Partial Readings: The Kremlin’s New Henchmen

The Kremlin’s New Henchmen
Evgeny Morozov on Russia’s latest contribution to a free press: “The official objective of liberty.ru — as articulated by Pavlovsky — has been to tap into the immense creativity of the Russian internet users and involve them in producing ideas that could make Kremlin’s increasingly unappealing ideological package relevant to the younger generations. Liberty.ru was meant to become something like Russia’s DailyKos or Talking Points Memo.”

The Admirable (Read: Stubborn) Right
Damon Linker on conservatism after Bush: “Whereas National Review promotes Reagan worship, the Weekly Standard and Commentary have chosen to rally around Dick Cheney, proud champion of “enhanced interrogation” and thoroughly unrepentant advocate of the invasion of Iraq. There’s something admirable in this position, I suppose, since it can’t possibly flow from a belief that an embrace of the wildly unpopular and increasingly grouchy Cheney will improve the political fortunes of the Republican Party.”

The Levant’s Camus
Bernard Avishai on the late journalist Amos Elon: “The fact is, Amos had never left “Europe,” any more than Dr. Kohn or, say, Abba Eban did—had never seen Israel from within the closed theories of Labor Zionist theory, or the closed precincts of any Zionist parties. He knew the open society and its enemies, and was sickened by the thought that Israel would fill up with the latter. He was something like our Camus: always an outsider the way a healthy citizen must be.”

The Gargantuan “Little Magazine”?
David Carr on Newsweek’s redesign: “The new Newsweek will no longer attempt to re-report and annotate the week’s events….The magazine will not scramble the jets and deploy huge resources to cover a breaking story…Instead, the reimagined magazine will include reported narratives that rely on intellectual scoops rather than informational ones and pair them with essayistic argument.”