Words have consequences; doubly so when it’s The New Yorker, the high-minded literary magazine that since 1925 prided itself in the Mot Juste – the perfect word or phrase. That’s how it was when Harold Ross founded the publication and continued likewise under William Shawn, somewhat less under Tina Brown – and David Remnick?
Remnick, who took over in 1998, has gone political, which is a shame. This was never why we read The New Yorker.
The worst of it is that ever since Donald Trump began running for office, Remnick and his writers have gone loco.
That may not measure up to a Mot Juste, but it does illustrate The New Yorkers’ turn to the radical left and to its ever-increasing hysteria against our President-elect. It is getting scary, what they are saying and what they are asking. The typical reader of that publication used to be, and maybe still is, the man and woman at ease on the Upper East or West Side.
A glass of wine, Brahms somewhere in the background, and then to the finest writing American literature can offer page after page.
The New Yorker was where Americans found F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, S.J. Perelman and first read James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”
There too we read J.D. Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” and Lillian Ross’ profile of Hemingway, and Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem.”
That was literature for the literati and journalism for the clear-headed.
But today, with the Internet, even crackpots can read, and who knows what they are reading, or what they are reading from the messages The New Yorker keeps ceaselessly delivering. What does it mean when The New Yorker proposes “direct action” as in this piece that offers “Nine Ways to Oppose President Trump?”
It was the Democrats who, it has been proven, disrupted Trump’s rallies through bullying bordering on violence.
Is that journalism, or is it a call to arms? Those “nine ways” are written in slippery prose. In the wrong hands, who knows?
Some may take it as a wink of permission, particularly from point number nine of the article where the writer tells his readers not to turn to violence.
That sounds awfully sly since it was the Democrats who, it has been proven, disrupted Trump’s rallies through bullying bordering on violence.
Is that code?
What does it mean when Remnick and his writers keep talking about means to disrupt Trump, harass Trump, deny Trump, stop Trump?
At this rate – and it’s been coming for nearly a year – some nut is bound to read nothing but the nuance, and someone is bound to get hurt.
Fact-checking aside, someone in the building may want to look into inflammatory-checking – checking against words that may be used as weapons.
Remnick, in his fanaticism against Trump, and as one of the leading spokesman of the American Left, has been careless to the point of being dangerous.
Remnick needs to relax and call off the dogs before something happens. Trump’s safety is at risk from so much hyper-vindictiveness.
The day after Trump won the nomination, Remnick called it “An American Tragedy.”
Remnick is flirting with usage that can only be interpreted for what it is, rabble-rousing.
That may not be a Mot Juste, but David Remnick needs to look in the mirror before calling Trump a demagogue.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist: “News Anchor Sweetheart,” a novelist’s version of Fox News and Megyn Kelly. Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com