ON ITS FACE!...

ON ITS FACE! Remember two weeks ago? Those were the days. The Boston Globe offers a recap of Jason Zengerle versus the blogs (without mentioning, though, the hilarious "blogofascism" interlude) in which Zengerle observes, "I mean, what do they call us, 'The Joe Lieberman Weekly,' stuff like that. That is kind of ridiculous on its face." On its face, I would say people call them that because they ran an unsigned editorial arguing that . . . Joe Lieberman should be President of the United States and put it on the cover of the magazine.

One might also note in this regard TNR's unsigned editorial of November 13, 2000 stating, "This magazine has made no secret of its admiration for Joseph Lieberman. For over a decade, few Democrats have better embodied the principles we hoped would one day define the party as a whole." Or their August 12, 2000 editorial observing of Lieberman's nomination for the Vice Presidency: "Gore's epochal decision appears to have been greeted by almost nothing but delight, except in the camp of the Republicans, who seem suddenly diminished and outwitted by the largeness and the shrewdness of the Democratic ticket."

Now, as it happens, I know that these editorial statements actually fail to accurately represent the ins-and-outs of TNR office politics and internal disagreements. But on its face this is a series of editorials indicating that the magazine strongly endorses Lieberman and what he stands for to the degree that they once looked forward to the day that "the principles he has espoused will once again guide the Democratic Party" and said "it will be the work of this magazine, to whatever small degree possible, to hasten that day." Is it really so crazy that one might come up with The Joe Lieberman Weekly as the joke name for a magazine which explicitly committed itself to the advancement of Liebermanism in an unsigned editorial?

--Matthew Yglesias