Paleocon isolationist Israel hater Pat Buchanan finds much to appreciate in lefty blogger Matthew Yglesias.
Buchanan writes about the recent Herzliya conference, where international leaders and political figures met to discuss the threat from Iran. Buchanan, anti-Semitic conspiracist par excellence, is convinced the United States will go to war (again!) for Israel:
Israel’s war is to be sold as America’s war.
The project is under way. According to Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor of the Guardian, Israeli media are reporting that the assignment to convince the world of the need for tough action on Iran has been given to Meir Dagan, head of Mossad.
Listening to the war talk, Gen. Wesley Clark exploded to Arianna Huffington: “You just have to read what’s in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided, but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office-seekers.”
The former supreme allied commander in Europe was ordered out of ranks and dressed down by Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. But Matt Yglesias of American Prospect, himself Jewish, says Clark spoke truth: “(I)t’s true that major Jewish organizations are pushing this country into war with Iran.”
Yglesias, who has been worried for months about the possibility of Bush bombing Iran,occasionally shows himself capable of writing rationally about the subject:
The one aspect of the Iran question that does enjoy universal agreement is that it involves difficult, unappealing choices and a notable absence of easy answers. Under the circumstances, it’s vital that the public have a clear understanding of what is genuinely at issue here.
However, he believes there is a great right-wing conspiracy to rush us to war:
[C]onservatives are seeking to foster an atmosphere of panic and hysteria that will cloud people’s judgment and delegitimize and marginalize the considerable downside of military action.
I find hilarious that while Iran has been a declared enemy of the United States since 1979 and is known to be engaged in furious efforts to develop nuclear energy; that while Bush named Iran as part of the “axis of evil”; that while Ahmadinejad has made a year-long play for the global audience with his appearances at the UN, his photo ops with the Bad Boy from Venezuela, his Holocaust-denial conference, his repeated questioning of the legitimacy of Israel, his crude taunts, and his extravagant threats to wipe it off the map—all of which have clearly communicated to even the lowest of the lowest common denominator in America that he is a loose cannon and that, by association, Iran is deeply untrustworthy—Yglesias is worried that American conservatives (and especially American Jews) are deliberately making Iran look bad.
…is a word that a certain war architect is, apparently, unfamiliar with.
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, as he leaves from Selimiye mosque in Edirne, Turkey
(via PJ Media)
A former FNC staffer is so upset over Fox’s war on Anderson Cooper that he spills to Romenesko:
Loath as I am to criticize my former employer, Fox News Channel, I can’t help but weigh in on FNC’s current public go-round with the Cable News Network. Fox’s smarmy hit job on Barack Obama, which touched things off, is contemptible in its own right. But what makes this latest dustup downright nauseating is Fox’s hypocrisy in targeting one of CNN’s best for the worst of its trademark vitriol. The Mediabistro website told the story in a recent headline dripping with unintended irony: “Fox Is Going After Anderson Cooper.”
You see, it’s not the first time Fox has gone after Cooper. In the past, though, its pursuit was in hopes of luring him away from CNN.
Our informant proceeds to tell us the not-so-secret story of what goes on all over town as media companies try to raid their competitors. A.C. wasn’t interested:
I got the impression that even the producer knew he was on a fool’s errand; that for Cooper, whose talents and instincts were in actual news, coming to Fox would be a huge step down professionally.
Well, maybe. But perhaps the more relevant detail is that the CNN gig Fox was trying to lure Cooper away from had been a huge step up for ol’ A.C. (not that there’s anything wrong with hosting The Mole). Not that our informant mentions that.
But he does go on to explain how the current war on Cooper is a replay of Fox’s war on Ashleigh Banfield of MSNBC (no, I didn’t remember it either) and how some FNC guy had crowed: “We’re gonna ruin her!”
So now, per current Fox spokes-assassin Irena Briganti, Anderson Cooper is “the Paris Hilton of television news.”
Yep, and I piled on (even though I have actually been impressed by Cooper, and I appreciate the efforts he’s made to add some context and depth to the issues he raises in his broadcasts).Then comes an admission from our informant:
It is true that Cooper set himself up for the attack.
Yes, he certainly did. But our FNC informant still thinks it’s not fair, because Cooper is so obviously full of integrity:
But he did so forthrightly, by publicly criticizing Fox for the tawdry way it conducted the Obama smear.
Gimme a break. Since when does leveling a forthright accusation of tawdriness against your business rival make you honorable?
CNN is wrestling pigs in the Infotainment Pigsty along with everyone else. (It’s too depressing to link. Just watch used-car salesman Wolf Blitzer hype each and every story on the Situation Room any night of the week.) The only difference is that Fox loves to get dirty, while A.C. and the folks at CNN spend a lot of time applying lipstick to their pigs.
Feh. I’m not buyin’. (But I’m not saying it doesn’t work when you’re trying to spiff up your brand.)
