NY Observer > Slate Magazine

'Slate' Writer Confesses: I May Have Unleashed 'Hezbollah-Style Fist Jab' Meme

Matt Haber — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:16:12 -0400

Slate's Christopher Beam has something to get off his chest.

In a post last night, Mr. Beam, who writes the website's 'Trailhead' blog, confessed that he may have accidentally set off the ridiculous Barack and Michelle Obama "terrorist fist-bump" meme that found its way into this week's New Yorker's cover illustration by Observer contributor Barry Blitt. That cover has spawned more op-eds, blog posts, news segments, and articles than, frankly, Media Mob is willing to link to, making it the most talked about magazine moment in history since Miley Cyrus bared her back in Vanity Fair, lo, two months ago.

According to Mr. read more »

Slate Reveals: The Love That Dare Not Bark Its Name

Matt Haber — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:52:33 -0400

Two weeks ago this reporter delved into the shadowy world of adorable animals and the people who love snorgling them. If you'll allow me to break from journalistic objectivity (while simultaneously breaking into first-person), it was a hairy assignment, full of wet noses and wagging tails. It was also one that changed me forever. I don't think I'll look at kittens being adopted by rabbits in quite the same way again.

With that in mind, I read with great interest as Slate ran a moving and funny story yesterday by writer and gentleman farmer Jon Katz about his dog Lenore and her intense relationship with one of his rams, Brutus. read more »

God is Dead (And Other Explanations for The Love Guru)

Matt Haber — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:12:09 -0400

In a recent New Yorker essay on the subject of theodicy, James Wood wrote:

Theologians and philosophers talk about 'the problem of evil,' and the hygienic phrase itself bespeaks a certain distance from extreme suffering, the view from a life inside the charmed circle. They mean the classic difficulty of how we justify the existence of suffering and iniquity with belief in a God who created us, who loves us, and who providentially manages the world.

With this philosophical framework in mind, let's look at some of the reviews of Mike Myers' The Love Guru.

"A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious. read more »

Michelle Malkin: Slate? Salon? Whatever.

Matt Haber — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:52:02 -0400

Yesterday on Fox News—America's Election HQ!—Megyn Kelly interviewed Fox News contributor and New Yorker profile rejecter Michelle Malkin about potential First Lady Michelle Obama. During the course of her echo chamber-like criticism of Ms. Obama (that's not a metaphor: someone should've checked Ms. Malkin's mic before putting her on air), Ms. Malkin said, "it's not just Republicans who are criticizing some of her comments, but also statements have been made in the left-leaning blog Salon about her comments."

That darn Salon!

Not so fast, Ms. Malkin. Alex Koppelman, Salon's War Room blogger, searched his site and couldn't turn up "anything like what Malkin is talking about." After posting a clip of her appearance and emailing Ms. Malkin, he solved the mystery:

Malkin responded to my e-mail; she says she misspoke and that she meant to refer to Slate, not Salon.

Let's call it the narcissism of minor differences.

Folie à Deux: Husband and Wife Journos Stay Together Through Hell or No Fresca

Matt Haber — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:10:40 -0400

In a bit of marital stunt journalism, Slate's David Plotz and The Atlantic's Hanna Rosin decided to spend a whole day 15 feet apart and report on their experiences. (They also let Slate V's camera' follow them.) read more »

Finke to Defamer: No Links For You

Matt Haber — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:37:58 -0400

Nikki Finke, The Observer's 2007 Media Mensch of the Year, has a bone to pick with Defamer. read more »

Don't Stop the Music! Times Hunts at Slate, Vibe for New Pop Critic

John Koblin — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:04:22 -0400

“Being pop critic at The Times is a dream job—certainly it was mine,” the former occupant of that position, Kelefa Sanneh, wrote in an e-mail to Off the Record this week.

But a little more than two weeks ago, Mr. Sanneh left his dream job for the other dream job: a reporting gig at The New Yorker. Since March 3, when a Times memo went out announcing Mr. read more »

Classical Music: Awkward, Then Snobbish, Like the Nerd at the Party

Gillian Reagan — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:38:01 -0500

The New Yorker's classical music reviewer Alex Ross, (whom the Observer's Doree Shafrir considers the best listener in America) and The New York Times' (mostly) jazz writer Ben Ratcliff have been firing off emails about pop, jazz and classical to each other and posting them on Slate for the past few days. They're attempting to "leave their musical islands." Here's a highlight reel: read more »

Slate to Launch Business Site

John Koblin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:10:04 -0400

The past year has seen the launch of the Fox Business Network and Condé Nast’s Portfolio. Now it looks like there could be another brand-new business journalism start-up to add to the list. read more »

Jews in the establishment

Observer Staff — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 07:54:41 -0500

Noam Chomsky has, on Znet (at zmag.org), now joined the chorus criticizing the Walt-Mearsheimer article in LRB on the power of the Israel lobby. Chomsky gives the authors credit for debating a verboten subject, but says, It's the oil and corporate interests, stupid (that have dictated policy in the Mideast). It's typical of Chomsky, as a materialist, to say this. He has always missed the sociological component of this issue, and he's doing so now. Hitchens does the same thing on Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2138741/) when he shrugs off the pro-Israel advisers in the Administration's war party as just a bunch of passionate Jewish neocons who happened to end up at Bush's elbow. What both men are missing is the transformation of the establishment in the last generation, the growing strength of Jews in our leadership class. I am part of this transformation, and it has largely been a great thing: reflection of diversity, openness and growing sophistication in educational and cultural values. The problem of the Jewish arrival in the leadership class is that we deny we've arrived. To say so goes against Jewish identity, as persecuted outsiders. Or it seems to echo anti-Semitic arguments the Nazis used about conspiratorial Jewish influence. But the result is that we completely fail to recognize our power, and fail, in certain respects, to exercise it responsibly. That failure is evident in the most questionable aspect of U.S. policy in the Middle East: the refusal by anyone in the Establishment to condemn Israel's near-40 year occupation of Arab lands. To his credit, Hitchens, a fellow traveler of the neocons, says as much in his Slate article.

Almost everybody also concedes that the Israeli occupation has been a moral and political catastrophe and has implicated the United States in a sordid and costly morass.

But such statements are rarely heard in the mainstream. Congressmen can't make them, at the risk of their careers. Artists can't make them--witness the censorship of the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie at a progressive New York theater. I know where it comes from. The refusal to condemn the occupation grows out of Jewish existential fears: the sense, born of the Holocaust, that at any minute we're going to be wiped off the map. Hey, we are powerless victims. But (at a time of the fifth largest army in the world and Ivy League presidents who stand up for it) this is an unrealistic fear, and meantime the effect of that fear, the refusal to acknowledge the occupation (the "so-called occupation," Congressman Elliot Engel said on BBC yesterday) means ignoring what most other states see plainly as an ongoing disaster. It's all well and good to condemn radical Islam and suicide bombers. As I do. But what about the religious/nationalist zealots who are colonizing the west bank? Mum's the word. It's like the Catholic hierarchy refusing to admit the church has a pedophilia problem. That is the real strength of the Israel lobby: taking this issue off the table in American public life, whether it's the Congress, The New York Times or the Washington thinktanks. It's not a conspiracy, it's simply the reflection of the fact that people who grew up loving Israel are now an important part of the establishment, and they are inflexible when it comes to this issue. And that is the "stranglehold" Mearsheimer and Walt identified in the paper that couldn't be published in America.