Beltway
Rich Lowry, the author of “Al Sharpton Is Right” and “Bush 2012,” has fired John Derbyshire for violating BRA’s racial etiquette:
“Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream,” or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative.
His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.”
It goes without saying here that National Review is a faileocon magazine that isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. This was seen in spades during the Trayvon Martin shooting when Rich Lowry jumped on the MSNBC bandwagon and published a ridiculous essay called “Al Sharpton Is Right” that called for the arrest of George Zimmerman.
National Review publishes a stable of worthless, mediocre Beltway writers like Jonah Goldberg, Ramesh Ponnoru, and Kathryn Jean Lopez to represent conservatism who churn out nothing but unreadable garbage. The comments that have been posted on blogs and forums in reaction to “The Talk: The Nonblack Version” show that Rich Lowry and hte clowns who write for his website do not represent the views of ordinary conservatives on this subject.
Update: The reaction begins on Kosher Republic.
Note: Personally, I don’t know why any conservative would subscribe to National Review to get braindead content from Rich Lowry like “Al Sharpton Is Right.” There are sites like OD, CofCC, SBPDL, VDARE, Amren, Alt Right, Takimag and many others who are doing the work that Rich Lowry is unwilling to do.
There’s a picture of a tit on you website. It’s indecent.
I find Rich Lowery’s nose offensive.
You know what else I find offensive Rich? Cheer leading and lying to support bloody wars that kill tens of thousands of people.
I find it hard to believe that anyone still reads NR. The only reason we ever link there is the occassional Victor Davis Hanson article.
The comments at American Thinker and Free Republic are almost 100 percent anti-Lowry.
Hopefully some of these true conservatives writes and publications will reach out to him. Strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.
Bogus Jew with a fake Brit accent Steyn still writes for that pansy, widely unread rag. I guess you can still say whatever makes you feel good regarding Muslims, but truth about Blacks must not be mentioned.
Derbyshire picked the right moment to throw gas on the fire. If he was going to severe all ties with NR, this was the way to do it. He brought maximum exposure to the column and to Lowry and NR’s cowardice.
As a side note, I hope the race realist philo-semites are paying attention. John Derbyshire sided with Israel and Jews for years. Unsurprisingly, it did not buy him any good will from Jonah Goldberg, John Podoretz and crew. This is what happens when you align with Jews.
Goldberg occasionally makes a good point but I don’t agree with his main themes of liberal capitalism and American/Israeli imperialism.
I’m waiting and waiting for Goldberg and Podhoretz to denounce the Nazi-like racism of Israel:
Hopefully within a day or two we’ll see people burning copies of NR on YouTube.
I would have called for a NR boycott but that would be pointless because no one who reads this website is dumb enough to subscribe to that magazine.
Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson are the only two decent writers left standing. How long before the axe comes down?
VDH won’t last. Classicists like him always pull an Enoch Powell. Then they become pariahs.
How many soldiers with legs blown off by IEDs has Lowry met? Helped get a job? Anyone at National Review?
Derb has long danced around the line on these issues
I like how lowry tacitly admits that everyone knew Derbyshire was racially aware, and so the offense wasn’t holding certain beliefs, but expressing them explicitly.
I hope Derb’s life will improve after having allied himself with the Light Side. His eyes must be opening wider by the hour.
He can come back among his Anglo Saxon kin, with a bit of a spring in his step.
According to the dictates of PC blacks are above reproach and not responsible for any of their bad behavior. It’s not the devil but old evil whitey made ’em do it.
In order for respectable conservatives like Lowry to remain respectable they must buy into this line. Derbyshire crossed the line and had to go.
The descent of NR from the premier conservative publication of 50 years ago to the fish wrap it’s become today is truly a shame. But I blame Bill Buckley for that and not Lowry. Lowry and his ilk are the logical result.
How despicable is Lowry’s posting? Here are some of the ways:
First off, Lowry does not refute ANYTHING Derb says: he does not make even a token effort to prove anything Derb said as false or wrong. This is the standard LIBERAL response to “racism”: it is so patently wrong and absurd, we don’t need to respond to it. Lowry’s attitude is quite literally indistinguishable from any liberal’s response.
“[Derb’s] column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation”
Rich, you are firing John Derbyshire. Say it. Take responsibility. Don’t try to frame this as “John’s choice”. Derb was brave enough to write his piece; you be brave enough to fire him for it.
“Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise.”
Bullshit. Derb has written for a large range of publications for over a decade. He wrote this piece DESPITE his association with NR, not because of it. Also, Derb’s integrity is unimpeachable: he has ALWAYS written with honesty. To say that he was leveraging his NR association to increase coverage of this piece is almost slanderous. It is also unfalseifiable. Derb has noted on more than one occassion that he is essentially a freelancer and not actually an employee of NR: he was paid piecemeal. Lowry is both belittling Derb’s own influence while exaggerating NRs.
Sailer, Brimelow, Buchanan, Francis, Sobran, Taylor, Derbyshire. The list of people fired from NR increasingly looks more illustrious than that of those who finished out their careers there.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but it is obvious in retrospect that National Review never represented White American interests even when it was defending segregation and opposing the civil rights act. The constant leftward evolution of NR’s editorial positions over the years suggests an agenda: NRs objective all along, or at least one of them, was to keep people with fairly healthy racial instincts on the Republican reservation where they could server as cannon fodder for Jewish and plutocratic interests on Wall Street.
The agenda is so obvious in retrospect a blind man could see it. When the cold war ended in the early 90s, National Review’s editorial stance moved seamlessly from “the commies are coming!” to “the ragheads are coming!”
In the 50s and 60s, National Review always threw out just enough red meat in the form of opposition to integration to keep conservatives from that era from looking toward real White leadership such as George Lincoln Rockwell and William Luther Pierce. In the 90s and 2000s, once the culture had moved substantially to the left, they always threw out just enough red meat in the form of tepid dog whistling about The Bell Curve and illegal immigration to keep the conservatives from considering Francis and Taylor.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/04/profiles-in-intellectual-courage.html
Nehi Coatsey Zip coon, or whatever his Afro centric name is, closed Comments on his derb attack almost immediately.
I did find this site, though, via one of the posts.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/04/needless-to-say/comment-page-1#comment-250547
SUPER snarky Cognitive Dissonant Upscale Lefties.
No moderation.
Perfect.
I’m down the thread.
Whoops – they pulled a bunch of my posts. The ones that actually offered real world testimony to Derb’s righteousness.
It will be quite interesting to note Steyn and McCarthy’s reaction to this. They have to make quite the decision now. I have some hopes for Steyn, none for McCarthy. Wonder how it will turn out.
I’m rather shocked at how uniformly negative those comments over at FR are towards NR. Have racial opinions amongst Kosher Conservatives really hardened that much?
It is like that pretty much everywhere: Free Republic, American Thinker, Daily Caller, Red State, Breitbart, etc.
There is a night and day difference between Kosher Republic in 2012 on race and Kosher Republic in 2004 on race.
Thrasymachus made some good points today about how dealing with blacks everday especially the intelligent ones kept at corporate offices is humiliating and degrading for whites.
Hunter, I concur that the tenor has changed over at AT as well. I posted a good number of posts tonight, any of which would have been moderated into neverland this time last year.
Steyn, McCarthy, and VDH, who are the only NR writers worth reading, all have a moral obligation to resign in protest.
Great column by Vox Day. I have added him to the blogroll for that act of honesty.
Does anyone here read National Review? If so, do you read anyone other than John Derbyshire, Victor Davis Hanson, and Mark Steyn?
The webzine they are referring to is Takimag.
Here is the offending article:
The Talk: Nonblack Version
The ‘talk’ is telling the kids that Blacks tend to be trouble. One of his points: “Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white.”
The article seems to be one of the most-commented ever at Takimag — 2,130 comments as of this writing — ~48 hours after posting.
I have had an RSS feed to Derb’s comments at the Corner for several years, but that has been my only reading at NRO for a good while. Steyn is good for a laugh (he is a good writer) but isn’t really on board with any “alternative right ideas”, he is strictly neo-con. Hanson is similar; interesting writer, but simply cannot get over into the race realist camp.
Byron York is a very good reporter but he left NR a few years ago to write for the Washington Times. And he is that very rarest of breeds: a news journalist (not opinion writer) who is relatively conservative.
The various calls to boycott NR and NRO have brought a bitter smile to my face: the truth is that most people who support Derb stopped reading National Review a long time ago. We are essentially powerless to support him through boycotts. But that also shows why it makes sense for him to leave that institution: his true friends and sympaticos are to be found elsewhere.
“Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. ”
Did Lowry talk to Derb before firing him on the web? This reads almost as if Lowry fired him by Internet. This is the acceptance by Internet of the resignation by Internet?
Lowry posted it on the web for Derbyshire to find?
Lowry and Ponnuru are the side that the original National Review was against. Derbyshire is part of the side of the original National Review. This uncivil defenestration by Lowry stands against the decorum of the Civility Era which came to an end under LBJ.
Lowry will find that those who remember National Review and Firing Line from earlier decades will see Lowry and Ponnuru as the people against them then just as they are now.
I threw in my tuppence, Denise.
Here is the offending article
Jesus fuck, the libtards there just get dumber and dumber. It’s like arguing with robots, they just keep bleeping “racist, racist, racist.”