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Opening Arguments

Orthodoxy according to Quindlen

I have a subscription to Newsweek, which I consider a wonderful time-saver. If I want to keep up on liberal orthodoxy, I don't have to read the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. times and all the rest or watch any of the major network newscasts. Newsweek has the distilled essence of liberal thinking, reported and commented on by likeminded people who think they're being dispassionate and objective because they talk only to each other. They exist in a bubble, you might say.

And if i'm really short of time, all I have to do is read Anna Quindlen's column, which runs in the back of the magazine every other issue. She is such a good writer that it almost disguises the fact that she seldom strays outside the liberal echo chamber. Her piece in the current issue, headlined "State of Illusion," is especially good. Because it reacts to President Bush's State-of-the Union speech, it manages to include almost the entire liberal litany.

She begins with the No. 1 screed on the liberal list -- Iraq is a disaster that will end with a whimper instead of a bang, having accomplished nothing but the creation of more terrorists, never mind that terrorists need no excuse. She moves from there to "illegal wiretaps," with no consideration that they might have some connection to the war on terror. From there, we go to Katrina, which proved that Bush and company don't care if American communities get destroyed. She ends by writing about the "profound sense of malaise" felt by "the young, the poor, the outsourced, the uneducated, the overqualified," who all understand that we have "a good life built on sand." George Bush should have made us all feel better about this, but, of course, he could not, because he has "a knack for thinking small."

I don''t know which is more discouraging, the fact there are people who feel this way (that our whole world is on the verge of collapse), or that so many of them think the reasons for current conditions are so simple that we just need a hero to charge in and rescue us.

As I said, the distilled essence of liberal orthodoxy.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Comments

Mitch Harper
Mon, 02/06/2006 - 9:52am

You're so right about Anna Quindlen, Leo.

She was a poor pick to follow Meg Greenfield. Greenfield had a great depth of knowledge of Washington and was an incisive writer. Regardless of Meg Greenfield's opinions her column was always a delight to read.

Anna Quindlen is so often predictable. Meg Greenfield was never so.

Anna Quindlen is no counterweight to George Will. (To be grudgingly fair to her, however, there are few who could be).

Her selection for the back page was of a kind with the general decline of Newsweek as a publication.

Leo Morris
Mon, 02/06/2006 - 12:11pm

I don't know how many know it, but Meg is the one who talked George Will into abandoning an academic career for journalism, and she's the one who got him started on the Washington Post's op-ed page. Charles Krauthammer, too, by the way.

Tim Reid
Mon, 02/06/2006 - 3:33pm

I have been a conservative all of my adult life and I believe that we should be very careful about foreign military adventures, that the government should have a very good reason to insert itself in people's private lives and that we should come as close to balancing the federal government's budget as possible. Bush has been a disaster on all fronts. Does this now make me a liberal? I think George Will agrees with me on this because he only live a few blocks from me and I've asked him.

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