Hacks Americana
Our friends at the Claremont Institute and the Claremont Review of Books have once again afforded us the privilege of rolling out a few pieces from the new (Winter) issue, which has just been mailed out to subscribers. Everything I think I know about American politics I've learned from the folks affiliated with the Institute and the CRB. The magazine also has friends in high places; copies of each new issue are shipped to the White House by overnight mail upon publication. Subscriptions to the CRB are only $14.95 a year; subscribe here.
Journalism in the founding era was rough stuff that crackled with vicious gossip and untruth. Yet it also displayed an eloquence and purpose that would be rare in any age; consider the seriousness of John Dickinson’s "Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer," the rousing pamphlets of Thomas Paine such as "Common Sense," or the utterly brilliant essays that originally appeared in three New York newspapers and became the Federalist Papers. Richard Brookhiser considers how we stack up against our forebears in his review of Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Fox News host Eric Burns. Brookhiser's review is "Hacks Americana."
Brookhiser is himself a National Review senior editor, a journalist, a historian and author, most recently, of the well-received What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers. In an interview he gave in connection with that book, Brookhiser observed that the "founders wrote constantly for the high-tech popular media of their day -- newspapers. Today they would wear their eyes and fingers out blogging." To illustrate the point he set up Founders Blogs featuring John Adams, Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton et al.
