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Mark Krikorian Shows Why Conservatives Need a New Act

By Jesse Singal - Sep 26th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Via Glenn Greenwald, Mark Krikorian has a sneering post on The Corner entitled “Cause and Effect?” in which he points out that the final press release of Washington Mutual, which just went under, highlighted the company’s diversity. As Greenwald puts it, Krikorian “apparently believes that the reason Washington Mutual failed may be because it employed and was too accommodating to large numbers of Hispanics, African-Americans and gays.”

It’s worth keeping in mind that this isn’t a fringe website. The Corner is the blog of The National Review, which is regarded as one of the most important magazines of conservative thought. And this is the level at which the magazine is operating: suggesting that a company’s diversity led directly to its downfall. It’s shameful, pathetic, thoroughly unintellectual stuff. Krikorian doesn’t even make an argument; he just slaps on a snarky headline and quotes the press release.

There’s nothing surprising here. This is the same publication that employs Jonah Goldberg, who wrote one of the most transparently ridiculous political books of this generation. And which regularly features the work of Dinesh D’Souza, who wrote a disturbing screed of his own which suggested that liberals are responsible for 9/11 because the left “has fostered a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies,” and which “endorses much of the jihadist critique of American society and gives at least a partial moral pass to al-Qaeda and the perpetrators of 9/11.” The National Review even more frequently publishes the work of Mark Steyn, who went on TV to describe Michelle Obama as “Kim Jong-Il dressed up with a bit of Oprah Winfrey dressing.”

These are not intelligent, serious thinkers. The reason young people in America are turning leftward isn’t just that progressive views on things like gay marriage, climate change, and sex ed are demonstrably saner; it’s also that the right’s popular intellectual edifice is crumbling, its barracks stocked with morons.

Note that I’m not even criticizing conservatism qua conservatism: there are plenty of conservative views that have at least some merit and are worth debating. But debate isn’t what rags like The National Review do. Instead, they’re the equivalent of porn: they are there to titillate and agitate, to stimulate the most ancient parts of readers’ brains. The problem is that The National Review, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh are all feverishly titillating and agitating the same shrinking group of middle-aged and older white men. They desperately need a new act.

When you look at the country’s shifting demographics and the views held by the, say, under-30 set, describing liberals as terrorists and blaming complicated financial problems on diversity are not going to cut it anymore, even among conservatives.

Tags: conservatism, Mark Krikorian, right-wing punditry, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, The National Review