Safety Glass

Peter Beinart went quietly into the night as the editor of The New Republic, and no one noticed except David Carr, who is of course paid to notice such things. TNR has lapsed into almost complete irrelevance, along with the putative political party it was long associated with. In fact, if it is possible to be even less relevant and engaging and more conflicted than your typical mainstream Democrat, TNR managed to do it by dissassociating itself even from him. The new editor-in-chief, promoted from the ranks, is Franklin Foer. He says he looks forward to carrying TNR’s “momentum” forward, but considering the fact that the magazine has hemmoraged forty percent of its circulation in the last few years, and now prints fewer pages per issue than your typical government pamphlet, it’s not clear what momentum he is referring too, other than maybe the subtle force that carries us all inexorably to the same destination–our final resting place. The fact of the matter is that TNR needs what Stephen Glass once pretended to give the magazine–actual reported stories from the fringes of Americana that were damn fun to read. The world needs more humorless liberal armchair commentary about like it needs another Canary Island, so here’s hoping Frank Foer all good luck with a magazine that desperately needs some fire in the belly… like it had in the days of Rik Hertzberg, Michael Kelly, and even the waxen Michael Kinsley.


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