We’ve linked a few times to some of Tina Brown’s classic columns. I still get a kick out of her “more metrosexual approach to foreign relations” line, her reference to 1930s neoconservatives(!), a good 30 or 40 years before there actually were neoconservatives, as well as her “Punk Meets The Godmother” run-in with a waiter who dared question her cocktail party’s politics. (Apologies to Pete Townshend for paraphrasing his song title.)
Over at The Corner, Tim Graham highlights her latest report from Fun City:
You have to love reading Tina Brown, since her columns for the WashPost seem to confirm what every conservative suspects about the secular elitism of the Manhattan media crowd. See how she puts it today: “For those of us who came to Manhattan precisely because you’re guaranteed never to meet anyone who has read the ‘Left Behind’ series, America’s much-celebrated spiritual revival can have its trying moments.”
But you’re only guaranteed not to meet those people as long as you remain in the right social circle and keep your hands and legs in the ride at all times. As Rod Dreher mentioned in his terrific essay of a few years ago, “The Godless Party:”
True story: I once proposed a column on some now-forgotten religious theme to the man who was at the time the city editor of the New York Post. He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “This is not a religious city,” he said, with a straight face. As it happened, the man lived in my neighborhood. To walk to the subway every morning, he had to pass in front of or close to two Catholic churches, an Episcopal church, a synagogue, a mosque, an Assemblies of God Hispanic parish, and an Iglesia Bautista Hispana. Yet this man did not see those places because he does not know anyone who attends them. It’s not that this editor despises religion; it’s that he’s too parochial (pardon the pun) to see what’s right in front of him. There’s a lot of truth in that old line attributed to the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael, who supposedly remarked, in all sincerity, “I don’t understand how Nixon won; I don’t know a soul who voted for him.”
There’s everything in New York City, including religion–too bad Tina’s never noticed.
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