That’s probably a really common thing but there was a time when things that announced themselves as aggressively high-brow were quite appealing to me. I knew about The New Yorker, yes, but when I learned about The New Republic I was quite charmed. Because of the age, yes, but also because of the long list of contributors: people like W.E.B. DuBois and John Dewey, Otis Ferguson (the forgotten Great film critic), Orwell and Woolf.
One name I didn’t know then but know now very well: Stephen Glass, the reporter wunderkind who forged, distorted or straight up fabricated stories. There’s a film about the story called “Shattered Glass”. Which, groan, maybe, but also: dude’s name is Glass, writer and director Billy Ray pretty much had to call this movie that. (These days Billy Ray is the scriptwriter for “The Hunger Games”. Are those about somebody named Hunger?)
As great as the movie is – and it really is wonderfully entertaining, and smart about many things – there are a couple of groaners. At one point “The New Republic” is called “the in-flight magazine of the Air Force One”. That’s probably not true, and if it were somebody at the magazine should seriously ask themselves why no president hasn’t turned America into a anti-Stalinist liberal wonderland. Maybe they’re just not up in the air enough.
At one point as the staff is trying to deal with the fall-out from Glass’ numerous fabrications – people he interviewed never existed – one of the writers is remarking that this whole thing could easily have been avoided: “pictures”. Because The New Republic was famous for having a no-picture policy – so nobody asked Glass for photos.
Those days are long gone. A while ago Some Google Dude bought the magazine and promised to keep its integrity intact, and its affinity for “longreads” as a text longer than 1000 characters is now called. (Skeptical ant-modernism!)
The result: when Franzen published his “Why Kraus taught me to hate everything now” thing in The Guardian the New Republic responded with a listicle. An article about an Art Spiegelman retrospective is called “Comics’ Most Pretentious Faux-Artist”. And a well-researched piece how the Tea Party’s fate can be predicted by looking at 17th century England is called “This Forgotten Chapter in History Shows How the Tea Party Will Collapse” without actually mentioning the chapter itself, like it’s some clickbait on Upworthy.
A tragic and sad decline. “The New Republic” has always been known to pull some contrarian shit. Dale Peck got his start there. If you want to read a piece on how beloved thing xyz is horrible “The New Republic” is the magazine for you. Texts are split up into listicle points, headlines are little more than clickbait, but the impulse is the same. TNR has been trollin’ readers for a long time. It’s just that the packaging is new – or not really new, but desperately fresh. Certainly one aspect of progress, that.