Masscult and Podcult

James Wolcott, on the controversy over JPod's appointment to be editor of Commentary:

... it's ridiculously prissy for Podhoretz's doubters and detractors to act as if Commentary risks infection from the alien virus of popular culture. Before it became strictly the lyric sheet for perpetual war, Commentary ran numerous essays about popular culture without feeling it had to apologize to Lionel Trilling. It ran a number of Robert Warshow's influential essays, it published Jewish hipsters such as Albert Goldman, Seymour Krim, and the young future director James Toback, for years it featured a film-review column by William S. Pechter, it even made room for Clive James's brilliant tour de force about Norman Mailer's Marilyn ...

Point is, if I know about Commentary's record of popcult coverage, shouldn't its contributors and donors have more of a clue instead of treating young Pod as if he were the lucky sperm club's tribute to Roger Ebert?

Indeed. The Times quotes Podhoretz saying that there won't be a "popping up" of the magazine - i.e. no "cover stories on 'Gossip Girl'" - but I'm with Andy Ferguson:

[JPod]'s style is a mix of “Mad magazine meets Foreign Affairs,” said Mr. Ferguson, who added he should develop that sensibility as editor. Commentary has such an air of sacred reverence around it, he said, that Mr. Podhoretz, may be “the only intellectual and conservative in America who is not intimidated by it and who could therefore change it.”

I suspect that Commentary won't stop running the occasional unpersuasive defense of neoconservatism under its new editor, but I'm hoping that - JPod's protestations to the Times notwithstanding - it makes room for that Gossip Girl piece. (I'm sure Reihan would be available to write it.)

Comments

Ross,
You forgot the best part!

"[JPod]'s an enthusiast with lots of gassy opinions, a farter of ephemera, the Jonah Goldberg of the cinema."

Posted by Rickm | October 25, 2007 3:34 PM

I didn't think the big worry was that John Podhoretz would run too many pop culture pieces. I thought the big worry was that he's not all that smart, he's a mediocre writer, and he coyly argued in the New York Post that we should "win" the war in Iraq by slaughtering all male Sunnis. In other words, he's not the guy you want if you're goal is to maintain your publication's intellectual or moral credibility.

If, on the other hand, you want your publication to inflict blunt-force trauma on anyone who disagrees with neo-conservative orthodoxy, Podhortetz--with his background as one of Rupert Murdoch's attack poodles--is a brilliant pick. So I don't think this is a "mistake" if judged from the perspective of the men making the decision.

Posted by JB | October 25, 2007 3:51 PM

Why would anyone bother to write anything about Gossip Girl?

Posted by Tiparillo | October 25, 2007 5:42 PM

Intellectual?

Posted by Little Boots | October 25, 2007 7:15 PM

"Mad Magazine meets Foreign Affairs"?

Mad was clever and funny, often very sharply so. Foreign Affairs has depth, credibility and well-reasoned factually-grounded articles. JPutz offers none of this.

Posted by Gene | October 25, 2007 9:20 PM

What Gene said. JPod only wishes he was as clever as Mad magazine. I guess I'll trust Wolcott that Commentary used to have some smart writers. You'd never know it now.

Posted by tgb1000 | October 25, 2007 11:10 PM

I enjoy JP's writings. They are openly unpretentious.

I would assume that all of the mean-spirited criticisms above were written by people with more impressive literary and intellectual credentials than Mr Podhoretz.

Posted by Tim | October 26, 2007 9:31 AM

Impressive literary and intellectual credentials? The guy is a narcisssistic juvenile whose idea of a profound intellectual reference is an allusion to Friends or Seinfeld. He is also a boorish intellectual thug who resorts to as hominem attacks when challenged.

Posted by Lugo | October 26, 2007 12:26 PM

Don't forget his support for genocide!

Posted by Rickm | October 26, 2007 12:34 PM

C'mon, we all know John P. Normanson has the two finest employment agents - Normie Podhoretz and Midge Decter - in Manhattan; that's the one - and only - reason John P. Normanson got the gig at Commentary.

Already Vegas bookies have put on the Over/Under on John P. Normanson's stay at Commentary: 17-1/2 months.

Meanwhile, James Wolcott's finest effort on Lucianne Goldberg's burden read as follows:

Advice Department

Parenting Bleg [Jonah Goldberg]

Okay, so my four year old daughter desperately wants me to do more magic tricks. All I can really do for her are variations of "Hey, I found a quarter in your ear" stuff. And even then, the prestidigitation isn't really up to snuff. If she were five, she'd be on to me. So, I need really simple, stupid in fact, magic tricks that can be done with little skill, that will impress a four year-old. Any suggestions?

