Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Is The American Conservative Shutting Down? (Buchanan's mag folding)
IntellectualConservative.com ^ | July 18, 2006 | Nicholas Stix

Posted on 07/18/2006 2:50:58 PM PDT by Western Civ 4ever

TAC would have prospered had it given its readers straight talk about race, and laid out that “humbler” approach to foreign affairs that George W. Bush had promised the electorate in 2000.

On Saturday, I learned it is very likely that The American Conservative magazine is shutting down. This is a shame, because:

1. It was the first major conservative magazine since National Review, almost fifty years earlier, that was founded not to curry favor with the powerful, but to criticize them, and seek to change their minds. NR had long since turned largely into a coven of neocon court propagandists. And though TAC’s demise may suggest otherwise, there is a healthy market for a semi-weekly magazine showcasing highbrow conservative intellectual writing and journalism.

2. I had a number of friends and acquaintances there, who are among America’s greatest intellectuals, and who must now seek elsewhere after work; and

3. I never got to sell an article there, and go through the cycle of freelancing for it, enthusiastically supporting it, getting stiffed by the editor, and becoming embittered towards the rag, that I have gone through with so many other media outlets where I lacked (or lost) a “rabbi,” and so was seen by the editor as “of use” for a time, before being tossed aside.

TAC (it calls itself “AMCONMAG,” but that sounds too much like “ECOMCON,” the clandestine military unit poised to take over the country in a coupe d’etat, in the movie Seven Days in May), could have become wildly successful, by the admittedly modest standards of political magazines. It had star-power (editor and writer Pat Buchanan), a few million bucks behind it (courtesy of editor/gossip columnist and Greek shipping and textiles heir, Taki Theodoracopulos), and a stable of brilliant writers.

Millions of Americans, including many white Americans, have been mad as hell for years about what passes for “conservative” journalism and political debate in this country. Their legions variously read, post, and sent letters to hundreds of Web sites such as Free Republic, VDARE, American Renaissance, Liberty Forum, Pipe Bomb News, ALIPAC, and hundreds more blogs.

But no matter how sophisticated paper-free media has become, there’s something special about a magazine. Once upon a time, National Review served this niche, but no more. Chronicles magazine could have served this audience, but it has long been run by classicist Thomas Fleming, who while a brilliant writer and thinker (at least he was prior to the lapse of my subscription in early 2000), is an incompetent and vindictive editor. Under Fleming’s leadership, while I wrote for Chronicles (1992-1999), its readership shrunk from over 20,000 to just over 5,000.

(And abusing editors and stiffing writers is also no way to go through life. In 1999, managing editor Ted Pappas left Chronicles after carrying Fleming for ten years. Rather than publicly thanking Ted for his yeoman-like efforts, Fleming coldly noted in a box that Ted had left Chronicles. No thanks, no nothing. By the way, Fleming still owes yours truly $150, for a 2,200-word, “Letter from New York” on Rudy Giuliani that he commissioned but never ran, never formally killed, and for which he never paid me a kill fee. I managed eventually to chop up the manuscript and sell the scraps, but that has no bearing on Fleming’s obligation to me. As best I could figure, Fleming’s stiffing of me just after Ted gave notice was some perverse form of revenge by proxy, sort of like stories I’ve heard of one tenured academic slugging a rival’s student. I guess Ted Pappas was my “rabbi” at Chronicles. You'd think an editor would realize just how vindictive writers can be.)

Middle American News, which is largely devoted to immigration reform but has published some work on race, has over 100,000 readers, but has never had the financial backing necessary to make a big splash.

American Renaissance has ably exploited the Internet, with a Web site that is read daily by tens of thousands of conservatives unhappy with the GOP. It is also read by conservative writers who would never admit to perusing it, and yet many of the articles they discuss or link to, clearly came from AR’s invaluable daily roundup. However, AR’s strength is also its weakness: It is about race, period. It is also not, to my knowledge, lavishly funded.

TAC would have prospered, had it given its readers straight talk about race, and laid out that “humbler” approach to foreign affairs that George W. Bush had promised the electorate in 2000, and which was characteristic of the Old Right, whose spirit TAC sought to evoke. An isolationist or neo-isolationist approach would have been respected, had it been intelligently argued.

