Katrina vanden Heuvel Should Not Continue As Publisher of The Nation Magazine

I am beginning to suspect there is more to that issue of The Nation and its publication of a badly sourced piece by Patrick Lawrence in the beginning of August, which the publisher and editor of the magazine, Katrina vanden Heuvel very obviously reluctantly and very inadequately attached an editors note to, even as they left it up.   She and others at The Nation chose to publish the article, even though the letter by some members of the Nation staff, some of their contributing writers and even by some of those in the sources Lawrence based his article on opposed it.  Even The Nations own expert who they consulted to review technical issues in the article disagreed with the decision to publish the piece which fed right-wing smoke screens protecting the Trump campaign, regime and family members from consequences of their involvement with Putin's interference with the election.

This is a big, big deal and it exposes probably the oldest and most esteemed journals of the left in the United States to suspicions about the motive of its publisher, its editors and whoever else was involved in the decision to publish the piece.

Last Friday I raised the fact that all during this scandal of Putin crime family interference in our election that vanden Heuvel's husband, Stephen Cohen, in The Nation and elsewhere was, unexpectedly, pushing a line that was gratifying to both the Putin regime and the Trump campaign and, later, regime.   I got some pushback for what I said about that last week, though I didn't state what I suspected, that the Putin regime might have something on him or that he might have more of a relationship with them than he'd want known.  Frankly, that's no more of a wild speculation than what The Nation has published on this issue and it is well within the realm of rational suspicion.  Given the general tone of The Nation's coverage of the election, what should have been an unmixed message of opposition to the election of Donald Trump was aggressively critical of his one and only real opponent.

There is a lot more here and, frankly, in the election reporting of other venues of allegedly lefty media than has been honestly addressed.  There is a lot about the behavior of the left, especially in the past several election cycles that doesn't add up, at all.  But this past election, especially as it was obvious that it was a choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton has made me suspect that there is a lot that has not been made transparent or clear.  I think, given her behavior in this regard that Katrina vanden Heuvel should stop being the publisher of The Nation, I certainly will never trust it as long as she is running it.

Early in the controversy, in an article by Erik Wemple in the Washington Post he got this explanation from vanden Heuvel:

“I’ve seen the danger for progressives when Cold War comes,” 

The biggest danger for progressives in the Cold War were self-inflicted by supporting and defending and lying for Stalinists,  some of whom, especially those in the Communist Party, were in the pay of the Soviet regime.  Communism was never a real danger for the United States, there was never any chance that the American People would tolerate a communist government, especially one associated and subject to the foreign dominance of a Stalin or even his successors as the Cold War went on.  Given the fact that Stalin and the Soviet System ran an epically murderous regime which, through terror of all levels of intensity, though the total suppression of all rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and through the prevention of a real vote which would produce representative democracy, there was every reason for the American left to oppose it as there had been to oppose the Nazi regime and fascist regimes around the world.

Such high lefties as The Nation and other lefty media published and promoted were the danger to progressive politics in the United States, the greatest danger wasn't the jailing of the much lauded and celebrated assholes of the Hollywood 10 and others, it was the discrediting of the legitimate left who, unlike the Communists and communists and the ever splintering groups of infighting lefties, produced everything that constituted progress towards equalitarian democracy and equal justice.   Lyndon Johnson produced more of that than the entire population of writers for The Nation and the rosters of all of the impotent, futile, stupid leftist "parties" from their beginning.   That is the progressive legacy that has been endangered by lefty undermining of effective liberalism since the 1960s.  That is the legacy that, now, The Nation is damaging as its publisher gives that lame excuse for aiding and abetting American fascists.

Things are so bad now that even a red diaper baby like Katha Pollitt knows how bad it is.   Eric Wemple's piece quotes her dissent against the choices of vanden Heuvel et al.

The dissenters [among The Nation's writers] appealed for a change in position: “We believe The Nation occupies a unique position in the ecology of American journalism, and precisely because of this position, it’s all the more important that the magazine get on the right side of this story as it develops.” In late June, vanden Heuvel met with the letter’s signers; she notes that an editorial board meeting in March had already addressed disagreements on Russia coverage.

Katha Pollitt, a columnist who signed the letter, tells the Erik Wemple Blog that her worries about the issue go beyond alleged Russia collusion. “I just felt that for some reason, we are too heavily invested in the defense of Putin and all his works,” she said. And she can’t abide too much more applause for Nation content from certain quarters. “These are our friends now? The Washington Times, Breitbart, Seth Rich truthers and Donald Trump Jr.? Give me a break. It’s very upsetting to me. It’s embarrassing.”

"It's embarrassing" is a rather pathetic understatement of what it is, the kind of inner-circle concern of the scribbling, media class which risks little more than embarrassment and broken friendships, it's people with no money, with dark skin, with no power who are the ones this is a real danger to.  They'd love to merely have to worry about socially awkward consequences from this.

In so many ways this is a typical specimen that shows why the lefty magazines and the lefty elite have been so ineffective at producing the kind of change that was possible fifty years ago but which has died.

Maybe the best thing would be for The Nation to cease publication.  It and the similar lefty media sources, romanticizing the idiocy of the past, concerned mostly for its own, internal issues and welfare do more harm to real American liberalism than they've ever done it good.  If vanden Heuvel is still there by the end of fall, I don't know if I'll even bother looking at The Nation again.   I suspect it will take the fall of the Putin regime and someone doing a specific search of Putin era files to find out what's really behind this.

Update:  If you want to read how absurdly unhinged Stephen F. Cohen, vanden Heuvel's husband is, read this incredible interview with him at Slate Magazine.

If it's vanden Heuvel's money that's keeping The Nation afloat, maybe it should have gone into retirement before it discredited itself as it is now.  Mark my word, there is a lot more behind this than we're being told.   As someone who has been scathingly critical of the New York Times - having called it a Great Gray Whore - any scholar, such as the Ivy League emeritus Stephen F. Cohen who claims that the crap that comes out of the Putin controlled media is more credible than the NYT has burned the last shreds of their credibility.  And it's obvious that his line has become The Nation's line under the control of vanden Heuvel.