The problem the Monthly‘s getting at is not confined to news stories with loaded lead-ins. (“Dogged by criticism of his role in the Lewinsky case, President Clinton today raised a man from the dead with the slightest touch of his hand.”) It’s just as common, and has an even longer history, in the portentous-sounding but […]
James Fallows
James Fallows, who began his career at the Washington Monthly, is the author of 12 books and writes the “Breaking the News” blog on Substack.
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The Difference One Man Can Make
A familiar literary conception holds that when an honest man challenges a dishonest system, it’s the man who gets destroyed. At one end of the literary scale, this is the message of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, in which the citizens of a resort town ostracize their local doctor rather than let him […]
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On Political Books
The literature of “neoconservatism,” which has built up in magazines like Commentary and The American Spectator over the last half-dozen years, deals at one level with public policy, but its emotional power springs from another source. Whether the stated object of discussion is racial quotas and ‘affirmative action,” nuclear versus solar power, or America’s response […]
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On Political Books
Those who know Joseph Califano’s life story but have not seen his book might have two reasons for wanting to read it: to see what he has to say about Jimmy Carter, the man who hired and then fired him as secretary of health, education, and welfare, and to find out what lessons this old […]
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“…And if this just another job, then by God, I’m a sorry suck-egg mule!”
In the stone buildings of Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, near the track on which the young Jim Thorpe set his records as a student at the Carlisle Indian School, officers on their way to the top attend the Army War College. The students wear civilian clothes to de-emphasize difference in rank and to foster an “academic” […]
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Sheepskins are for Sheep
A few months ago, I wrote an article for the Atlantic about the deficiencies of standardized aptitude tests such as the “College Boards.” I had been planning for some time to write a complementary article for this magazine about the importance of assessing actual competence rather than aptitude, when one of the letters the Atlantic […]
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The President and the Press
Midway through the summer, as news of President Carter’s cabinet changes was shaking up the town, I talked with a reporter who once covered the Carter White House. “The problem with these people,” he told me, “is that they don’t know any history. Don’t they remember who the last president was who fired his whole […]
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Who’s a Snob and Who’s Not
A few weeks ago, while leafing through the latest Esquire, I came across the sad tale of the demise of Studio 54. “All the poor slobs that couldn’t get into New York’s hot disco are soon going to be let in,” the table of contents revealed. “And whom will they find inside? Themselves.” This seemed […]
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The Seductions of Washington Society
“Too many have had to suffer at the hands of a political and economic elite who have shaped decisions and never had to account for mistakes nor to suffer from injustice. When unemployment prevails, they never stand in line looking for a job. When deprivation results from a confused welfare system, they never do without […]
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Murder by the Book
The breast-beating season has begun again among our friends in the press, this time about the CIA. In February [MORE] sponsored an editors’ symposium about blowing the cover on an overseas operative. Question: You learn that an American businessman in Italy has been performing part-time labors for the CIA. He thinks he’ll be killed if […]
