NY Observer > Leon Wieseltier

Leon Wieseltier To Youth: Drop Dead

Matt Haber — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:23:47 -0400

Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic's answer to a question no one asked, files a Washington Diarist column this week in which he touches on The New Yorker's Barry Blitt-drawn Barack Obama cover as well as buyouts in the newspaper industry. He also has a thing or two to say about the youth. Mostly, he hates them.

On the subject of newspaper buyouts, specifically, those at The Washington Post, friendly old Mr. Wieseltier writes:

The losers in contemporary America conspicuously include the old, or the no longer young; and in a country in which the addiction to newness is even greater than the addiction to petroleum, this is as much a laxity of culture as a laxity of economics. read more »

Trash Me, Baby!

Doree Shafrir — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:02:59 -0400

Buzz Bissinger is the author of the Texas high-school football book Friday Night Lights and Prayer for the City, which is about Philadelphia under former Mayor Ed Rendell. Mr. Bissinger also wrote the Vanity Fair article on which the movie Shattered Glass was based. He is 53 years old, with a wide, almost froglike face and glasses, and on the night of Tuesday, April 29, he participated in a panel discussion on HBO’s Costas Now, hosted by NBC sportscaster Bob Costas, on the subject of sports and the Internet. read more »

Wieseltier-amis: Post-game

Leon Neyfakh — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:42:46 -0400

An incendiary essay by New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier about Martin Amis’ recent essay collection on 9/11 and the evils of Islamism ran on the cover of the New York Times Book Review last weekend. The review was an evisceration, built on Mr. Wieseltier’s contention that Mr. Amis aestheticizes politics and tragedy for his own narcissistic purposes.

Sample snippet: “Amis is the sort of writer who will never say ‘city’ when he can say ‘conurbation.’ In his first article about Sept. read more »

Mob Hits for April 10, 2008

Matt Haber — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:03:24 -0400

Hath Not a Jew Ears? New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier attempts to answer to a question you've probably never asked yourself: Can A Jew Enjoy The Sound Of Church Bells? (Spoiler Alert: yes.)

Cos Célèbre: Ta-Nehisi Coates examines entertainer-turned-activist Bill Cosby's brand of post-Civil Rights empowerment philosophy in The Atlantic. "From Birmingham to Cleveland and Baltimore, at churches and colleges, Cosby has been telling thousands of black Americans that racism in America is omnipresent but that it can’t be an excuse to stop striving," writes Coates. "As Cosby sees it, the antidote to racism is not rallies, protests, or pleas, but strong families and communities." read more »

Barry Gewen, Editor at New York Times Book Review, Throws a Rock at Leon Wieseltier

Leon Neyfakh — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:50:25 -0400

Barry Gewen, one of the editors on the staff of The New York Times Book Review, has written a fierce little post on the NYTBR's Paper Cuts blog, in which he calls out the famously severe New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier for calling Malcolm Gladwell an "idiot" in a recent column.

"Wieseltier has always enjoyed a good literary brawl, most famously perhaps, with his long takedown years ago of the work and career of Cornel West," Mr. Gewen writes. "Wieseltier knows how to spew vitriol, and the smoke that rises from the page can be fun for readers to inhale... But in a column Wieseltier did for the March 12 issue of The New Republic, I think he stepped over the line. " read more »

Be Like Leon (Wieseltier)

Observer Staff — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:49:43 -0500

Many, many intellectuals are now being called on to perform a backflip on Iraq. Alas, few have attempted it, and few of those have pulled it off with any grace. I mean the mea culpa for supporting the Iraq war. After all, how seriously should any writer be taken who hasn't come to terms publicly with his own bad judgment on one of the great questions of our time? Not very.

Leon Wieseltier does a pretty good job of it in the last New Republic, in a forum on what to do in Iraq.

"Since I was a supporter of the war, I have its consequences also on my own conscience. I do not believe that American troops should die for some heartless Kissingerian notion of American credibility in the world, or the like. (Anyway, it is the war itself that is doing the most damage to American credibility. After terrorism, the most immediate problem for American foreign policy in the age of Bush is anti-Americanism.)"

There's some other stuff to nod your head to here, like the frank admissions that more troops wouldn't have made any difference, that the war has increased terrorism and emboldened terrorists, that it's been a great setback to the dreams of universalists in the Middle East. (A new key on Wieseltier's piano, universalism; though of course he particularistically dismisses the Palestinians.) But I admire Wieseltier's moral tone on this one. He's taking some personal responsibility, and doing so in an open and sincere manner.

Ali Abunimah on One State in Israel/Palestine

Observer Staff — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 08:45:50 -0500

I caught Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian/American activist and author of a new book calling for a single Arab and Jewish state in Palestine, at Columbia the other night. Abunimah made a few interesting points: 1. Having been to Northern Ireland, Abunimah reports that the two sides hate each other "deeply" but live with each other because they regard their situation as "vastly improved" over the violence of ten years before. The challenge in statecraft is to create mechanisms that allow for equal treatment under the law while giving a lot of space for people to preserve independent ethnic identity and autonomy. So what if they hate each other? At least they're working together to improve one anothers' lives. (The late Milton Friedman endorsed a similar view in a posthumous rerun on Charlie Rose: people who hate each other can still trade with one another.)

2. The "Peace process" is an industry that spends billions of dollars on the same idea over and over again with no clear results. "There is a fantasy of separation, that the other side can be made to disappear, either behind a wall or through the existence of a Palestinian state." read more »

3. Some Zionists in the 20s and 30s were in favor of a state that was Arab and Jewish.

Judt at War

Suzy Hansen — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 20:00:00 -0400

“I’m struck when I observe the Jewish community in the United States, especially in New read more »

New Republic Critic Tumbles in Blog-land: My ‘Dumb Mistake’

Sheelah Kolhatkar — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 20:00:00 -0400

“I made a dumb mistake, and I’m very sorry I did it. read more »

Can't anybody just savor a metaphor anymore?

Tom Scocca — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 20:00:00 -0400

Can't anybody just savor a metaphor anymore? read more »