By Edward Herman
The liberalism of the Philadelphia Inquirer has long been something of a laugh, as its leaders and editors have persistently strained their backs bending rearward to supply right-wing commentators and prove their own non-liberal credentials. They were always harsh on Clinton, calling for his resignation for his unsaintly behavior, but never calling for the resignation or impeachment of the rather more serious law violator George W. Bush. They gave their editorial approval to Supreme Court seats for John Roberts and Samuel Alito, while claiming an interest in court “balance.” Their most regular columnist over the past 20 years has been the “enlightening” Charles Krauthammer. All in all their commentaries have been a combination of trivia and obfuscation.
The Inquirer was acquired from the McClatchy Company in 2006 by a local syndicate led by ad executive and Bush activist Brian Tierney. This was not a wise financial investment as, despite valiant and sometimes compromising ad campaigns, the newspaper’s decline put the paper into bankruptcy proceedings. But Tierney, so far, maintains control. His main imprint, apart from ad intensity and lightening the paper’s content, has been a strong push to the right on the editorial page with the addition of former Senator Rick Santorum as a columnist, along with right-winger Michael Smerconish—and with a lineup including Mark Bowden, Jonathan Last, Kevin Ferris, and Krauthammer.
The inside “left” is Trudy Rubin, who loved Yeltsin, thought that Arafat’s death made peace in the Middle East possible, and finds each “surge” by U.S. forces in distant lands promising even if not a sure winner.
It was in this context that Tierney urged the hiring of John Yoo as a regular contributor. This may have been a mistake. One reason is that Yoo is notorious for his advocacy of torture and executive power over-reach, both involving legal and constitutional violations. This makes him at minimum an opponent of the rule of law, but also a candidate for trial as a war criminal. That Tierney and the editors would actually solicit such a person as a commentator does not speak well for their own morality or sense.
A second reason why this choice was problematic is that it is overkill—the Inquirer already has four regular commentators who are open defenders of torture (Smerconish, Krauthammer, Ferris, and Bowden), and then there is Santorum who, in effect, voted for it by supporting the Military Commissions Act. Editor Harold Jackson defended the Yoo appointment, among other reasons, on the grounds of “wanting to make sure our pages present alternative points of view” (“Why I Hired John Yoo,” May 17). This is a double hypocrisy: the right-wing gang they already installed offers plenty of defense of that “alternative view” on torture and it is, in fact, a genuine left presence that is missing on the “Inky” editorial page: somebody who would call for the prosecution of home-country war criminals; someone who would oppose “free trade” (i.e., special protection of foreign [U.S.] investors in Third World states); someone who would call for an end to “power projection” under the guise of a “war on terror” and for major cutbacks in the military budget. The Inquirer provides nobody like this and has even cut back its occasional visitors from the left.
The bringing in of Yoo has caused Tierney and the editors some headaches, as manifested in Harold Jackson’s feeble but aggressive defense. Criticism was widespread, extending to coverage on “Democracy Now!,” attacks on many blogs, a campaign initiated by the phone company CREDO, local protests, and many highly critical emails and letters to the editor.
Possibly as part of a response to these criticisms, the Inquirer offered readers a new regular commentator, Susan Estrich. Estrich was campaign manager for Michael Dukakis in 1988, has been the nominal “leftist” on Fox, and is a reputed feminist—so for the Inquirer leadership this package presumably makes her a leftist and offset to Yoo. But the first column of this alleged feminist-leftist was a nasty and dishonest attack on Michelle Obama (“Powerful women: They just can’t win,” May 24). Estrich says that “half the people I run into every day” don’t “love” Ms. Obama, and her article is largely a snide list of Michelle Obama’s alleged mistakes and reasons why people “resent her.” In the 14th paragraph Estrich finally mentions that her own feeling that many people don’t like Ms. Obama conflicts with “whatever the polls say.” In fact, a USA Today/Gallup poll published on April 24 found that 79 percent of those polled approve of the way Michelle Obama has handled her position while only 8 percent disapprove. A solid majority of Republicans also approve of her performance. Her rates are also higher than those of her husband (Jeffrey M. Jones, “Michelle Obama’s Favorable Rating Eclipses Her Husband’s,” Gallup, April 2, 2009, www.gallup.com).
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