The New Republic

But “the liberal” TNR’s animating principle is provoking “The Left.” They cannot get through a hack list without engaging in hippie-punching. So Drew Westen and Frank Rich get nods. I think Frank Rich is brilliant at what he does, and what he does is write specifically for people who don’t obsessively monitor the liberal blogosphere daily. This is why he is a successful weekly columnist and not a blogger. But TNR’s criticisms are fair, or at least based on things Frank Rich has actually written.

Then we get to the entry on Stephen Walt, who is, as always at TNR, tacitly accused of antisemitism for opposing the professional Israel lobby. His book, we’re told, “relies on tropes with a decidedly dark and conspiratorial provenance.” I know what tropes they mean! Nazi tropes!

And: “The controversy about Walt’s views appears to have embittered him even more, and the virulence with which he now writes as a pundit is extraordinary even in these virulent times.” Maybe if you were constantly and loudly accused of antisemitism for pointing out the power and influence of a powerful and influential lobby, you’d get a bit virulent too. (Marty Peretz’s New Republic tsk-tsking at “virulence” is more than bit rich.)

But the “over-rated thinker” most transparently included solely to bait liberals, the entrant who clearly made the cut just because imagining some sputtering Kossack made “The Editors” smirk to themselves, is Rachel Maddow.

Someone could write a defensible, reality-based Maddow take-down. Her show and persona can be too cutesy by half, and fighting the fiery rage of the right-wing with wry rationalism can seem ineffectual. This ain’t that criticism:

But Maddow is a textbook example of the intellectual limitations of a perfectly settled perspective. She knows the answers even before she has the questions. The truth about everything is completely obvious to her. She seems utterly incapable of doubt or complication. Her show is a great tribute to Fox, because it copies the Fox style exactly.

I think “doubt and complication” are sort of what modern American liberals excel at, to a fault, but it’s not at all enlightening to hear that someone is too sure of herself if I don’t also learn whether or not she’s right. The majority of our most celebrated political thinkers tend to operate from a position of moral certitude — without that advocacy journalism and punditry scarcely exist. Maddow is making an unapologetic argument for robust liberalism, which is also coincidentally the mission statement of this one political magazine that I sometimes make fun of. Being confident in her answers is sort of the point.

Most egregiously, anyone who thinks Rachel Maddow’s show “copies the Fox style exactly” has clearly not spent very much time watching Maddow or Fox. It’s just very lazy false equivalence. But congrats, TNR — you successfully trolled me.

Meanwhile, two of the three stories TNR is highlighting on the front page right now: Leon Wieseltier on “The New Heartlessness Toward Israel” and Marty Peretz on Gilad Shalit. Speaking of overrated thinkers…