Posted on 12/29/2014 9:19:15 PM PST by prplhze2000
That used to be a great magazine. I subscribed back when Rush was on TV.
Loved R. Emmett Tyrell’s column during the Clinton years.
Tablets etc are fine in their context, like reading in bed or the like, but there is a multi-layered sensory experience in reading a real dead-tree book.
The feel of the binding and covers, the sepia tone and texture of the paper, the very weight of the volume, the smell of dust and sense of time passed. The swish of the pages turning is but a tiny fraction of the pleasure in reading a book. To try and use only the sound as a substitute for the whole sensual experience is an insult to the reader.
It must have been thought up by a millenial...
Well said!
Yes, there were some great writers at TAS in the 80s and 90s: Joe Sobran, Tom Bethell, John Simon, and now-established writers such as Andrew Ferguson, John Podhoretz, Malcolm Gladwell, William McGurn, Richard Brookhiser, etc when they were young and still a bit unpolished.
I agree completely about Frum. His article was a milestone in the decline of TAS, as were the exposes by the execrable David Brock on Anita Hill and the Clintons. Yes, these articles greatly increased the circulation of the magazine, but were damaging to the conservative movement, in my view.
A great article on the first rise and fall of TAS (written before TAS was revived):
I got tired of the whiney Ben Stein columns and the increasing RINO mentality.
When I first began reading TAS their offices were in Indiana, far enough away from Washington DC that they weren’t co-opted by the Conservatism, Incorporated racket that abounds inside the Beltway.
Then in 1985 Tyrrell had the bad judgment to think that he needed to live in the hothouse environment of DC and he moved the headquarters there. That guaranteed that the magazine would get wrapped up in the intrigues of movement politics instead of being a critical voice on the outside. I suspect that was the start of its decline.
You’re right, Brock was another fraud that TAS got involved with. I had already dropped my subscription when that twink was writing for them but it wasn’t a total surprise to see how he turned out.
I was in Bloomington for graduate school in the early 90s. I was involved in Balint Vaszonyi’s campaign for mayor. I met most of the Bloomington conservative intellectual set through the campaign, including some of the “funding fathers” of TAS such as Tom Tarzian and several of Tyrrell’s former neighbors. I could sense mixed feelings about the direction TAS was going.
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