how John McCain might've fucked lobbyist Vicki Iseman is up, and, as could probably be predicted, it's the story of Bill Keller being a total pussy and not letting his reporters go with all the awesome juicy stuff they were totally sure they had…
Writer and "cultural critic" Lee Siegel went on the Daily Show to promote his "I hates teh Internets" book, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. Lee is also known for the little anonymous-commenting stunt he pulled on his own essays for the New Republic. He thinks we are just spending way…
Tinker, tailor, soldier, fabulist alert! The credibility of A Long Way Gone, the bestselling Farrar, Strauss and Giroux memoir from child soldier Ishmael Beah has been called into question by an Australian couple. It seems Beah may have spent a mere three months-not two years-kidnapped, drugged, running for his life,…
Much like bloggers, Stalin "rewrote history, made anonymous accusations, hired and elevated hacks and phonies, ruined reputations at will, and airbrushed suddenly unwanted associates out of documents and photographs," explains New Republic editor Lee Siegel. And that's only one choice bit from the Times' review of his…
"There needs to be a [late, influential New Yorker film critic] Pauline Kael of the Internet. People need to write critically about this thing," says New Republic editor Lee Siegel. (As you might remember, he was once suspended for a little stunt where he commented anonymously on his own essays, via the Internet).…
When Portfolio lost Gabe Sherman to the New Republic, the troubled Conde Nast business magazine claimed the young reporter would remain as a contributing editor. (At this point, is anybody not a contributing editor to Joanne Lipman's free-spending title?) Portfolio, which has lost a slew of writers despite lavish…
The current issue of the New Republic clocks in at a trim 56 pages. Hmm.
Some commenters are just so gosh-darn helpful in relaying the kind of information that we absolutely need to know to, as they say, move the story forward, that they deserve an award: the Helpful Critter award. Oh, and while we're at it, we've decided to execute people whose comments this week make them decidedly…
In our item yesterday about the New Republic's sad number of ads in its latest issue, we overlooked the fact that last month the magazine hired former National Journal Corporate Advertising Director Sarah Kuhn, and a couple weeks ago hired former National Journal Advertising Director Holly Maine to beef up ad pages.…
Leonine New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier comments on the New Yorker in the wake of that publication's hiring of TNR book critic James Wood: "It would be hard to comment on the difference between The New Republic's audience and The New Yorker's audience without sounding vain and snobbish. The pieces we…
James Wood, literary critic for The New Republic since 1995, follows recent TNR evacuee Ryan Lizza over to the New Yorker. [NYT]
We understand that the "dark week" at the New Republic was "long-planned," and in any case, "it's not so dark," since half the office is there. (So again, we wonder: paid or unpaid?) But there might be a very compelling reason for the involuntary vacation: Editor "Frank Foer is expecting child at any moment," a source…
A meandering, unsigned note in this week's New Republic informs readers that the magazine is going on vacation, and that the magazine will be published three weeks from now, instead of the "customary two." Err, okay! This raises a few questions for us, some of which are related to the fact that this week's issue is…
Today, the New Republic's Iraq soldier-blogger revealed his true identity—he's Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, of the Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division. (Questions had been raised as to whether the blogger was actually a soldier, and also whether the gruesome events he…
Does the New Republic have another fabulist on staff? Editors at The Weekly Standard—who, as full-time administration supporters, know from b.s. military dispatches—claim that the magazine's 'Baghdad Diarist' (allegedly an American soldier in Iraq) is a fraud. TNR editor Franklin Foer has launched an investigation—how…
