Frontpage Mag by Â
Since 1998, David Remnick has held the office of editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, that most definitive of weekly guides to the left-wing narrative, and during his tenure heâs demonstrated amply just how much he deserves that position of solemn, even sacred, responsibility. Sacred? Well, yes. For while the ancient scriptures of their nominal faiths may not be regarded as particularly holy in the homes of many secular upscale Manhattanites, The New Yorker certainly is, because, week after week, it makes clear to its devout readers â in conjunction with the New York Times, of course â just what opinions should and shouldnât be tolerated at fashionable cocktail receptions and dinner parties.
A few illustrative highlights from his tenure. In November 2008, just after Obama won his first term, Remnick filed a shamelessly flattering profile of Obamaâs mentor, the former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Remnick not only depicted Ayers as a gentle soul â actually comparing him to the amiable, sweater-wearing paterfamilias portrayed by Fred MacMurray in the prelapsarian sitcom My Three Sons â but also allowed Ayers to rewrite his own personal history. Without any dissent from Remnick, Ayers insisted that his terrorism had been of a far more harmless variety than people imagined (although, he volunteered, he now felt a mature regret for the âjuvenile and inflatedâ rhetoric of his youth) and claimed that mischievous GOP propaganda to the contrary, heâd never been particularly close to the Obamas. That profile â carefully stripped of facts that wouldâve blown to smithereens virtually every detail of Remnickâs pretty picture â was the very apotheosis of shady, shoddy journalism…