03/24 01:09 PM

Perhaps you could pull a completed manuscript out of your ass and watch those little eyes light up with wonder.

Posted by Mark | October 26, 2007 12:42 PM

Lugo, are you the pot or the kettle?

Posted by AJM | October 26, 2007 12:45 PM

"I enjoy JP's writings. They are openly unpretentious."

Openly unpretentious?

Try blatantly imbecilic.

The manual on how to operate a toaster offers more insight, scope, and humor than anything ever crafted by John P. Normanson.

Neoconservative Nepotism is really another name for cultural engineering, the elimination of merit, and the destruction of the American society.

Posted by Mark | October 26, 2007 12:45 PM

I don't have the instinctive Podhoretz hatred that seems to afflict some folks around here. Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe that this guy is going to be head of Commentary.

For five years on and off, Podhoretz wrote a column for the conservative Moonie-owned newspaper the Washington Times, in which he lived out the banal life of a twentysomething on the page -- one of America’s first bathetic, solipsistic Gen-Xers (around the Washington Times offices, the column was often read out loud in Podhoretz’s absence, for comic value, in a ritual famously called Podenfreude).

No subject was too trivial to share with readers. Topics included his trip to an amusement park; his hatred of household pets; his love of Jell-O; conversations with his imaginary friend. He recounted events in mind-numbing detail: “I missed the 2:30 shuttle, so I had to wait for the 3:30 shuttle . . . I arrived in Washington at 5:15.” He’d also do things like type “SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX sex sex sex sex sex,” apropos of nothing (“I can see your eyes drifting”). One column ended with “Podhoretz . . . this is without question the dumbest column you’ve ever written. Stop it now!” I can see, however, why Ross and other conservative writers are playing nice and trying not to offend.

Posted by John Doe | October 26, 2007 2:09 PM

John Doe,

Neoconservative Nepotism: They Hire Only The Best (sic)

Posted by Mark | October 26, 2007 3:29 PM

I find it hard to believe that this guy is going to be head of Commentary.

Why?

Is there any evidence that neoconservatism is fertile intellectual ground these days?

Back when a moderate number of powerless but noisy liberals were kind of far to the left, neoconservatism attracted some pretty bright people.

But now that neoconservatism is a politically powerful, intellectually spent, self-glorifying dogma, which deep thinkers do you think should be running that magazine?

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | October 26, 2007 4:08 PM

John Doe,

I don't hate anyone, much less John P. Normanson.

But I loathe mediocrity, ineptitude, laziness, and paranoia. John P. Normanson owns ample amounts of all of these less-than-flattering qualities.

Every in the business knows that when the Good Lord (Or Deity of Your Choice) handed out Paranoia, John P. Normanson got in line four times - and on the fourth pass denied that he'd ever been in line.

John P. Normanson simply epitomizes incompetence, arrogance, an absence of common sense, and xenophobic extremism. All four qualities should have landed John P. Normanson a job with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003. (See cooking school alum Simone Ledeen, daughter of Michael "Kill, kill, kill....faster, faster, faster" Ledeen.)

But John P. Normanson blatantly lacks the qualifications to run Commentary. Either John P. Normanson will be out shortly (right after daddy and mommy pass on) or Commentary will R.I.P.

Posted by Mark | October 27, 2007 11:22 AM

I would assume that all of the mean-spirited criticisms above were written by people with more impressive literary and intellectual credentials than Mr Podhoretz.

Yeah, my literary and intellectual credentials are more impressive than Mr. Podhoretz's. But I'm not bragging--it's just that Mr. Podhoretz doesn't have any "literary and intellectual credentials." Writing speeches for politicians, being good at Jeopardy, and working for those noted men of letters Rupert Murdoch and Sun Myung Moon is not what "intellectual and literary" achievement looks like.

In any case, who cares how smart I am or what my resume looks like? Maybe I flunked out of a bad school, live in a cardboard box on top of a subway grate, and access Ross' blog by sneaking into the public library and hoping no one calls the police to report that a vagrant is stinking up the computer center. That wouldn't change the fact that I've never lamented America's unwillingness to order its soldiers and Marines to commit genocide, and John Podhoretz has. The guy could have the resume of Leonardo effing da Vinci, and he'd still be a reprobate.

Posted by JB | October 27, 2007 6:25 PM