Sources
I consider The New Yorker to be one of my primary sources of hard information about politics and culture. The information to be obtained from that periodical has a clear liberal bias, but it can’t be said that they shy away from the hard questions, or at least not entirely. The criticism can be harsh, often snide, for that matter, but I’ve always trusted the journalistic integrity. When Art Spiegleman resigns and complains of a sell-out, my first inclination is to question my assumptions, but then I remember: Spiegleman is a cartoonist, and while he’s entitled to his opinions, I don’t have much evidence that he’s also a philosophical genius or in any way any better informed than the individuals and collective he’s condemning, any more than I do any of those other cartoonists touted as cultural critics of high significance. In fact, it strikes me that his problem with The New Yorker isn’t that they’re kowtowing to Bush (because they don’t, so he can’t), but that in the face of the Bush policy toward Iraq, they haven’t changed the magazine’s tone or content any more than to editorialize a bit more than they might have in “The Talk of the Town” when the President makes yet another ethically-challenged, blood-thirsty statement, as he did in the last State of the Union, regarding the assassinations that have apparently taken place recently of Al-Qaeda members. The articles otherwise continue to present as much of all sides of each issue under discussion as they can, allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind, albeit with a liberal audience fully intended. So I continue to read The New Yorker, and I continue to allow it to shape my opinions, on this matter as on others (although I may still watch movies they’ve savaged).