Judging Posner

Slate’s Jack Shafer has the takedown I wanted to write about Richard Posner, whose nearly 5,000-word typing exercise on the state of the media appears in the current New York Times Book Review.

Since Shafer beat me to it, let me instead whine a bit about the Sam Tanenhaus-edited NYTBR. I had thought it was settling down into something resembling its old self – that is, the slightly boring but indispensable guide to Books I’ll Never Read That I Need to Know Something About. I mean, according to this, there have only been three Christopher Hitchens bylines in the Review all year. That’s something to be grateful for, and it’s more than can be said of, um, Slate.

Posner’s poorly researched, clumsily written opus suggests that Tanenhaus still hasn’t quite figured out that his job is to provide a service, not to create a sensation – let alone an embarrassing one like this.