Newsweek ponders the intelligence of President Obama’s critics:
On the other hand, unlike Newsweek, they actually know he is the president. Recall this classic Newsweek gaffe from 2010:
Unlike Newsweek, they’re also more likely to display a healthy skepticism towards statist hacks such as Al Gore…
…and Joe Biden:
And also unlike Newsweek, they also believe in intellectual diversity:
Though unlike Andrew Sullivan, they’re probably not debating who’s more conservative — John Kerry or Barack Obama? (Or Ron Paul, for that matter.)
Like Ann Althouse, in her initial take on Newsweek’s cover, I haven’t bothered to read Andrew’s actual article, but all I can say is, based on the cover that was created to promote it, why does he want to belittle his editor Tina Brown, so? Journalism’s first rule of interoffice relations is “don’t **** where you eat,” (I’ll let you fill-in whatever four letter euphemism you prefer in the asterisks), and by painting with such a broad brush, Andrew, or his headline writer, has certainly blown past that.
Actually, that’s not all I can say — I was reluctant to mention the Newsweek cover, since Newsweek ran it for one reason only. In their last days as a magazine owned by the Washington Post, they openly came out hard left. After the Post unloaded the paper for a buck, the Tina Brown/Jane Harman version of the magazine hasn’t exactly altered that perception. So they’re adopting the strategy that Hollywood ran with after the 2004 election: attempt to work their Red State non-audiences into a lather in the hopes of generating publicity for their far left projects. And of course, attempting to get rival camps playing off each other has long been the M.O. of Politico as well.
I’m not sure what it says about the right’s election chances this year; though if past performance is any indication, we saw an accelerating number of “Why Does America Suck?” stories in the fall of 2010, when it was obvious that the MSM had lost their side of the aisle in at least one house of Congress.
Hollywood has been surprised in the past when conservatives have ignored their more outré fare; I think that would have been the better strategy here as well, but once Power Line, Hot Air and Instapundit all piled on, too late for that.
Besides, to paraphrase a riff Jonah Goldberg used to describe RatherGate back in 2004, Newsweek cover this week is like a pinata — you can whack it from any angle, and all sorts of gifts fall out.
QED.
– Schwarzenegger is the ideal and perfect Republican (and for him you have to dumb down the definition of “dumb”).
Ah-nold was so dumb that he boffed his maid, and brought his love child with her along on family outings, and his Democrat wife never caught on.
In fact, she argued that he was such a wonderful guy that we should elect him Governor. Seems like it is evidence that a Democrat is dumb.
Me? I long for the days when Democrat scandals were about sex and Republican scandals were about money. Did anyone really care about Nixon’s dog?
Name calling and mockery are unattractive whichever side indulges in it. Here I attempted a glossary of political factions and the names they generally call each other. Generally, we need a better understanding of populism and its limitations. See http://clarespark.com/2009/12/16/perceptions-of-the-enemy-the-left-looks-at-the-right-and-vice-versa/.
Well said, Clare. Name-calling is not the kind of schumer I indulge in, either.
Well, if Newsweak really wants to attract attention, maybe they should try giving away a free news magazine to anyone that purchases their propaganda rag.
They do, almost, subscriptions for $8. Would have to pay me to buy it. Alot.
Good idea – I hope it’s National Review they give subscribers.
Andrew’s been doing this schtick for almost eight years now, since his “Hell hath no fury” moment when the Defense of Marriage Act passed with Bush’s support. And the left loves to promote the conservative apostate, even if Sullivan really was only one between the time the towers came down and Bush announced his support of DOMA. But at least pre-9/11 he was far more circumspect about making a fool of himself in print.
Clinton signed DOMA into law. Bush had nothing to do with it.
Sullivan’s beclowned himself so many times in the last 10 yrs., it’s impossible to keep track.
The Defense of Marriage Act passed and was signed into law under Clinton. What set Andrew Sullivan off in early 2004 was a speech George W. Bush gave in which he said he didn’t support gay marriage and he’d be open to considering a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.
I really wish I could remember who it was who said “Andrew Sullivan changed his mind about the Iraq War when it became apparent that no gay married couples would be fighting in it.”
Newsweek’s page count seems to shrink and shrink. What is it now — 12 pages? Soon an issue will contain less paper than an Sheryl Crow T.P. square!
(Not that its police car-pooping #OWS audience would know how to use it.)
That’s awesome!
Alas in my early 20′s I was 1 of ~3 men at a Lilith Fair concert in the late 90′s with my wife. Of the talented women performing (Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, Tracy Chapman, Lisa Loeb & Natalie Merchant) Sheryl Crow had to be, IMO continues to be, the least talented, overrated, moronic ‘songwriter’ of all-time.
Heck I’d rather listen to Marc Cohn’s IRRITATING, ‘Walking in Memphis’ once an hour when awake the rest of my life or ANY of the equally mind numbingly bad Jackson Browne’s ‘music’ than Ms. Crow’s discography.
What happens so many times to a person who is very, very sick, or possibly in the deepest sewer of meth/opiate addiction….?
