First winner of Naomi Wolf Prize announced

VFR announces today the inauguration of the Naomi Wolf Prize. Winners are individuals who make statements that equal in audacious detachment from reality Naomi Wolf’s recent column arguing that America is being systematically turned into a fascist/Nazi country, a process that includes, she says, the assignment of “paramilitary groups of scary young men [to] terrorise citizens.” The first awarding of the Prize goes to Tamar Jacoby, quoted today in a New York Times article on the appointment of John Podhoretz to be editor of Commentary:

Mr. Podhoretz’s supporters agree. “John happens to be in the family,” said Tamar Jacoby, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has written for Commentary, “but he is also more than qualified to carry the tradition forward. John is a serious person and takes ideas personally.”

Notice how Jacoby couldn’t stop at saying that J-Pod is “qualified” for the job. She had to say he is “more than qualified.” However, even if Jacoby had just said that J-Pod was merely “qualified,” rather than “more than qualified,” she still would have been awarded the Naomi Wolf Prize.

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But wait. What about that last line: “John is a serious person and takes ideas personally”? When I first read the sentence I mistakenly thought it said, “John is a serious person and takes ideas seriously,” because that’s what would have normally followed. To say that someone “takes ideas personally” is hardly a recommendation for a top-level intellectual position. It suggests a person, well, a person like J-Pod himself, who is incapable of discussing ideas objectively and who unleashes boorish attacks on anyone who disagrees with him, as J-Pod did just the other day at the Corner. Did Jacoby merely mispeak when she said that J-Pod “takes ideas personally,” perhaps not realizing the implications of what she had said, or was she deliberately undercutting him even while endorsing him?

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A reader writes:

I think Commentary lost its prestige about ten years ago. It’s been very predictable (and uninteresting) for the past decade. Do you know what their circulation figures are? I think you think it’s more influential than it is. John P. will probably sink it yet further.

LA replies:

That’s interesting. I must say I’ve read Commentary much less in the last ten years, though that may be due to factors other than pure quality. And I also felt that the “Commentary boilerplate” aspect of it had increased, a kind of mass produced, magisterial tone with less and less substance backing it up.

Still, bringing in this lout and buffoon as the editor is something else.

C. writes:

Actually, given the hype of today, even “more than qualified” could be called faint praise. People who really mean it would probably say brilliantly qualified, a superb choice, etc.

Paul K. writes:

I agree with your reader C. that describing J-Pod as “more than qualified” is faint praise by today’s standards, and calling him “a serious person” who “takes ideas personally” has a whiff of the intentionally ambiguous recommendation as described by author Robert Thornton.

Some suggestions for additional testimonials to J-Pod:

“I assure you that no person would be better for the job.”

“Attacking a challenging issue, he doesn’t think twice.”

“I recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.”

“There is nothing you can teach a man like this.”

“He is only 46, but he has the mental faculties of a man twice his age.”

LA replies:

If Jacoby deliberately called J-Pod “a serious person who takes ideas personally,” then I have to give her credit for something I didn’t think she had: wit.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 24, 2007 10:24 AM | Send