Two Liberals Sitting Around Talking

I got to interview Hendrik Hertzberg a few months ago for Publishers Weekly; I'd link to it if it was available online, because it was an awfully fun conversation, but I can't. And I'd link to the review of Politics, which is available on Amazon, but it was "balanced" somewhere in the editing chain and no longer quite reflects my sentiments. Specifically, the articles do not "feel distant given the pace of current events;" Hertzberg's a dynamic enough writer (and, perhaps more importantly, reporter) that his work carries a sense of immediacy even when he's describing a political reality a few iterations removed from the contemporary scene.

Anyway, now Robert Birnbaum has got to chatting with Hertzberg. He gets to tell the story of the book's genesis that got cut from my draft due to space considerations, but mostly there's a lot of analysis of the current political climate:

Maybe it’s a failure of imagination but I don’t fully understand why people are attracted to hard-right conservatism. If they are so far off into fantasyland that they believe in a God that interferes in history at every moment and that that God is a right winger who is active in the pro-life movement and in the anti-tax movement, then I can kind of understand that. Then you are thinking, “There is a big authority figure out there who’s got a list of dos and don’ts and I have to obey them.” But for the neo-cons and for other kinds of conservatives I just don’t really get it. I don’t understand why they want to take from the poor and give to the rich. It’s just so unattractive.

Except that things really get interesting once Hertzberg starts weighing in on what's been happening to NYTBR and that punk Stanley Crouch.