Issue #274
There are no more honest conservatives, so stop looking for one
Last November I received a friendly request from an editor at a political publication. A liberal himself, surrounded by liberal colleagues, he wanted to make sure that the journalists he was hiring were not drawn exclusively from the left. He wondered if I might help him out with a list of “conservative reporters, writers and commentators” whom I admired most. “Who on the right does the best job of covering politics or the economy or anything else, for that matter, in a thoughtful, fair and accurate way?” Maybe if I had a time machine and could travel back to the 1970s or 1980s, I could name names. Now, though, I can’t think of a single one. Sure, the right in previous decades was jam-packed with the same sorts of haters, hustlers, hacks, and conspiratorial lunatics that are familiar to us now. But there were lively exceptions. Now? Few if any. Rick Perlstein, The Nation, 5-29-14.