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The Murder of the Weekly Standard (Good Riddance)
Commentary Magazine ^ | December 15, 2018 | John Podhoretz

Posted on 12/15/2018 3:38:01 PM PST by Kaslin

The Weekly Standard will be no more. There is no real reason we are witnessing the magazine’s demise other than deep pettiness and a personal desire for bureaucratic revenge on the part of a penny-ante Machiavellian who works for its parent company.

There would at least be a larger meaning to the Standard’s end if it were being killed because it was hostile to Donald Trump. But I do not believe that is the case. Rather, I believe the fissures in the conservative movement and the Republican party that have opened up since Trump’s rise provided the company man with a convenient argument to make to the corporation’s owner, Philip Anschutz, that the company could perhaps harvest the Standard’s subscriber-base riches and then be done with it.

That this is an entirely hostile act is proved by the fact that he and Anschutz have refused to sell the Standard because they want to claim its circulation for another property of theirs. This is without precedent in my experience in publishing, and I’ve been a family observer of and active participant in the magazine business for half a century.

The creation of the Weekly Standard was my proudest professional moment. When Bill Kristol and I conceived the magazine at the end of 1994, our purpose was to create a publication that would help guide and keep honest the hard-charging Republican party that had scored its stunning lopsided victory over Bill Clinton’s Democrats. This putative magazine would not cheerlead for Newt Gingrich’s Republicans, but instead represent the best thinking about how to lead the country through a new conservative era. We were criticized for not being part of the team from the get-go. Indeed, after the first issue came out in September 1995, a wag at a weekly meeting in Washington chaired by Grover Norquist handed out a parody of the Standard based on the precept that we had already gone off the reservation and weren’t being properly supportive of the Gingrich era.

As a matter of character, while the kindest and most generous of men, Bill is more the type for an ironic and deflating joke than a good “rah rah” about anything. And for better or worse, I was the kind of player on your softball team who would side with the other on a close call at second base if that’s what it looked like to me. Thus, not being a team player was part of the DNA of the Standard from the outset, for better or worse. Our loyalty was to the ideas in which we believed, not to the Republican party. And to be truthful in our analysis. That sounds pompous, and I hate sounding pompous, but it’s true. And it has been ever thus in the 23 years of the Standard’s existence, from its opening personal essay (the “casual”) to the cultural essays of the back-of-the-book and even the parodies that bring the weekly issue to its close.

The compact between the Standard and its readership was that it would reflect an expansive conservative vision of America and the world and would evaluate the politics of the present moment as honestly as its writers and editors knew how. It would speak to, and from within, the conservative movement without being a Republican Party sheet. This approach was an immediate success. The Standard was the only successful high-end magazine launch of its time and, I believe, the last important print magazine created in America before the Internet began its search-and-destroy mission against those things published on the pulp products of dead trees.

To be sure, it has never made money. Magazines like it never make money. But its circulation has always been extraordinarily healthy in opinion-journal terms. And within the giant corporations run by the wealthy men who started the Standard and then bought it—Rupert Murdoch and then Anschutz—its annual losses were a rounding error, akin to the budget for the catering on one of their blockbuster movie productions. But if Anschutz had been motivated by an unwillingness to bear the cost any longer, he could have sold the Standard. He chose not to. He chose to kill it.

The cessation of the Standard is an intellectual and political crime. I hope and expect its subscribers, tens of thousands of whom have been with the magazine since its very first day, will demand refunds rather than serve as passive participants in this act of politico-cultural murder. If you are a Standard subscriber but not yet a COMMENTARY reader, write to me at johnpodhoretz@commentarymagazine.com. Have I got a deal for you.

Your proper home is here.

As for me—I am heartbroken.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: kristol; podhoretz
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The author needs to blame him


1 posted on 12/15/2018 3:38:01 PM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

“The cessation of the Standard is an intellectual and political crime.”

It’s existence was a crime against humanity!!


2 posted on 12/15/2018 3:41:25 PM PST by Lent
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To: Kaslin

Interesting how we always have to conform to them. But the liberal wing of the Republican Party never has to let us drive.


3 posted on 12/15/2018 3:41:30 PM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
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To: Kaslin

John & Bill two peas in a pod. Not American firsters.


4 posted on 12/15/2018 3:42:44 PM PST by Trumpisourlastchance
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To: Kaslin

Podhoretz is from the same mold as Kristol. Another damned neocon who doesn’t f***ing get it either!


