printI never tire of commending—and recommending—the generally apolitical Times Literary Supplement for its intellectual rigor. I’m equally energetic when it comes to berating that bit of dreck, the New York Review of Books, for its pamphleteering. The latter’s obtuse art and book critiques, interspersed as they are with lengthy political essays on the undisputed purity of Hamas or Cuban-styled healthcare, fall into the category of agitprop.
In a preface to his review of two books dealing broadly with the fraught topic of racial—or what I term rational—profiling, the TLS’s James Bowman doesn’t disappoint. He quotes the former Education Secretary, William Bennett, who created an uproar by saying that,—If you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose—you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.'”
“The remark,” observes Bowman matter-of-fact, “was widely characterized as ‘racist’ and President Bush was called upon to disavow the views of his fellow Republican—and he obliged with that new favorite substitute for moral judgement, the word ‘inappropriate.’ Yet while doubtless tactless—the sort of deliberate provocative comment that delights the philosophy professor, which is what Bennett used to be—his words had been in substance nothing more that a statement of the undisputed fact that in America black people proportionately commit more crimes than whites.” (My emphasis; Bowman’s words)
To underscore my original point, the TLS is generally liberal (although more classically so) but is committed to a heuristic pursuit of truth and excellence. The NYRB is left-liberal and dedicated to the crass promotion of specific political perspectives. If it reluctantly succumbs and discusses “the color of crime,” the “debate” is carefully in root-causes circumlocution and strictly confined to the Three P’s—the pale patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness. No wonder the TLS is sophisticated and fascinating and the NYRB as pedestrian and dull as any good Bolshevik bulletin.