[Pen-l] The I. F. Stone Question (Again) - NYTimes.com

[ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My wife knows exactly when I am reading the New York Times (on the  
web), because (she says) that's the time she usually finds me  
muttering darkly with increasing anger and frustration. You can  
imagine then my growing rage as I read this hit piece:

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/the-i-f-stone-question-again/?partner=rss&emc=rss

> And yet there is more to Stone than the honorable. He was never a  
> member of the Communist Party in the way Heidegger was a member of  
> the Nazi Party, but he was, for much of his life, an admirer of  
> Stalin - in the parlance of the time a “fellow traveler.” Stone  
> abandoned his Stalinism in 1956 - which, one might observe, was  
> rather late for a talented and inquisitive journalist — but he went  
> on to praise Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh. Why did he keep making  
> the same mistake of falling for left-wing dictators? Maybe his  
> alleged independence of mind was more a case of what Jeane  
> Kirkpatrick called blaming America first. Certainly, that’s what he  
> did in his 1952 book, “The Hidden History of the Korean War.”


I will ignore the Heidegger mention... save that for another day. And  
I confess I am not very knowledgeable w.r.t I.F.Stone as a journalist.  
But the man's character was determined (for me) based on his clear and  
incisive critique of that thuggish duo (to whom all of Western  
politics serves as footnotes): Socrates and Plato. Anyway, you may  
disagree with on the old Greek, but I hope you will find the random  
bundling together of individuals and movements, finished off with a  
reference to the modern thug Kirkpatrick, as outrageous as I do. If,  
like me, you scrolled down in a hurry to pen a hot-headed response,  
you would have been gratified to note those already present:

===========================

Comment #1:

Horrible neoconservative tripe from an editor one of the country’s  
most notorious neoconservative publications: the NY Times Sunday Book  
Review.

— Louis Proyect

Comment #2:

Hey Gewen,

George Bush is a war criminal who has killed over 400,000 Iraqi’s in 8  
years to push the interests of capitalism.

What the hell are you talking about?



Comment #3:

Strange to be lumping Ho Chih Minh with Stalin. I was in Saigon when  
Ho died - and every Viet Namese, even the ones that fought on our  
side, had a tear in their eyes. Had Eisenhower had the courage of his  
convictions, and let Ho win his election, many lives would have been  
saved. And as we are learning today, some of the moves that were taken  
(privatizing FHA and FMCA), Johnson’s Guns and Butter policies that  
borrowed to pay for an expensive war, have come home to roost in a big  
way. We should have let Ho have his country. IF Stone saw that more  
clearly than the rest of us.

— Vietnam Vet

Comment #4:

Nice piece, Barry McCarthy.

— Michael Dawson

===========================

The good news for someone like me is that the NYT's erroneous  
reputation as a "liberal" and "intellectual" rag is that it attracts,  
at least in the readership, intelligent individuals, as most of the  
comments (which were a joy to read) show.

	--ravi

--
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