Michelle Cottle writes about the Redemption of Barney Frank. Now, what would one expect to find needs redeeming?
Could it be, er, his long relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Maybe with some explanation as to how he has learned from his errors, what he did wasn't so bad, he is working to fix things, etc???
Bzzt. No. Cottle claims that his error was his affair with a male prostitute. Cottle wont even mention his affair with a page and with an executive in Fannie Mae. Let alone Frank possibly helping contribute towards the current financial meltdown.
Whether or not you think Frank had much responsibility for the Fannie / Freddie mess, it should be addressed in an article about Barney Frank! It would be a perfect place for the leftist New Republic to address the charges against Frank, and present their case that he had little or no culpability. Sadly, New Republic is intellectualy incapable of even mentioning the history, let alone making a case for Frank's innocence.
As you can see from the comments on the New Republic site, I'm far from the first to notice this asinine article. I'm trying to understand (and balance my center-right tendencies) with leftish thinking, and thought that New Republic was one of their more capable outlets. But this is just stupid. Why should I believe any future article by them?
2 comments:
Sorry, the New Republic is not a lefty magazine. It stopped being a lefty magazine in response to the rise of the "New Left" in the 1960's. Their positions now are a weird mix of old style liberal ideas in domestic policy with neocon aggressiveness and a strong pro-Israel slant. Politically, they are pro-Hillary Democrats, who strongly favored the Iraq war in 2003-2005.
The Nation is the most liberal mainstream magazine, and the Huffington Post website is probably the most widely known liberal news site.
As for Barney Frank, he is the chairman of the Banking Committee I think, and is in many ways the representative from Wall street. Don't expect an establishment liberal site to be really critical of the New York financial world. One of the problems of the US is that it does not have an anti-finance capital opposition significant enough to keep the financial types honest.
Thanks for the "inside view" Ray. I'll try The Nation. I'm finding that Harpers tends to have intelligent articles too. The recent article on why and how to prosecute Bushies for various crimes is, for the most part, intelligent and even metions possible complicity by Democrats in oversight committees. Almost convinced me that it is the right thing to do.
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