[LurkerNoMore!]

It is the end of an era.

I have every American Spectator mag since Jan '93. One of my favorites is the Sept '95 edition, when James Ring Adams first educated me about the Riady connection and the coming campaign finance scandal.... TAS was so far ahead of the mainstream media it was sad.

[keithtoo]

Great post. I started reading The American Spectator way back in 1984 after a guy at the pool at the apartment complex I was living in, saw me reading my National Review and recommended that I check out TAS which was 'just as conservative and a little less Catholic'. I had been reading and subscribing ever since up until a few years ago.

I've been sad to see the magazine go.

[murdoog]

This is one of the saddest articles I have ever read on FR. I have been reading TAS since the 80's...I read about AIDS in there before it was even called AIDS!!

[HHFi]

Interesting but sad tale. I was a longtime subscriber to the Spectator, but I certainly didn't let my subscription lapse because I thought they went after Clinton too much or were "out of touch" with all the idiots who blindly supported him (and who are now heaving a collective gasp as the vibrations from the WTC explosions shake the scales from their eyes). I only let my subscription lapse when Gilder changed it, and I was disappointed that it would no longer be the sharp-edged conservative magazine that I loved. I wanted more politics, not less. I hope Tyrell & company find another outlet, and soon.

[murdoog]

On April 9 Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder wrote to Kenneth Starr recommending an investigation of the bait-shop allegations. Starr appointed the former Justice Department official Michael Shaheen to look into the matter. The decision meant that the Spectator, already barely able to pay its bills, would have to hire a lawyer to defend it in an open-ended probe.

Is it much of a stretch from this to say that the Clinton Administration used the Justice Department to put a publication critical of it out of business?

[Luis Gonzalez]

FYI

[AUsome Joy]

I am/was still a subscriber. I had decided to let my subscription run out because of the new format. It wasn't the same magazine as I had enjoyed before. I used to devour every article, but recently found it hard to find anything to read, except for Ben Stein.

[habs4ever]

A fond farewell from another longtime subscriber and fan.What a shame and sad article to read.Hubris did them in.Damn.

[VietVet]

Gone? Destroyed? How very odd. I have in my hands the September/October Issue of TAS. Doesn't look defunct to me.

[clintonh8r]

R.I.P., T.A.S.

[aruanan]

I have subscribed for a good part of the time since the 80's. I have not renewed. Did those who purchased the magazine actually think that they could make it into something else and everyone would just stay on board? What were they thinking?

[x]

York's view is worth considering. FWIW I always thought Tyrrell's problem was that he was an outsider who desperately wanted to be an insider. Hence the magazine's move to DC and play for "inside the Beltway" influence. Tyrrell may not have understood that being an outsider was his strength -- and the magazine's.

Another strength of the magazine was the mixture of points of view -- paleo, neo, mainstream conservatives with the odd liberal thrown in. There was also a wide variety of styles, from highbrow to very lowbrow, and subject matter from politics, to folk culture to political theory. When TAS moved to DC an attempt was made to homogenize everything -- to throw out people like Buchanan and cater the whole thing to a Washington audience.

The risk of decline was always there. It couldn't stay 1979 forever, and the particular culture war of those years was bound to end. By the Nineties you couldn't just send someone to a nuclear freeze or feminist rally and have a story. That cultural schism that TAS had explored for over a decade was much less pronounced in recent years. But Tyrrell took the wrong course by trying to Washingtonize TAS. It deadened what had once been a very lively magazine.

The emphasis on Clinton misdeeds was natural for the times, because there were so many misdeeds, real or merely rumored. But the emphasis on Clinton crimes that York deplores probably had much to do with the blurring of the old political/cultural divides.

I probably would have read the Spectator more in recent years if I'd seem more Clinton scandals stories. So far as I could tell, they were always doing some boring story about the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

[Rainbow Rising]

I started reading the Spectator in the spring of '93. Its irreverent spirit immediately hooked me, and soon I was buying it every month. By the end of 1993 I was a subscriber. The day that each new issue arrived in the mail was always a happy day in my house. I always got something out of the magazine: an interesting book review, an intriguing column, an expose of Clinton mischief, or some nugget of liberal foolishness from the Current Wisdom section. The "new" Spectator has a glossy look, but it has none of the spirit of the Spectator that I knew. I feel the loss very deeply.

Tyrrell won my heart forever when he was interviewed in another magazine and said that Bill Clinton had the sex drive of a monkey in a zoo. I hope he can resurrect the old Spectator in some form. Barring that, I hope he continues to comment on current events, because I've always valued his unique voice. In the meantime I have my old issues, and my memories.

[connectthedots]

I have subscribed to TAS for the past eight years. In the past year, it has really gone down hill and hardly worth reading, especially the last 4-5 issues.

[BunnySlippers]

Bump for later.

[Deb]

Now I understand why the last three issues of AS are unreadable.

This is so sad. Where is Tyrell? What is he doing?

The truth is, everything and everybody, good or bad, that came into contact with Bill and Hillary Clinton were destroyed. But the Clintons didn't win this one, Bob, you did. Don't forget that...wherever you are. Because of you people know the truth about the Scum From Hope and forever the first sentence in all the history books will read:

Clinton, William Jefferson Blythe: Impeached 42nd President of the United States.

You rule!!!

[Stefan Stackhouse]

I always did believe that moving from Bloomington was the worst thing that TAS ever did. I felt at the time that it would eventually result in the magazine's destruction. And I liked the old newsprint format better, too.

[pittsburgh gop guy]

I will forever remember THE REAL ANITA HILL article by David Brock. Made me loathe the media and Dems even more than I had before. And when he turned gay and renounced the article, I knew it was just an attempt to get with the (so-called) IN CROWD.

While I loved THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, I never really liked Bob Tyrrell and always thought of him as a poor man's William F. Buckley, another man associated with a great mag: NATIONAL REVIEW. Thankfully, NR still exists, though I don't think it has ever really made a dime either.

[F16Fighter]

All hail to Vlady, Tyrrell, PJ and crew -- thanks for waging important conservative moral battles over the years and ultimately paying the price -- alienating too many advertisers thus TAS's demise. However not before relentlessly exposing the corruptness of XPOTUS and his associates exploits and hypocracy of the left.

American Spectator died a hero.

[szweig]

*sniffle* I lived in Bloomington, Indiana from 1970 until 1982. I knew Von Kannon and Ron Burr very well. In those innocent times we had a club called Brewmasters sponsored by a local beer wholesaler. Our aim was to promote beer drinking on campus. Once a year we'd have the Beer Olympics (different individual and team drinking contests ). The event was held every year at the "Establishment" of the American Spectator west of town near Ellettsville, Indiana. We would raise over $2000 each year for the Children's Hospital in Indianapolis. We wouldn't be able to do this these days. Pity...