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Go Home Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself

TIMOTHY NOAH SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

Having already received three very generous public introductions (from TNR’s Richard Just, Jonathan Cohn, and my predecessor, Jonathan Chait), I’ll try to keep this brief. My name is Timothy Noah. Until recently I was a senior writer at Slate magazine, a position I held for about a dozen years. At Slate I wrote something called Chatterbox that pretended to be a gossip column but was actually a column mostly about domestic politics and policy. I also covered health care reform and consumer regulation and wrote a ten-part series about income inequality that I’m expanding into a book to be published by Bloomsbury this spring.

Before Slate I was an assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report; a reporter in the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal (during its pre-Murdoch, tombstone-layout era); a reporter in the Washington bureau of Newsweek; a writer-editor at the Washington Monthly; and an editor on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Before all that I was, for about two years after I graduated from college in 1980, an intern and then a staff writer at The New Republic. You might say I took a 29-year leave of absence. The best-remembered piece from my earlier TNR tour was a June 1982 cover story titled “It’s You Or Fido: The Case For Vivisection,” illustrated with a drawing of a droopy-eyed beagle puppy waiting to be gassed. The article made one animal rights group so angry that it took out a paid ad in the magazine to denounce me. In these troubled times for print journalism, this economic model might be worth a second look.

I’ll blog in this space and write the New Republic’s TRB column. I actually had a very slight acquaintance with Richard L. Strout, who wrote the column from 1942 to 1982, much longer than anyone else. He was 82 when I first laid eyes on him. Strout would march into TNR’s old offices on 19th Street, boom his greetings to any and all, drop off his typed column, then march out. I wish I could say that Strout sat down to regale me with stories about Harold Laski and Calvin Coolidge and E.B. White. But his actual impact on my life (apart from my noticing how graceful political writing could be; even after Strout’s columns lost their logical coherence they maintained their exquisite beauty) was to persuade me not to use the briefcase my parents bought me after I turned 22. I carried my stuff in a backpack, and so, I noticed, did Strout. If an octagenarian journalism legend was too free-spirited (not to say practical) to carry a briefcase, then I was damned if I would, either. I carry a backpack to this day.

You’ll find my politics not all that different from those of Jon Chait, a writer I have admired for many years. Twenty or thirty years ago I stood a bit to Chait’s right, but since then I’ve become somewhat disenchanted with “third way” liberalism. You choose a third way to accommodate the right and next thing you know they’re hollering that your third-way compromise defines the extreme left wing and all you’ve really done is help the bastards nudge the political spectrum a little further to the right. How about them accommodating us for a change? President Obama, I think, is beginning to grasp this reality, though it’s not yet clear what he’ll do about it. Let’s find that out, dear reader, together.

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23 comments

Nice to see Timothy Noah's writing has found a home as Slate degenerates into further self-parody becoming essentially an online outlet for exhausted mothers in their late 30s and 40s living in Park Slope, Brooklyn and the more affluent Maryland suburbs to chat with each other in lieu of actually performing journalism. Noah was the writer behind Slate's best piece of the last few years. http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026 He, of course, was fired while the authors of the following inadvertent comic masterpieces of yuppie laziness continue to prosper at Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2285147/ http://www.slate.com/blogs/procrastinatebetter/2010/07/27/candid_queue_david_plotz_and_hanna_rosin.html It may only be a matter of time before the fine Dahlia Lithwick and David Weigel leave Slate to make way for yet further expansion of its beyond parody XX section ("Great point, Amanda", "I totally agree, Emily", ) and Slate can fulfill its destiny and become essentially a place for Jessica Grosse and a cadre of other harried yuppie women with small children to discuss the possible feminist implications of the latest celebrity gossip and their favorite TV shows. It's good to see a real journalist and significant political thinker find a new outlet for his work. Chait will be greatly missed, but TNR was wise to pick up Noah.

- mtinora@me.com

September 12, 2011 at 8:52pm

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Welcome Tim! I've admired your work for years and know you'll fit right in around here. I was thrilled when your name surfaced. I went through a similiar ideological arc (except in FP - as proud Obama/Scrowcroft groupie I'm in centrist around these parts, it gets pretty right wingy around here in that realm). I remember in 1991 trying and failing to write a masters thesis on privitizing social security. I thought, like so many wide-eyed third-wayers back then, that the far right would like me if I did that - this was right before Clinton/Monica - why did we need to think that Tim? After a fruitless year of research, I finally realized that the whole idea had a long way to go before it even made it to a load of crap and gave up on licking right wing boots. They only hate you more for it and they've only gotten more vicious and stupid (nice debate last night, ya bunch of sociopaths). Anyway - welcome!!

