Betsy McCaughey's mendacious article "No Exit," which ran in the New Republic in 1994, has long been given a share of the credit for killing the Clinton healthcare plan. Andrew Sullivan, who was TNR's editor at the time, says he's addressed all this before, he's sorry he published the piece, he ran plenty of rebuttals, and anyway Clinton's bill had plenty of other problems too. Fine. But he also tells us today that he tried to correct some of McCaughey's worst excesses but failed:That's a damn good question, and I'm pretty sure the answer is "the same people who are running the same mendacious scare tactics in 2009."He lost? He was the magazine's editor. So who forced him to run the piece?One key paragraph — critical to framing the piece so it was not a declaration of fact but an assertion of what might happen if worst came to worst — became a battlefield with her for days; and all I can say is, I lost. I guess I could have quit. Maybe I should have. I decided I would run the piece but follow it with as much dissent and criticism as possible. I did discover that she was completely resistant to rational give-and-take. It was her way or the highway.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Bloggers Behaving Badly
K-Drum calls out Sully (emphasis mine:)
Re your question "He lost? He was the magazine's editor. So who forced him to run the piece?", at http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/10/09/clinton_media Joe Conason says:
ReplyDeleteHaving boasted proudly that by publishing McCaughey he helped to destroy the Clinton plan, and having accepted a National Magazine Award for doing so, Sullivan now says he is sorry about all that. He professes to take "full responsibility" for publishing an article that he knew to be false in its particulars and its broader argument -- but, in fact, smarmily seeks to blame someone higher up (in addition to McCaughey herself) who supposedly forced him to run the piece. That would have to be Martin Peretz, who then owned the New Republic and advertised himself as "editor in chief."