MetaFilter posts tagged with TheNewRepublic

In the Shadow of the Patriarch

infinite intimation — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:31:51 -0800

Gabriel García Márquez's romance with power. During the youth of García Márquez’s grandfather, Colonel Nicolás Márquez Mejía, who was born in 1864 and died in 1936, a number of presidents and government ministers--almost all of them lawyers from the conservative camp--published dictionaries, language textbooks, and treatises (in prose and verse) on orthology, orthography, philology, lexicography, meter, prosody, and Castilian grammar. To the horror of the Royal Spanish Academy and its American counterparts gathered in Zacatecas, Mexico, the celebrated author--lord and master of "Spain’s eternal presence in the language"--declared himself in favor of the abolition of spelling. The snub was the final victory of liberal Colombian radicalism over conservative grammatical hegemony. The ghosts of General Uribe Uribe and Colonel Márquez smiled in satisfaction.

The blue state Sarah Palin

IvoShandor — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:01:56 -0800

Michelle Cottle takes a look at the rise of Betsy "Death Panels" McCaughey - No Exit: The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey: Since her earliest days in the spotlight, McCaughey has presented herself as a just-the-facts-please, above-the-fray political outsider. In reality, she has proved devastatingly adept at manipulating charts and stats to suit her ideological (and personal) ambitions. No stranger to falsehoods Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey, played a pivotal role in the takedown of the Clinton health care reform plan in 1994, on the very same pages that Cottle's piece appeared on October 5. The assertions she made in that '94 piece were shown to have been heavily influenced by Big Tobacco in a recent Rolling Stone piece (excerpt only), and were debunked far too late by James Fallows. McCaughey responded to those accusations by attacking Rolling Stone for accepting tobacco advertisements. The RS journalist responded in kind, pointing out, among other items, a thank-you letter to The Tobacco Institute for their help in getting the Pataki/McCaughey ticket elected in New York's 1994 gubernatorial race. (Previously)

Stephen Glass Didn't Pass

Effigy2000 — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:03:33 -0800

In 1998, a journalist at The New Republic named Stephen Glass wrote a compelling piece in the influential magazine entitled 'Hack Heaven'. It told the story of how Glass witnessed a 15 year old hacker named Ian Restil being hired by a large Californian computer company named Jukt Micronics at a hacker convention as a security analyst after Restil hacked Jukt's website. But the entire story was, in fact, entirely fictional. Forbes Digital reporter Adam Penenberg exposed Glass as a fraud in his article Lies, Damn Lies and Fiction (mentioned previously) in what was hailed as a breakthrough for internet journalism and which forced The New Republic to issue two apologies to its readers. It also conducted it's own internal investigation into Glass' previously published articles and subsequently determined that at least 27 of 41 stories written by Glass for the magazine contained fabricated material. Some, such as "Don't You D.A.R.E.", contained fabricated quotations and incidents woven in with real reporting. Although Glass was ultimately exposed, he did his best to try and cover his tracks beforehand, going so far as to create a fake website for Jukt Micronics and having his brother act as its chairman in a phone call to his editor. All this would later form the basis for the movie Shattered Glass. Very few of the articles that Glass wrote for The New Republic are still available online. Some of those available include; A Day on the Streets Mrs. Colehill Thanks God For Private Social Security (PDF format) Probable Claus Don't You D.A.R.E. Writing on the Wall Slavery Chic The Young and the Feckless Hack Heaven For further reading, check out A Tissue of Lies: The Stephen R. Glass Index, which provides a complete index of Glass articles with even more links and with known fabrications specially marked.

Cure for pain

Kattullus — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:10:25 -0800

In December 2003, Brent Cambron gave himself his first injection of morphine. Save for the fact that he was sticking the needle into his own skin, the motion was familiar--almost rote. Over the course of the previous 17 months, as an anesthesia resident at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cambron had given hundreds of injections.

- Going Under by Jason Zengerle of The New Republic [print version] is heartbreaking article about the high rates of drug addiction among anesthesiologists. It tells the story of Brent Cambron and his spiral into addiction. His live was also sensitively chronicled in The Boston Globe by Keith O'Brien in Something, anything to stop the pain [print version]. Don't pass up on reading the comments to Zengerle's article, the first few of which are by medical doctors. Here's the Boston Globe story about Dr. Cambron's death and his obituary from the Tulsa World.

"Run, you pigeons! It's Robert Frost!"

Kattullus — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:52:35 -0800

Dark Darker Darkest is an essay in this week's New Republic by Christopher Benfey on the newly published Notebooks of Robert Frost (here's a more conventional book review by Mark Ford in The Financial Times). Glyn Maxwell, a couple of years ago in the same publication, wrote a short article, Beautiful as He Did It, about Edward Thomas and his relationship with Frost. Should you want more direct contact with the famous poet, you can read Richard Poirier's 1960 interview with Frost that appeared in The Paris Review (pdf) or listen to him recite a few of his better known poems.

Bush-hating meme

palancik — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 06:42:14 -0800

The New Republic . . . is one of multiple sources featuring variations on Bush-hating in recent weeks. What's up with the sudden currency of the phrase?