- WandreyCer

September 13, 2011 at 10:25am

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Very much looking forward to reading from Tim Noah. High hopes!

- SEBASTIANSALING@HOTMAIL.COM

September 13, 2011 at 10:26am

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Tim Noah -- a man of wealth and taste. Welcome to TNR and TRB -- looking forward to your work. If I have one request as a former Michigander, please solicit Jonathan Chait for the occasional guest posting on "Life in Ohio". It so soothes the soul.

- wildboy

September 13, 2011 at 10:47am

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As an OLD liberal in both senses of the word (e.g. I worked for Humphrey against JFK in 1960 and stayed "clean for Gene" in 1968), I welcome you warmly to TNR and look forward to getting your slant on our more than slightly perverse political life.

- JackR

September 13, 2011 at 10:47am

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Welcome, Tim. Big shoes to fill, buddy. Good luck. :)

- Tristan

September 13, 2011 at 10:51am

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This is TNR, I doubt you really needed an introduction since TNR has been touting your exceptionally well written work for years. I was also a huge fan of the incomparable Marjorie Williams and as I never had a forum to publicly express my regrets at your (and the world's) loss I wish to express my condolences to you now. It is easy for us readers, because of the wonders of the tubes I still get to read Chait at his new home and Tim Noah here at TNR, best of both worlds.

- blackton

September 13, 2011 at 11:01am

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I nice nod to Strout. I often refer to him in my comments because his criticism of our presidential system of governance (i.e., divided government) was, as we now know too well, so darn accurate. The others (besides Strout, Chait, and Noah) who have penned the TRB column include the great Michael Kinsley, Andrew Sullivan, and Peter Beinart. Very large shoes, indeed.

- rayward

September 13, 2011 at 11:24am

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Jeez, the whole second half of my comment seems to have been banished to some hellish netherworld beyond reach or click! In any case - ahem - this is the sort of journalism Slate decided to go with rather than keep Timothy Noah on staff: http://www.slate.com/id/2285147/ Once again. This is Noah: http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026 These are the cloying folks running Slate: http://www.slate.com/blogs/procrastinatebetter/2010/07/27/candid_queue_david_plotz_and_hanna_rosin.html Why do real reporting on economics and societal change when you can have rushed articles by harried yuppie parents discussing their video rentals or possible feminist implications of celebrity scandals? (If real reporting must be done - oh, save that for 'The Atlantic'. And then make it super gimmicky.) Well, it's good to see Timothy Noah land on his feet.

- mtinora@me.com

September 13, 2011 at 11:33am

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Welcome aboard, Timothy. As a reader of The New Republic for a third of a century, I vividly remember your tour here. Then, as now, I live in Seattle, and I recall some thirty years ago when you wrote in TNR that there was a children's performer in my city with your name, whose name I would see bandied about fairly often. All the best and I look forward to reading you at TNR once again.

- liberalref

September 13, 2011 at 11:41am

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Welcome, Timothy.

- STTaylor

September 13, 2011 at 12:32pm

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Welcome aboard, Tim! I, too, enjoyed your work on Slate and feel confident it will port well over here. You'll find a similar audience here at TNR, with the exception of the MALF Club (that's Marty's Angry Little Fan Club). I won't worry too much about them :) Best of luck to you, sir!

- RJSampson1

September 13, 2011 at 12:32pm

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No joke: After his Westen rebuttal, I decided to subscribe to TNR just to tell Chait how much I love him. But as an exhausted mother in my late 30s and 40s, I didn't get to that particular to-do item until everything went blooey at TNR & Slate. You can see that I proceeded with my subscription as soon as I could when I heard you would take his place. I've been reading Slate a long time, and I agree with Grimes on one thing: Unfortunately that publication seems to have taken a wrong turn of late. I am less familiar with TNR, but Mr. Noah, this fan wishes you the best of luck in your new home.

