Well, Mr. Auster, I am not sure what you mean. When I read Jonah Goldberg’s post, it reminded me of the writing style of Richard Weaver, or maybe one of the Southern Agrarians, or perhaps even Russell Kirk. So, what is your complaint? :-)

(Can’t you just see Goldberg’s blog entry coming from one of those?)

And don’t forget Russell Kirk. My reading project this year is his books. There was a good article on Kirk in one of the recent American Conservative issues.

For once I agree absolutely with Mr. Auster. Its not just Goldberg, it seems as though all these guys can produce is re-hashes of how bad Clinton was, how bad the liberal media is, etc. etc. Look at Rich Lowry’s new book. Just how does yet another knife job on the dead corpse of Clinton’s reputation serve to advance conservative thought.

Sadly, I don’t think the American Conservative has quite taken up the slack, either.

They replaced Florence King with David Frum. DAVID FRUM. The younger NR writers are all Republican party hacks - at best. At worst they are Goldbergs.

“They replaced Florence King with David Frum.”

It could have been worse. At the time when O’Sullivan was fired as editor a few years ago, I thought Frum would be his replacement.

However, despite of all my criticisms of NR/NRO, I still regard it as valuable and even indispensable. It is the one conservative publication that provides quick, factual, balanced overviews of various issues and responses to leftwing charges. As weak and inadequate as they are, they still keep the air of being the responsible, centrist, conservative magazine.

The most disagreeable thing about NRO these days is the free rein they give to David Frum’s attempts at paleo-bashing. His NR cover article lumped people who would be amazed to learn that anyone considered them to be a paleo (e.g., columnist Bob Novak), and criticized people for positions taken out of context and positions that were not particularly identifiable as paleo. It was the nasty tone of the whole thing, filled with insinuation about motive, that was especially discreditable. I damn near cancelled my subscription.

Jonah Goldberg is neither a trenchant thinker (which is putting it mildly) nor a talented — let alone “gifted” — writer, and for those deficiencies alone, regardless of what his political opinions may be, should never have been given the high position in National Review which he somehow got.

No one needs to cite thinkers, writers, essayists, or opinion journalists who possess in greater or lesser abundance the qualities Goldberg, regardless of his politics, so blatantly lacks. We each have our favorites. Many espouse politics we don’t agree with — even abhor — but we acknowledge their brain power and writing skill and we enjoy reading them.

When was the last time anyone actually *enjoyed* reading Jonah Goldberg?

When I start reading a piece by Christopher Hitchens (whose politics I ABHOR, I hope it’s not necessary to add), Paul Gottfried, Steve Sailer, Peter Brimelow, or the late Balint Vazsonyi for that matter, I can’t help taking a second to scroll down and see how long it is, to get an idea how long my sheer intense pleasure’s going to last.

Anyone ever do that with Goldberg’s columns? (Yeah — the same who’d do it with Katy Couric’s columns, if she wrote any.)

When I discovered Steve Sailer in October, 2000, shortly after first getting online, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Absolutely smitten, I went back and read every single word of the entire archives of his stuff at Vdare.com and at his own site — every single word. It took me a week-end or something. Glued to my seat, I didn’t know or care whether it was day or night.

I’ve done that with others — Ann Coulter, Julia Gorin … many. Couldn’t stop reading their stuff, once discovered.

How many have done that with Jonah Goldberg’s stuff?

John O’Sullivan, Paul Craig Roberts, Alexander Cockburn, Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens, Florence King, David Horowitz, Chilton Williamson Jr., Lawrence Auster, Jim Kalb, Pat Buchanan, Justin Raimondo, Sam Francis, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Paul Gottfried, Ilana Mercer: this is quality — often rivetingly so.

Compared to this league of pros, Goldberg is on the level of a smart-alecky high-school student.

I’m sure he’s a very nice guy. But — completely apart from his politics, whatever those are, and regardless of whatever debt it was which Buckley owed Goldberg’s parents which he was OBVIOUSLY paying off when he hired him, that couldn’t be more clear — he’s not up to the standard of the lofty position he holds. He’s not deep. He does not and cannot deliver the quality which largely characterized National Review until the start of his tenure.

Lowery is no better. (And let’s not even talk about some of the less-than-zero total non-entities they have there, like Ben Domenech.)

It’s important to distinguish between National Review Online, which is, purposefully I suppose, much fluffier and sillier and for which Jonah Goldberg writes so often, and the magazine itself, which I continue to enjoy reading. John Derbyshire, Stanley Kurtz, Jay Nordlinger, and Ramesh Ponnuru are all generally worth reading. Sadly, the magazine represents centrist conservatism today; I find it helps to think of it as what Time or Newsweek ought to be in a saner world.

What is really needed is a more serious but sane conservative magazine, given that Chronicles and The American Conservative are not up to the job. And I would do anything for a centrist-to-right book review which treated both fiction and nonfiction. The Claremont Review of Books is almost exclusively devoted to history and politics, which I get enough of, and no review is complete without the comment somewhere that the book’s author has amazingly neglected to consider the brilliant thought of Harry V. Jaffa.

Fluffier and sillier is one thing, promoting porno is another—as is advocating suicide, which Andrew Stuttaford, another NRO regular, recently did.

One way to deal with the problem is to browse more selectively. For example, I’ve stopped reading The Corner, as that’s the place where some of the perpetual adolescents at NRO feel freest to express their selves, while continuing to look at the main page each day.

In the same way, I regularly read the New York Post, which is overall a truly crass, degrading publication. Yet most issues will have some interesting and worthwhile columns, and for all its flaws it’s the only lively voice in New York opposing at least some aspects of the prevailing leftism. Also, the paper only costs 25 cents. So, while I disapprove of the Post as an entity, I buy it for the things I like and try to ignore the rest.