Ann Coulter has done more for the "conservative cause" in the past six years than NR has done in the last 46 years. Besides, they are obviously losing their spine and probably don't have much more to contribute. Ann is young and brilliant, and has a long future ahead of her to get even better. Out with the old, in with the new.
I would also submit the following:
Jonah Goldberg is a gifted writer himself. I wonder if he and others at NR used this controversial piece by Ann to get rid of some competition in a smarmy "office politics" - type move. There may have been some rivalry going on.
Also, I think National Review needs Ann a whole lot more than Ann needs National Review, LOL!!!
Would agree.
But it's a much different NR now. Soon after JFK's assassination, a network news type took a verbal swipe at the magazine by suggesting that the assassination was probably to be expected in a nation where a national magazine could "come out for" hanging Earl Warren. (A recent NR cartoon had portrayed Warren on the gallows.) The NR response written by Wm. F. Buckley, Jr., mocking this absurdly literal interpretation of the cartoon included the line: "Damn the torpedoes? What had the torpedoes ever done to him?". But that was in 1964, when Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. was a much younger and much funner man.
I've always questioned her judgement when it came out that she was instrumental in trapping Clinton in the Monica scandal.
So for 2 years, the country was focussed on cigars, crooked organs, etc. while the real scandals (which led up to the September 11 disaster) like speeding up the immigration process, making citizens out of felons, the China connection, etc. were pushed into the background.
If we want to convert Mainstream Americans to conservatism, let's face it. They WON'T listen to Ann Coulter.