COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Remember when I suggested any time you read a book review, do a little research on the author?

Well, now it's more important than ever.

The Nation is now hailing the rebirth of the New York Review of Books as an openly political arm of small-'l' liberalism:

But the election of George W. Bush, combined with the furies of 9/11, jolted the editors. Since 2001, the Review's temperature has risen and its political outlook has sharpened. Old warhorses bolted from their armchairs. Prominent members of the Review "family"--a stable that includes veteran journalists (Thomas Powers, Frances FitzGerald, Ian Buruma), literary stars (Joan Didion, Norman Mailer) and academic heavyweights (Stanley Hoffmann, Ronald Dworkin, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.)--charged into battle not only against the White House but against the lethargic press corps and the "liberal hawk" intellectuals, some of whom are themselves prominent members of the Review's extended family.

Longtime editor Robert Silvers is not eager to discuss the Review, but he does allow, "The pieces we have published by such writers as Brian Urquhart, Thomas Powers, Mark Danner and Ronald Dworkin have been reactions to a genuine crisis concerning American destructiveness, American relations with its allies, American protections of its traditions of liberties." He worries that critical voices are being silenced: "The aura of patriotic defiance cultivated by the Administration, in a fearful atmosphere, had the effect of muffling dissent."

Wow...those dissenters must be awfully cowardly, to have been so easily muffled.

It's silly to Fisk the article. And the article is smart, perceptive, and too good to Fisk. The New York Review of Books is what it is.

But take a look at the political-intellectual landscape of publishing. The three high-status book review houses, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books, are all unabashedly liberal in their outlook. The New Yorker is less so, but certainly not in the same league.

Each of these publications has considerable penetration into media and academic circles--which as the article points out--leverages their influence out of all proportion to their circulation.

But despite the near monopoly of the left on the powerhouse review collection market, everytime I walk into a Borders or Barnes and Noble, and look at the bestseller list, I see Savage and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter and Bernard Goldberg running neck and neck for hot seller space with Michael Moore and Al Franken.

The publishing press has gotten radically out of kilter with the American public (although it's probably not so far out of kilter with academia.)

Is there an opening here? Will a heartland publisher be able to take up the reins and put together an intellectual, challenging book review publication for those shameless diehards who still take pride in this country?

Conservative book publishers are doing an end run around the Big Three, and marketing themselves directly to the reader. I can hardly click on a site anymore without closing a pop-up ad for the Conservative Book Club. And it's annoying.

But I'm sure it's effective, or they would have stopped by now.

There are really two separate politics book markets--each growing more separate and more strident. (I found a book the other day called the "I Hate George Bush Reader." What kind of pathetic way to go through life is that? To define yourself and your readership by who you hate? C'mon!)

What we don't have yet is any kind of honest book review system to provide independent quality control on the conservative side. Ronald Reagan could release the greatest political memoir since Grant tomorrow, but there's no way it would get a fair shake in the New York Times, and it would get trashed right along with the sloppy, clunky vendettas of Bernard Goldberg or the over-the-top nonsense of Michael Savage (while pathological morons like Michael Moore rake in the free publicity from an adoring left-presse.)

The talent is out there. The market is out there. Who's going to do it? Chicago Tribune? Dallas Morning News? Atlanta Journal Constitution? University of Southern California? Are you listening?

Is anybody out there?