5 posted on 12/15/2018 3:42:52 PM PST by dowcaet
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To: Kaslin
The Weekly Standard will be no more. There is no real reason we are witnessing the magazine’s demise other than deep pettiness and a personal desire for bureaucratic revenge on the part of a penny-ante Machiavellian who works for its parent company

Well, theres always the factor that subscribers walked away, and newsstand sales dropped to.

If (you know) you wanted to look at the whole picture.

6 posted on 12/15/2018 3:44:11 PM PST by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: Kaslin

Podhoretz is just upset over his legacy. Poor baby.

Hey Pod, Trump still stands and the Weakly Standard doesn’t.

Yay.


7 posted on 12/15/2018 3:45:31 PM PST by SaxxonWoods (Yes, it's a Cold Civil War with Socialists. They don't have the stomach for a hot one.)
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To: Kaslin

Hey Junior! How did you treat people who were not team players in your war mongering?


8 posted on 12/15/2018 3:46:44 PM PST by Forgotten Amendments (Stawp the hammering!)
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To: Kaslin
Article reminds me of the old Woody Allen line:   "I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysentery."
9 posted on 12/15/2018 3:46:59 PM PST by Kenny Bania (Ovaltine? Why not call it Roundtine?)
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To: Kaslin
I was the kind of player on your softball team who would side with the other on a close call at second base if that’s what it looked like to me.

This isn't softball, John, which was your problem all along. It's war. And cutting the enemy an even break isn't virtuous if he only uses it to avoid cutting you one.

10 posted on 12/15/2018 3:50:57 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: Kaslin
The author's claim that spitting on Trump and his base is not to blame is ridiculous on its face. What ever he's thinking, clearly a river runs through it.


11 posted on 12/15/2018 3:51:13 PM PST by Sirius Lee (In God We Trust, In Trump We MAGA)
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To: Kaslin

“The best way to control the opposition is to run it ourselves”—Kristol, Podhoretz, McStain, Bush, Ryan, Graham, McScrotum, Romney, etc.


12 posted on 12/15/2018 3:51:32 PM PST by Electric Graffiti (Cocked, locked and ready to ROCK!)
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To: Kaslin

Excuse me for laughing hysterically at the demise of this neo-con rag & the fat-load Podhoretz.

BTW, Podhoretz, your own psychotic Trump-hated killed the WS magazine.


13 posted on 12/15/2018 3:52:47 PM PST by LongWayHome
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To: Kaslin

There is no real reason we are witnessing the magazine’s demise
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It failed because nobody reads magazines anymore. Simple as that.


14 posted on 12/15/2018 3:52:58 PM PST by shelterguy
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To: Kaslin

1. The people who PROVED Iraq was behind 9/11

2. The people who PROVED Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks

3. The people who originally hired Fusion GPS to go after Trump (& Cruz)

To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, “These are the little ladies who started this great, big war.”

Schadenfreude Dept.: Pat Buchanan’s THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, founded to counter these monsters is still alive & kicking.


15 posted on 12/15/2018 3:55:32 PM PST by Forgotten Amendments (Stawp the hammering!)
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To: Kaslin

My largest problem with TWS is that they backed politicians who could not be counted on when we counted on them. And while they could not stomach Trump, they could stomach Mexico, China, democrats and RINOs.

TWS had great writers who could come up with rational for any policy that their big donors wanted. But when it came to average Americans, TWS generally sided with (not always agreeing with) the elites.

Trump takes a different style to the Issue. He fights, he doesn’t just argue in an obscure magazine. Trump fights China, Fights North Korea, fights The UN committee on Human Rights, fights Russia, fights Mexico, and fights the swamp. Trump is the most actionable president in my lifetime. Reagan is the only one close. Its like the different between Janitors and Contractors. Trump knocks down and builds anew. Bush would apply WD40 or a new coat of paint. Obama would just give a speech.


16 posted on 12/15/2018 3:57:28 PM PST by poinq
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To: Kaslin
And for better or worse, I was the kind of player on your softball team who would side with the other on a close call at second base if that’s what it looked like to me.

Cuck.

17 posted on 12/15/2018 3:58:52 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: Kaslin

Suicide


18 posted on 12/15/2018 4:02:11 PM PST by butlerweave
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To: Kaslin

Self inflicted.


19 posted on 12/15/2018 4:05:47 PM PST by gov_bean_ counter (Ruth Bader Ginsburg doctor is a taxidermist.)
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To: Kaslin

We just couldn’t fight enough wars in the Middle East for long enough to save this neocon magazine. G_d knows we tried.


20 posted on 12/15/2018 4:08:48 PM PST by cdcdawg
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