They get thinner and thinner and thinner…. and simultaneously they descend deeper into the abyss of dementia, as though the illness begins to consume the very brain cells themselves. Hair, nails, and teeth fall out, and soon you have a haggard, disheveled rotting shadow of someone once vibrant with power and purpose.
And then they die.
Death pool on ‘Newsweak’? Oh, they’ll make it through the election on sheer will to see it through…
I say, summer of 2013. Place your bets.
I noticed that last time I was in the doctor’s waiting room. I was seriously confused if I was looking at the whole magazine, some kind of free preview, or if sick kids had torn half the pages out.
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/01/tale-of-two-works-andrew-sullivan-vs.html
Great commentary. I linked you to the others panning Sullivan’s campaign brochure for Barack Obama. The real focus today should be on Mark Levin’s Ameritopia anyway.
There is a reason Newsweek was recently sold for $1.
Let’s not forget the “purchase” also involved taking on Newsweek’s outstanding debt, which was quite substantial. Sidney Harman should have stuck to making audio gear.
Newsweek, what’s that? People still read that thing? I thought it went out of business years ago. Didn’t somebody sell that magazine for one dollar? Guess they’ll say anything to get their last two or three readers to pay attention to them. I’m just surprised anybody even cares about them anymore.
Newsweek is MAD magazine reborn as a running joke that Democrats and Barack Obama are not as incompetent as they so obviously appear to be.
There’s “piling on” and validating Newsweek’s crap with attention, and then there is satire.
I’m not a huge fan of Redstate, but they covered this Newsweek story in just the right way by challenging readers to come up with the best photo-shop parody. The joke, of course, was that the parodies were no more ridiculous than the actual cover.
This is the kind of thing that Newsweek has to write in order to get the liberals to buy a copy. Desperation.
It lost me tears ago and I canceled it. They are all losers over there.
The reason that Newsweek is popular in dentists’ waiting rooms is so that you’ll look forward to the root canal.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
You just hit this morning’s jackpot for comedy gold!
My High school newspaper editor would never let me put a headline this amateurish on the front of page of any issue.
Photoshop Contest
Does that mean we are not racists anymore?
Wow! I wish I was not so dumb; maybe I could read Newsweek sometime, or not.
If Newsweek wants to be the banner publication for the Liberal Left, why not let them? As long as they do not pretend to be otherwise, I do not see a problem.
We should read their diatribe, even though we disagree, because it is useful to know what the talking points and factoids are that the left uses.
It’s not as if they’re so highly regarded that they can actually influence politics…
This is like a print version of the Onion.
Not sure what saving whales has to do with trying to save our rights online BUT ████’█ ███ ██████.the ████ ████ ██ ████ ████ █████ government████ ███ ██ knows█████ ██ ██████ ███ best█ █████ ██ ███ ██████ █████ █████ ████/████ ███’█ ██████ ████████
Instead of “Why are Obamas critics so dumb”, a much better headline would be “Why are Newsweeks editors either dumb enough, or desperate enough, to print this BS”.
ha ha…more ignorant mental flatulence from another pseudo-intellectual in a soon to be extinct liberal rag! imagine that
Newsweek is going the path of Air America.
Why would any publication aspiring to be a newsmagazine slam the door so firmly on half their prospective readership? After this cover, no Republican would come within bargepole distance of Newsweek — and there goes your opportunity to persuade the opposition to your side. I can’t really see rabid Democrats paying for this either — after all, they already know all about it. And Newsweek can’t be trying for flagship publication of the left — Mother Jones has that pretty much sewed up.
Newsweek? That’s my ‘Form 1′ when camping.
If such Uhbama cheerleaders you’d think Newsweek would have photoshopped Uhbama’s weak chin and actually GIVE him a chin!
Who reads Newsweek these days anyway? I mean, whats the circulation down to?
Those previous covers were before newspeak were before it was sold for 1$. Just my 2 cents worth.
Yes — and what has Tina done since that would indicate that Newsweek has repositioned itself back to the center?
I don’t ponder the intelligence of the Left wing. I already know what it is and have proved that for myself many times over. I have a life to live – values to produce – and getting in a lather over this is ridiculous. Newsweek as far as I’m concerned is the sound of one hand clapping.
covers like Newsweek’s are proof that substantive debate with the left is no longer possible. All we can do is laugh at them, kinda like we do at the town drunk, the small child, and the dog who chases his own shadow.
If the comments are correct, are they really asking 8 times more for a subscription than was actually paid to buy the entire enterprise? Really? Who falls for that?
They could just as well have said “Nude pictures of the Queen of England inside!” They are truly that desperate for readership. Who reads it? Leftist don’t read as much as conservatives (if book sales are any indication) or no one wants to advertise to them. So they create a “car crash” scenario, something where everyone’s instinct is to look.
Everyone is overlooking the obvious; Newsweek is going for a bailout to “create or save” jobs for more Democrat hacks. The fact that the tax dollars come from the 53% of productive Americans (who probably are not Democrats) is a feature, not a bug.