By Saswat Pattanayak
In an editorial on April 4, The Weekly Standard came down heavily on the federal judges for citing “evolving standards of decency” to save the life of Christopher Simmons who was earlier sentenced to death by the laws of Missouri, and contrasted the logic with Terri Schiavo’s case, arguing that the standards of decency were not enough to save the latter’s life.
The attempt to draw analogies between two unrelated cases which are contextually distinctive is continuation of a neo-conservative journalism tradition. This is one which the conservative Insight magazine follows in its opinion too, “Is Terri Schiavo's right to not be starved to death less than that of a convicted murderer like Scott Peterson, who gets three square meals a day on death's row?” A critical look as opposed to a surface one, would prevail two fallacies: one, on content, the cases are entirely different in terms of their unique histories, and two, countless anti-life cry against Simmons/Peterson et al, doth not make one pro-life cry for Schiavo right. The neo-rights have not come clear on the policy decisions on life and death; they have merely tried to highlight the show with one single incident.
Every section including Scrapbook, the Week in Review, or the debates over moral issues, makes a harsh critic of the Left, and leaves no unturned stones while siding with self-proclaimed and self-defined ‘family values’.
The New Republic is all about how it has organized itself online. There are four sections online for its search option: Economy, Foreign Dispatches, Iraq and George W. Bush! Needless to say, its quite influential considering its access to the high and the mighty of the country. Along with The Weekly Standard, TNR is also the major content provider to the White House from time to time.
And then there is journalism for the liberals (if not for the underdogs!). The Nation leads since 1865. Commenting on the current debate, Katha Pollitt writes, “In this transposition of the abortion drama, Terri Schiavo is the defenseless fetus; her husband, Michael, is the callous "convenience" aborter; and the Schindlers are the would-be adoptive couple doomed to childlessness by tyrannical judges.” Pollitt has, like her predecessors Bernard Berenson and Clement Greenberg, weighed in within the art criticism an abstraction of culture wars over funding and free expression. The Nation indeed has pioneered the cultural criticism as an institution in the US. This apart, the “unconventional wisdom” publishes ‘liberal’ opinions, certainly not leftist in nature. In the most recent issue, George McGovern writes for The Nation, “There is a notion abroad in American politics, carefully crafted by its proponents, that is both disturbing and false…..What is the truth as I see it? I have believed since childhood that my country is the greatest nation on the face of the earth.” Even the Column Left by one of its editors Robert Scheer is at its strongest, a scathing criticism of the administration, and at its feeblest, an opinion generating no heat, letters or anger. Definitely not a magazine of the Left.
On a final note on the ideologues, I am sure, people deserve the kind of magazines they subscribe to.