I just wanted to write a few words about a rather old publication that has really impressed me lately. The New Republic magazine used to be thought of as a dinosaur with little relevance to the liberal community. But recently, and due mainly to the efforts of a staff writer named Osita Nwanevu, I have found new life and energy there and highly encourage my readers to give them a chance if you haven't already.
I think the first time I had heard of NR was in one of Jello Biafra's spoken word albums where he cited them supporting Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, a book length chastisement of higher education. Jello was angry that this supposed keeper of the Liberal flame that his dad subscribed to since he was 18 was endorsing a book that Jello felt was everything that is wrong with mainstream liberalism. So I had basically written them off after picking up a couple of issues from the one old school independent bookstores in my little 'burg and not finding much of interest there. This was in 1999 when the internet was still an exciting possibility for the future but not really relevant in every day life yet. A little later when I was really getting serious about understanding politics I ventured out to the public library and found some of the other magazines that Jello mentioned in his spoken word albums such as The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, and Harper's that I found much more interesting. The New Republic fell by the wayside for a long time after that.
Especially when I got a job that allowed me to have a radio at my machine and I could listen to CDs. I discovered that what we always called "books on tape" had progressed and were much better in the CD format, this was still during the early Dubya years. My knowledge of politics, ideology, and intellectuals/writers was growing rapidly during those years working the night shift. The magazines reviewed books that were interesting and I went out to find them on CD whenever I could. Three big ones that concerned the media were very important and I often look back on them as the bedrock of understanding the ways that the mainstream political press interacts with the public in contrast to right wing media. These were Al Franken's Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media?, and David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine.
Of these, Alterman told the most complete story about the New Republic that I have found, though now I suppose it is out of date and I will have to do some research to find out where and how they turned it around. NR was bought by a appliance maker's heir, who didn't do a great job managing it and was caught under the spell of the DLC school of liberalism for a long time if I remember right. One of these three books talked about how NR marketed itself with endorsements from FDR and Orson Welles even into the new millenium, which is to say it was coasting on past lustre well past it's present situation.
As I said, I am still early in the process of evaluating the current form of The New Republic, but Mr. Nwanevu essay entitled End The GOP really caught my attention and I have shared several of his other articles to the blog's Facebook page. I see a few familiar names on the website's masthead and many more articles that portend great analysis and hard-hitting reporting. I haven't subscribed yet but I'm thinking about it. So I am encouraging my readers to give them a chance and not dismiss the name as just an irrelevant relic of the past, because the New Republic is definitely not that anymore.
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