[Marxism] Another pro-war hack rewarded

[Ethan Young <ethanyoung@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

New NYT Week in Review Editor's Neocon Cred
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/12/new-nyt-week-in-review-editors-neocon-cred.php

New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus has been tapped to helm the 
paper's Week in Review sectionâit's the equivalent of a right-turn signal at 
a 
paper that pretty consistently cruises in the left lane.

Tanenhaus's work as a biographer of conservative icons Whitaker Chambers and 
William F. Buckley (that book is forthcoming) has made him enough of an 
eminence 
gris in right-wing circles to merit an invitation to speak last month at the 
American Enterprise Institute (AEI)âthe current employer of White House 
cast-offs
Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and David Frum.

There's no doubt where Tanenhaus' politics lay. At the AEI speech, he 
repeatedly 
referred to conservatives as "we," expressed puzzlement that "much of 
conservative ideology is not widely popular," heaped praise on Gen. Irving 
Kristol, and ended with a prescription for "a conservatism that can last 
another 
generation."

Tanenhaus' ability to keep his partisan beliefs out of the Book Review, which 
he 
has run since 2004, has been frequently called into question, most recently by 
Jim Sleeper in the Nation. Since taking over, Sleeper wrote, "Tanenhaus 
published 
a steady stream of put-downs of dissenters" and declined to even assign space 
for 
a review of Al Gore's The Assault on Reason. "As Iraq fell apart," Sleeper 
continued, "the Book Review became a neoconservative damage-control gazette."

As for why the Times would appoint someone with such a firm, public, andâat 
least 
insofar as the war in Iraq is concernedâwrong political point of view to edit 
a 
section that's nominally devoted to news analysis, neither Tanenhaus nor a 
Times 
spokesperson responded to requests for comment.


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