Instead, TAC caved in on race, without even putting up a fight, and its foreign affairs position, rather than intelligent isolationism or neo-isolationism, often amounted to little more than “Die Juden, er, Neocons, sind unser Unglueck!”

The attacks on the, ahem, neocons, were to give the editors the illusion that they were fearless. Straight talk on race would have replaced such illusions with the reality of courage.

And what, then, is the legacy of the less than four-year run of TAC? That is impossible to say, at present. Its friends and enemies will seek to spin its demise this way and that, but the magazine’s true legacy will reside in what its most talented writers go on to do, including whether they manage to found another conservative magazine, and if so, whether they avoid repeating the mistakes they made this time around, or give in even more to paranoid obsessions with Jews, and cowardice on race.

On Monday morning, I called TAC, to get a comment. A staffer, Daniel McCarthy, said “O.k., one moment,” and went to confer with his bosses. He then came back and told me, “I’m sorry, there’s no one here who can help you at the moment."

I opined that I would think that his bosses would want to comment on such an important story. McCarthy replied, cooly, "Well, thanks for calling.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix has written for Toogood Reports, Middle American News, the New York Post, Daily News, American Enterprise, Insight, Chronicles, Newsday and many other publications. Add1dda@aol.com http://www.thecriticalcritic.blogspot.com/


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Philosophy; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: buchanan; conservatives; freerepublic; media; neoconservatives; nicholasstix; paleoconservatism; patbuchanan
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-47 last
To: Western Civ 4ever

Pat Buchanan has lost it.


41 posted on 07/18/2006 7:28:42 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Peach
As well, given this country's love for Israel, I think Buchanan only appealed to anti-Semites like himself.

He was just on Scarborough blaming Israel for starting the current bloodshed in Lebanon. I remember he said Israel's actions were anti-Christian, then I changed the channel wondering why anyone on here or anyone else other than Aljazeera cares what the guy has to say about anything.

42 posted on 07/18/2006 7:35:17 PM PDT by Deadshot Drifter (Discovery Institute- promoting one of the core tenets of Islam since 1990)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Deadshot Drifter; All

There are times I wish I could go back in time and change the the past.. I would go back in 92 and make sure I would not vote for this shrub.. I had a feeling that he was going to blame Israel....


43 posted on 07/18/2006 7:37:38 PM PDT by KevinDavis (http://www.cafepress.com/spacefuture)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: KevinDavis
I had a feeling that he was going to blame Israel

Pat has one of those D&D like tables he uses to generate columns:

ROLL 1d6:
1. Bash Bush for whatever he just did
2. Bash Bush for whatever he just didn't do
3. Dress up leftist economics in conservative clothing
4. Accuse other conservatives of being leftists
5. Denounce furriners
6. Denounce Israel/Joooos

44 posted on 07/19/2006 5:31:16 AM PDT by steve-b ("Creation Science" is to the religous right what "Global Warming" is to the socialist left.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: Deadshot Drifter
al-Queda loves him though!

http://tajdeed.org.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=8308aa3f28d601f7be8141ed5b41915e&threadid=42964

45 posted on 07/19/2006 2:30:31 PM PDT by harwood (Ann Coulter: Future SCOTUS nominee!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: veronica

breaking news.


46 posted on 07/19/2006 8:33:14 PM PDT by SJackson (The Pilgrims—Doing the jobs Native Americans wouldn’t do!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: Western Civ 4ever
The American Conservative always struck me as too slim a magazine for its price. Even then, I was considering ordering a subscription merely to get an "Old Right" perspective on events in comparison to the "neoconservative" position, but Pat Buchanan's ever-increasing diatribes against Israel have convinced me not to. TAC might as well fold the way the late JFK Jr.'s George did.

Chronicles was another "Old Right" choice I had in mind, but I cannot take seriously a magazine that champions the late Samuel Francis, whose views I find suspect, not to mention that persistent romanticized attachment to the antebellum South Pat and Joe Sobran embrace as well.

So, what publication is out there that gives us a paleoconservative perspective in an intelligent, logical manner? I don't know, although an article I read in Wikipedia.org places The Intercollegiate Review in the "Old Right" camp.

For the time being, National Review and The American Spectator are "neocon" magazines worth investing in.

47 posted on 07/21/2006 7:01:27 AM PDT by Ebenezer (Strength and Honor!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-47 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson