The death of the American Spectator:

October 28, 2001 9:39 PM

The death of the American Spectator: The conservative magazine survived and prospered for twenty-five years before Bill Clinton came into its sights. Now the former President is rich and smiling, and the Spectator is dead.
posted by Rastafari (7 comments total)

Warning: It's a long read, but it's informative, interesting, and gives a great history of the magazine's rise and fall.
posted by Rastafari at 9:49 PM on October 28, 2001

Interesting read. I am glad I read the link, since I almost passed it by as a troll.
posted by thirteen at 10:19 PM on October 28, 2001

There's much in here about the "Arkansas Project" and how they became entwined with Scaife, not to mention asides on the rising career of David Brock and the disastrous reporting on the Mena Airport connection, whatever that was.

It would be instructive to compare this account with Brock's own Blinded by the Right, not to mention Conason's The Hunting of the President. If even former loyalists like York feel this way ....
posted by dhartung at 11:08 PM on October 28, 2001

bibble-babble, claptrap, flapdoodle, flumdiddle, hokum...

fuliginous, gaseous, gimcrack, maudlin...

simpleton, snot, windbag, wretch

--Boy, that Hendrik Hertzberg article within an article is a treasure trove and veritable Invective For Dummies.
posted by y2karl at 12:03 AM on October 29, 2001

Very interesting story, good link. Can't say I'm sad to see them go...
posted by owillis at 12:06 AM on October 29, 2001

Woo Hoo!
Look out National Review and Sludge Report! You may be next!
posted by nofundy at 7:00 AM on October 29, 2001

Didn't they win, though? I mean wasn't American Spectator's goal to get Slick Willie out of office and put a conservative republican hand puppet in his place? In the end they learned that patience was a virtue. Just wait until after Bill was voted twice into the seat by the majority of Americans, let the democrats have their eight years in the sun, and then laugh and smear it in their faces. Finally! A Bush back in the White House! Whoopie!

Isn't the real reason AS is going away now because there's really nothing to report? Nothing that they'd personally want to report anyway. They'd have to become Environmental Libertarians. Or just have twenty pages of crossword puzzles every issue. I'm glad AS is gone. I hope it's soon forgotten, and gets not even a footnote in the history books.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:30 PM on October 29, 2001