Before getting into the details of this feud between two very
unsavory characters taking place in the Sunday NY Times Book
Review, it would be useful to put that section into some kind of
context. For years now, it has been the practice of the Sunday
review to assign right-leaning characters to write hostile reviews
of left-leaning authors, while at the same time it will never, for
example, invite a Noam Chomsky to review a Paul Berman book.
The book review section exists as a kind of rightist enclave at
the Times, drawing inspiration ideologically from the neoliberal
New Republic and neoconservative National Review in roughly equal
parts. The current editor is Sam Tannenhaus, who wrote an admiring
biography of the McCarthyite stool pigeon Whittaker Chambers. He
is now at work on a new biography of the reptilian William F.
Buckley. Before Tannenhaus, the review was edited by Mitchel
Levitas, the son of Sol Levitas who was editor of the New Leader,
a magazine that accepted funding from the CIA.
Levitas, a Russian emigrant and Menshevik, apparently had a big
influence on his son who accepted a post on the board of directors
of the Tamiment Library at NYU, a first-rate repository of
socialist and labor publications. Ostensibly, his tepid social
democratic beliefs had recommended him to NYU. But when the
Tamiment displayed some sympathy and support for the reputation of
Alger Hiss, Levitas blew a gasket, stating: “To have the Hiss
banner flown from the Tamiment flagstaff was just an insult.” It
was of course a logical transition from bashing Hiss to writing
valentines to Whittaker Chambers.
read full article:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/george-packer-mark-danner-pissing-contest/
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