Newsweek’s other scandal (one of them, anyway) by Roger Kimball

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May 23, 2005 07:52 PM

Newsweek’s other scandal (one of them, anyway)

by Roger Kimball

"Insert Mainstream Media Credibility Here": that’s what the cover of the June 6, 2005 National Review advises, with a helpful black arrow pointing down into an open toilet. I know what they mean. Dan Rather. Jayson Blair. Just about everything the BBC broadcasts. Newsweek.

Wait--isn’t Newsweek old news now? Can’t we get beyond that, as the Clintons used to urge us to do when something unpleasant, er, came up regarding Bill and Boopsie? I mean, everyone now knows that no one was flushing Korans (or Qurans, or even Q’rans) down any toilets at Gitmo--nor could anyone have done so, as Mark Steyn pointed out in a typically hilarious and insightful column:

In a way, both the U.S. media and those wacky rioters in the Afghan-Pakistani hinterlands are very similar, two highly parochial and monumentally self-absorbed tribes living in isolation from the rest of the world and prone to fanatical irrational indestructible beliefs -- not least the notion that you can flush a 950-page book down one of Al Gore’s eco-crazed federally mandated low-flush toilets, a claim no editorial bigfoot thought to test for himself in Newsweek’s executive washroom.

In the great competition for the most shameless (or shameful--isn’t English a wonderful language?) response, the judges are still deadlocked: was it Newsweek’s mealy-mouthed, hand-wringing response or the disgusting performance by the cream of America’s media at a recent White House Press Briefing (Remember: "With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek?"--talk about liberal snottiness!).

Well, that was yesterday. Everyone now knows (don’t they?) that the holy-book-down-the-toilet wheeze was just a momentary aberration--excessive zeal in pursuit of a story, honest mistake, could have happened to anyone, new strictures now in place, no more reliance on anonymous sources, we promise to do better, our obligation to the truth, our readers, the Democratic Party, no strike that last thing . . .

Actually, Newsweek was simply behaving the way it has always behaved--as a partisan shill for the liberal elite, which also means as an ideological hammer with which to beat the conservatives, Republicans, George W. Bush--anyone and anything not toeing what John Fonte aptly dubbed the "transnational progressive" line on, well, on everything. This was brought home to me today when a friend mentioned a post on the excellent weblog CaptainsQuaters, which picked up an interesting piece from RidingSun on some interesting differences between the American and some International editions of Newsweek. On the cover of their February 2 Japanese edition, Newsweek ran a picture of a garbage can into which a dirty American flag, its staff broken, was stuffed:

The headline reads, "Amerika ga shinda hi," which (according to RidingSun) translates to "The day America died."

The corresponding international edition of Newsweek (January 31) was different:

"Both of the above editions," RidingSun noted

featured a cover-story article by Andrew Moravcsik, titled "Dream on, America". (This was translated into Japanese as "Yume no kuni Amerika ga kuchihateru toki", which is even harsher; it means, roughly, "America, the dream country, is rotting away".) According to Newsweek itself, the article described "the world’s rejection of the American way of life."

Moravcsik’s article did not run in the American edition of that same issue. The cover was also a bit different. It featured Hilary Swank, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx, with the title "Oscar Confidential." [Check it out here.]

If you look carefully, you’ll see that one of the articles from the other two editions is mentioned in a small blurb at the top: Fareed Zakaria’s "High Hopes, Hard Facts" ï¿½ here billed as "A reality check on Bush & ’Freedom’". Sure, they put scare quotes around "Freedom", but pretty tame stuff, all things considered.
It’s one thing for Newsweek to actively promote the notion that America is a "dead," "rotting" country overseas. But it’s quite another thing indeed to hide those efforts from its American readers. If Newsweek really thinks America is dead, and our flag belongs in the trash, why won’t it tell us?
If I were to offer Newsweek a suggestion, it would be this: Any story or cover you’re ashamed to run in America probably shouldn’t be used in other countries, either.

The bloviating self-righteousness that has congealed around Newsweek since their latest foray into anti-American fiction was exposed has seemed preposterous and embarrassing by turns. The closer one looks at the magazine, the worse it appears. (And ’fess up: do you ever read Newsweek--or Time or any of those stale-news-with-a-leftish-tilt--unless, that is, they are the subject of some scandal? I didn’t think so.) The real story here is the programmatic, reflexive anti-Americanism that has infected what some, with a quaint sense of dignity, refer to as the "mainstream media." Out-of-steam media is more like it.

[Update: LittleGreenFootballs gets it right, as usual.]