Illustration by Chip Kidd
Since I challenged you not to believe onetime industry pillar Jason Epstein when he said that book publishing wasn’t scandal-ridden, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the sensational account of the firing of Judith Regan in New York magazine, which you can read here. I’ll let GalleyCat’s Ron Hogan pique your interest:
[I]t’s a doozy of a story, especially in the way [writer Vanessa Grigoriadis] lays out the dynamics of Regan’s relationship with the rest of HarperCollins, including CEO Jane Friedman, and its parent company News Corp. But, of course, you want to hear about how Regan staffers in LA were called into a meeting room to be told about her firing, only to discover she was still eating lunch at her desk. Or about the speculation that Friedman may have jumped the gun on cutting her loose. And, let’s face it, you kinda want to know what O.J. Simpson had to say for himself during that interview. …
But my favorite detail is actually one that’s ancillary to the Regan saga:
“There were two secret books at HarperCollins in 2006, and we asked, ‘Are they worth it?’” says a HarperCollins editor. “Jane [Friedman] said that one of them was not that big a deal, but the book with Judith was going to be huge.”
Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch (subscription required; $$) is less focused on the details that will be surprising to outsiders. Instead, he hones in on the obvious lies and lacunae, and on what he calls “the large theme of this story—lots of people were involved or had knowledge, but none of them were responsible or in the wrong.”
I’ll focus on the two things that struck me the most: First, Regan’s fingerprints are all over the story and, absent legal depositions, this may be the closest we get to her side of how it happened. Second,…multiple people from [NewsCorp] are leaking and spinning without revealing the full story, and sometimes without making any sense—which is a big reason that this story keeps going and going.
Yep. I’ll cut and past a few of Cader’s observations:
source[s] are almost never named and rarely even characterized well, and even players who should be important (”Simpson’s manager”— is that Bret Saxon, or someone else?; “Simpson’s lawyers” — theoretically not lawyer Yale Galanter given his denials) are not named. …
Many of the anecdotes presented ring true to our own reports— while others, like the issue of when the book was printed, make no sense at all. …
We’re told “Mark Jackson, Murdoch’s in-house counsel, made the deal for about $880,000, put into a third-party trust for Simpson’s children.” The contract’s been published. The number is wrong…
The article doesn’t explore what “story” was pitched and Murdoch nodded assent to. … etc., etc.
Cader reserves his most bitter observations for last:
Now for the News Corp. side. Leakers there finally confirm that during the firestorm and initial defense (including Harper’s Thursday staff meeting), executives there had not read the book, or even the most controversial chapter. … “And we didn’t have the book, so we had to go on what she told us.” …
They had to. Because, even though orders had been solicited, a higher-than-initially-expected print run of approximately 400,000 copies had been set, and by the time the book was cancelled four days later on November 20, those books were printed and at least some of them had shipped, News Corp. is selling (or NY is enabling) the story that as late as Thursday, November 16 they couldn’t get anything to read. And it’s Judith’s fault, of course.
The article claims, “By November 13, the consensus among News Corp. executives was that they couldn’t wait any longer to announce the project, since a cameraman at the TV taping had leaked a video clip to Entertainment Tonight. There was one problem: Regan said the book wasn’t ready. It wouldn’t go into galley form for several days.”
Not a computer file? Not a printout? Not a photocopy? Not even something pasted into an e-mail? And why a galley for book that is miraculously printed and shipped days later? “We didn’t have the book, so we had to go on what she told us.” Until Friday, you see. “The galleys of the book were finally ready on Friday, and distributed to a small circle of executives. They were unenthusiastic.”
They like the profits from Regan’s books, but don’t like the stink to rub off on them. What a surprise.
Score: Judith Regan 1, HarperCollins -2.
And can I just say that I miss Tina Brown, who at least knows how to do “Lowbrow is Fun” while at the same time nurturing the tender egos of artistes?
And can I ask why a Random House bigwig was present at editor Bob Loomis’s 40th anniversary party in 1997:
BOB LOOMIS, who has been an editor at Random House for 40 years, has always operated on the principle that good editors are invisible, remaining in the shadows of the authors with whom they work. But on Tuesday evening, he was the center of attention at a dinner given by HAROLD EVANS, president and publisher of Random House, at the New York Public Library, to celebrate Mr. Loomis’s four decades with the house.
but why on Loomis’s 50th anniversary party in 2007 (last week) he had to be content with the Ghosts of Random House Past?
“About 25 years ago, I began to think, ‘I’m a stick in the mud,’ ” Mr. Loomis, now 80, told an audience of close to a hundred in the trustees room of the New York Public Library last week, at a tribute celebrating his 50 years at Random House. “ ‘Why wasn’t I moving on?’ ” Mr. Loomis asked, in that soft, tricky voice that compels you to lean forward and listen. Why wasn’t he like so many other editors jumping from house to house in search of bigger, better opportunities?
Well, the answer is, he would have to leave his beloved authors. Mr. Loomis has been at Random House since the days of Donald Klopfer and Bennett Cerf, its founders, and the essence of that great publishing era still lingers in the halls — at least for him, though the company has moved several times.
