JONATHAN COHN SEPTEMBER 9, 2011
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For an editor, the night before a magazine goes to press involves periods of manic activity interspersed with long lulls of waiting for stuff to happen. When I first came to TNR, I used to spend the downtime reading through the magazine’s archives. There are all kinds of treasures to be found in there, but invariably the articles that caused me to emit peals of indecorous laughter while alone at my desk (possibly prompting my new coworkers to wonder whether I was mentally sound), were written by Jonathan Chait. Today, he's leaving TNR to take a job at New York magazine (he will be replaced by the excellent Timothy Noah). As longtime readers know, Chait's oeuvre combines an intellect as sharp as a diamond drill with one of the best senses of humor in the business. Below, Jonathan Cohn has the last word on Chait's qualities as a friend and colleague, but I wanted to share links to a few of my favorite pieces that he has written during his years at the magazine. We wish him all the best.
Cloaks and Daggers: What I Saw At the Coat Revolution
Still His Party: Why the GOP Can't Get Over Reagan
Not Boston Diarist: Why I Won't Be Going to the Convention
Feast of the Wingnuts: How Economic Crackpots Devoured American Politics
1 comments
I think my favorite Chait piece remains this one: http://www.tnr.com/article/mad-about-you Magazine articles are by their nature a bit ephemeral (if not disposable), but Chait's thorough, incisive analysis of all the disparate threads of his distaste for our former president so perfectly summarized my own feelings that I've referred back to this article again and again, especially the line: "Liberals hate Bush not because he has succeeded but because his success is deeply unfair and could even be described as cheating."
- austinexpat
September 10, 2011 at 10:55am