Among the many pieces I’ve written for The New York Times over the past couple of decades, the one I may be proudest of is a 2010 review for the NYT Book Review—of a pair of books about co-founding neoconservative intellectual Norman Podhoretz. (The other, and to my mind altogether more admirable, co-founder was Irving Kristol.) The criticism of Podhoretz in the review was severe enough that his famously irascible son John Podhoretz apparently exploded in the offices of Commentary magazine soon after it appeared, “Linker is dead to me!” He blocks me on social media to this day.
Fair enough. If you’re interested in what got him so angry—and in my take on Norman Podhoretz and his legacy—I can’t do better than to send you to the piece itself. (That’s a gift link, so you don’t need a NYT subscription to read it.) I stand by everything I say here. If writing it today, I would only note that Podhoretz’s enthusiasm for Sarah Palin was soon swapped out for strong support for Donald Trump. There is nothing at all surprising about that. It follows from everything I note in this piece about his character and political evolution.
I’ll be back with a new post by the end of this week.
Once upon a time, an old family friend (a senior partner at Covington & Burling, and a neocon) sent me a copy of Podhoretz's essay, "My War with Allen Ginsberg." As he was aware, Ginsberg was a personal friend of mine, and something of a mentor.
I passed the Podhoretz article along to my (quintessentially Jewish, late-in-life Buddhist) mother -- and after reading it, she shook her head -- muttering: "What a bitter, little man!"
Damon, your review of Podhoretz was eminently fair -- and, like my mother's assessment (almost verbatim), spot-on!
Kirk, Reiner, Cheney, and now Poddy. Nil nisi bonum is deader' than Kelsey's nuts all right.
Not that there is anything untrue or nasty about what Damon said here; its just that these days we have no compunctions about speaking the unpleasant truth right away without a decent interval.
I'm not saying its a bad thing.
Old Irish joke which i am going to keep repeating until forced to stop : a man widely regarded as the most horrific in the village passes away in a small Irish hamlet, and at his wake, the priest invites anyone who wants to step up and 'say a good word about old Shamus." Silence in the church, as no one steps up or moves. After a few seconds, the priest says, "Come come, there must be something good to say about Old Shamus?" And in a few seconds one man raises his hand, sheepishly and says "His brother was worse."