SO-CALLED LIBERAL BOOK REVIEWS

...peculiar...

...The mostly first-person questions and the footnoted answers have a note of parody, forcing the terms of consumerism to witness the materials of Goya....

The method of his book, its form..., is too eccentric, too self-parodic, to be fully adequate to its purpose. The summary morsels of fact, the sometimes falsely naive questions, vaguely despise themselves....

OK, I'm quoted just some of the negative passages in Robert Pinsky's review of What Every Person Should Know About War by Chris Hedges, which appeared in today's New York Times Book Review. The review was mixed (Pinsky, in fact, called it "arresting, peculiar, significant"). But notice that it's not a rave.

I'm telling you this to make a point about "our" media and "their" media. When you remind conservatives of the overwhelmingly right-wing bias of talk radio, or cable-news commentary, or the entire broadcast schedule of Fox News, they invariably say, "Yes we have those things, but you have ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times."

But think of Chris Hedges's career, as a reporter, author of an acclaimed book on war, and, most recently, the subject of controversy because of an anti-war commencement speech he delivered.

Now, imagine that a respected right-wing journalist and author had recently upset a commencement audience with a speech in which he lashed out at the anti-war movement. And imagine if he published a book right after doing so (and, perhaps, incurring the wrath of progressives from coast to coast). Is it conceivable that the book would get a mixed review in the New York Post or The Washington Times? Is it conceivable that Fox News would be lukewarm toward a writer who had lashed out against the anti-war movement?

But that's just how "our" side works, virtually all the time. And it's good, really -- except for the fact that the right is at war with us, and extends that war to the Times and other institutions it considers ideological, and many of those institutions do nothing in response. I'm not arguing for biased, ideological book reviews. What I would like is for someone on the right to have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that the Times doesn't use its book reviews to fight a culture war, much as Ann Coulter might like her readers to believe it does.