Remember the recent Manzi Soap Bar Beating, in which National Review's writers and editors refused to admit the obvious fact that popular right-wing radio talk show host Mark Levin is a hack propagandist? The Frum Forum's Noah Kristula-Green digs into the obvious follow-up:
Do liberal intellectual magazines ever call out liberal entertainers for extremism? A good question. So we looked that up too, and the answer this time is “yes.”
Both The New Republic and the even more liberal American Prospect were willing in their time to uphold intellectual standards against Michael Moore at the peak of his celebrity.
He provides examples, though he leaves out the biggest: Jason Zengerle's take-down of Moore from July 2004, the absolute peak of Moore's celebrity and influence. Kristula-Green concludes, "What does it say that almost all conservative intellectuals pay obeisance to our clowns, while many liberal intellectuals are willing to challenge theirs?"