Jeet Heer jumps on Jennifer Rubin’s lamentable post at Commentary about the AIPAC’rs who compare Obama to Hitler, and points out that Norman Podhoretz used to get exercised when anti-Vietnam-war writers likened LBJ to Hitler. Heer then laments the downfall of Commentary magazine, whose great alumni he then lists.
That’s a very strong list of writers. But of course, many of them are dead and gone. And of the living, many have broken with Commentary. Aside from Robert Alter, is there a single first-rate writer still associated with Commentary? These days the magazine publishes Jonah Goldberg and Jennifer Rubin. The decline and fall of Commentary as a serious magazine is a story that has yet to be told. If I wrote the story, it would be told in a tone more of sorrow than of anger.
