{"id":178407,"date":"2018-12-07T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-08T00:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/12\/07\/were-gonna-need-a-smaller-violin\/"},"modified":"2018-12-07T19:45:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T00:45:00","slug":"were-gonna-need-a-smaller-violin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/12\/07\/were-gonna-need-a-smaller-violin\/","title":{"rendered":"We’re Gonna Need a Smaller Violin"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>It appears taht Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard<\/i> is at risk of closure<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Things don\u2019t look good for The Weekly Standard<\/i>. Yesterday, CNN\u2019s Oliver Darcy reported that the conservative magazine may shutter<\/a> after sparring between its leadership and owners MediaDC, who told the magazine\u2019s editor, Stephen Hayes, that he could court potential buyers, then went back on the pledge. While MediaDC\u2019s parent company wouldn\u2019t be drawn publicly last night, MediaDC\u2019s chairman, Ryan McKibben, has reportedly requested a meeting with Hayes next week. Ominously, Darcy reports, he\u2019s requested that the entire Standard staff be made available immediately afterward. <\/p>\n

The Standard has steadfastly opposed the Trump presidency, making it a relative rarity in conservative media circles. Its anti-Trump stance\u2014and stated commitment to fact-driven and nuanced debate\u2014helps explain why CNN\u2019s scoop elicited such widespread concern in the mediasphere. On the right, Noah Rothman, an associate editor at Commentary magazine, tweeted<\/a>, \u201cThis would be a disaster. The Weekly Standard<\/i> is indispensable.\u201d Further left, Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein called<\/a> CNN\u2019s story \u201cterrible news.\u201d The Atlantic\u2019s Adam Serwer added<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m obviously not the target audience for The Weekly Standard <\/i>but its output in the Trump era has mostly avoided the bizarre tone of Trumpist sycophancy dominating much of conservative media and losing it would be bad.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No.<\/p>\n

The fact that The Weekly Standard<\/i> is right, for all the wrong reasons, for once, does not justified its continued existence.<\/p>\n

Even now, as a “fact checker” for Facebook, it continues its role as a pox on public discourse and a welfare program for overpriviliged conservatives.<\/p>\n

The hand-wringing for a publication that was begun to pursue Bill Clinton’s penis and to advocate for destabilizing wars throughout the world does not deserve support for anyone who might consider themselves a journalist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears taht Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard is at risk of closure: Things don\u2019t look good for The Weekly Standard. Yesterday, CNN\u2019s Oliver Darcy reported that the conservative magazine may shutter after sparring between its leadership and owners MediaDC, who told the magazine\u2019s editor, Stephen Hayes, that he could court potential buyers, then went back …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,490,486],"class_list":["post-178407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-hack-journalism","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}