- Wonderland

September 13, 2011 at 12:39pm

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Hi Tim, your offhand slam of Strout's later work was graceless - especially after the "generous" introductions you yourself received. Not a great start to your relationship with readers here. Hoping for better going forward.

- floydsm8

September 13, 2011 at 1:26pm

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Welcome to TNR, Wonderland. I think you will like it here. The political reporting is generally very good and TNR publishes many fine essays, ranging from politics to art to literature to philosophy. Ruth Franklin and Jed Perl are just two of the many excellent writers that TNR carries. I recall when Michael Kinsley left the East Coast to come out here to Seattle in the mid-1990s to become the first editor of Slate, which was a Microsoft project. Slate was sold to the WaPo in I believe 2004. It sure has gone downhill lately.

- liberalref

September 13, 2011 at 1:32pm

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Au contraire, Boy. Richard Strout was not a good read at the end. Michael Kinsley was a welcome replacement. TN 1, B. 0.

- liberalref

September 13, 2011 at 1:35pm

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Welcome to the party. Let's hope 2012 isn't the year of the damned.

- andyman345

September 13, 2011 at 3:41pm

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Nice intro, Timothy. Welcome! Looking forward to reading your stuff.

- Thunderroad

September 13, 2011 at 3:50pm

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What's puzzling me iis the nature of this guy's game. I certainly enjoy his intorduction here. But there are a couple of inconsistencies here that make me go hmmm... From an NYT Editorial Page writer to a Reporter and WSJ? The ideological acrobatics need some explanation. Managing Editor at US News & World Report is pretty impressive, and that was a great publication, may still be but I don't read it much any more. But following that up with a Blog at Slate???? I hope for the best. Mr. Noah remembers the old fashioned weekly delivery, crisp writing and editorial knock-downs of the 1980's TNR when I started reading and fell in love with this magazine. But it's a different world now and Mr. Noah seems a little more interested in gossip and horse races than Fluoridation or Albert Shanker. Don't let the Blog take you away from the long form pieces and quality writing just to comment on the Talking Point of the day. Ignore the emails and press releases. Focus on the qualotiy and let us know what we don't know.

- CRS9TNR

September 13, 2011 at 7:17pm

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Wonderland, Welcome on board. And for the record, jeez, I'm not anti-exhuasted mothers. (For all, I know some of the journalists I most respect may be, you know, E.M.s!) I'm just anti-the-current Slate, which seems to consist way too much of chatty back and forth posts beginning "Great point, Emily" or "I agree, Amanda" (the beyond parody XX section), lengthy discussions about what the writers saw on TV last night, harried articles on the possible feminist implications of the latest celeb scandals, etc. Slate has become awful: lazy, self-indulgent and, well, bizarrely chatty. A support group for upper-middle-class journalists who had kids late in life and now are trying to pass off articles about what Cameron Diaz movies they like to watch on TV or hope to see via Netflix as journalism! It's like being trapped at a kids' soccer practice in Bethesda Maryland with the Rosin-Plotz family! At one point Hanna wanders off to take a cellphone call from dim witted Jessica Grosse in Park Slope who wants to tell her about the latest celeb she's met! When someone like ex-editor Jacob Weisberg tries to actually do some journalism - like, oh, look at the Paul Ryan budget plan - he does a hasty incompetent job, gets everything wrong and disgraces both himself and the magazine! They then go and fire Timothy Noah who wrote the most memorable piece that's appeared in Slate in years. It's a disgrace and I'm happy to see Noah at TNR. Though, yeah, Chait will be sorely missed.

- mtinora@me.com

September 13, 2011 at 8:17pm

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I remember reading a very good piece of Mr. Noah's at Slate that touched on the excise tax for "cadillac" insurance plans and why it wasn't as powerful a tool as many health economists had deemed it to be. It was a thought-provoking piece that made me reconsider my prior stance. I am happy to see TN at TNR.

- Jonas

September 13, 2011 at 10:26pm

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Welcome.

- skahn

September 13, 2011 at 10:48pm

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"You choose a third way to accommodate the right and next thing you know they’re hollering that your third-way compromise defines the extreme left wing and all you’ve really done is help the bastards nudge the political spectrum a little further to the right. How about them accommodating us for a change?" - I love it! Keep carrying on like that and throw in an occasional Big Lebowski post and you'll have me as a loyal reader!

- zkraut

September 14, 2011 at 2:24am

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