I’m behind in my reading, which means I only recently read Yascha Mounk’s brilliant piece in the Easter issue of The Spectator: “Why the British think differently from Americans.” He notes that opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post are logical and unsurprising. “In American journalism, to be right – or, at any rate, to argue for the position that the right people consider to be reasonable at the time – is much more important than to be brilliant or entertaining.” Further on he states: “For American journalists, the cardinal sin is to be wrong. For British journalists, the cardinal sin is to be boring.”
I agree with him wholeheartedly (though I wonder how strongly writing in a litigious society contributes to an obsession with accuracy - and a tendency toward blandness). The two weeklies I read are The Spectator and The New Yorker, and I get more pleasure out of the former than I do out of the latter, which is earnest and informative but not especially enjoyable, even, lately, many of its cartoons. The one exception is Anthony Lane, but Lane is a Brit and, notably, was recently relieved of his movie reviewing chores.
I'm off to the nation's capital for a few days. Will be back here next week.
