Each time another of these stories comes out, I'm glad of my decision to drop my 20 year subscription to TNR last summer.

Kirchick's lies -- the willful misrepresentation of the political arguments, histories, and beliefs of his opponents -- are his writing style ... he has commitments and resentments, cherished heroes and a seemingly endless list of enemies

And yet, despite all of these attractive personality traits, he has trouble finding love because he's a conservative.

Full right of return would mean displacement of too many Israelies to be realistic, so no I don't support it either as an active slogan, but it's sad when the idea that people who got tossed off their land should have the right to get it back is treated like it's an evil from beyond the pale.

Peter,

What took you so long. I cancelled my subscription in 2002.

You know who Kirchick reminds me of? Jonah Goldberg. I think it's the petulant dishonesty and the lack of awareness.

I started my first subscription to TNR in '84 or so, finally gave up this year. I was getting it for less than half their normal rates too, just couldn't stand to see the kind of lying trash they occasionally print in a magazine I was paying for. I think it's still a reasonably good magazine, considering it's published by conservatives.

Allow me to say: Ouch!

This is the same publication that churns out the racist diatribes of Marty Peretz. What else would we expect but more ignorant, poorly researched nonsense?

Richard, what took you so long? I cancelled in 2000 when the New Republic took W's side in the Florida recount.

Mind you, I'm not taking credit for perspicacity there: I should have cancelled by summer 2000 at the latest, when it was clear the New Republic hated Gore with a burning passion, all those stories about Gore's close ties to hi former Harvard instructor Marty Peretz notwithstanding.

I'm not much of a Kirchick fan, but you and Matt constantly pitch J-Street and talk about what progress it represents for the Jewish-progressive community. J-Street is pretty much a single-issue lobbyist group-as far as I know, it only lobbies on Israeli issues. To assume that your constant support of it means you agree with its positions I don't think is too far of a leap. If a conservative columnist was constantly saying positive things about the NRA, cheering on its growth, etc. you would assume that he doesn't support a ban on automatic weapons. The same goes here.

I'm with am here. The first thing that struck me on reading this was how the right of return was dismissed out of hand. It is impractical but let's at least acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons for Palestinians demanding it.

Jamie:

J Street is a more progressive Israel lobby than AIPAC, but still essentially a pro-Zionist Israel lobby. It doesn't support full right of return for Palestinian refugees either. So if Ezra says something positive about a group that doesn't support the full right of return, why would it be natural to extrapolate from that that he does in fact support the full right of return?

Kirchick is the Alberto Gonzales of Beltway political journalism. That is to say that he has risen far above his station and his ability.

Everything he writes would be recognizable without any creditting because of his bizarre structuring and leading phrasing. In conjuction with his contemptuous, spiteful, presumptuous and mendacious personality what you get is a pompous jerk with no sense of integrity or honour.

Who exactly is Jamie Kirchick? I thought he was Marty Peretz' "assistant", whatever that means, so how does he get to write opinion in TNR? Obviously, he's there through his association with Peretz. I can only assume Crazy Uncle Marty agrees with his positions.

Jamie Kirchick- Martin Peretz' "Mini-Me'.

This thread is rife with homophobia. Stop your damned gay baiting once and for all, now and forever.

Anoymous:

WTF are you talking about? No one in this thread even hinted at Kirchick's sexuality except you.

If there is inuendo in any of the posts it went way over my head.

Me thinks you are simply trolling

How Kirchickian of the 2:18pm poster - it couldn't possibly be that people here (who have not mentioned his sexual orientation) must be homophobes for not liking his positions or the disingenuous ways in which he presents and defends them.

Perhaps it's more the case that there are alot of people, many TNR readers included, who think he's an idiot and the latest embarrasment in their long and sordid history of presenting cover to conservatives and hacks.

It would be nice Ezra, since you have explained that Palestinians, and apparently their Muslim friends and neighbors so hate 'the occupation' that it causes them to go nuts enough to get on buses with bombs, attack civilians, intentionally smash 4 year old girls heads in with rifle butts, etc, etc.

I understand that position, but is has ONE HUGE DISCONNECT. Why do Muslims in totally other parts of the world, regarding entirely different issues carry out these same barbaric attacks when the issue has nothing to do with Palestine, Jews, or occupation.???

From slitting throats in Denmark, to bombings in Bali, to killings Nuns in Somalia, attacks on Christians in Indonesia.
Balkans, Chechnya, , Cashmere, Sudan: wherever Islam has borders with the non-Islamic world it is violent. Can the entire world be wrong ??
Even the fact that Muslims kill their own family members, their wives and their daughters for the smallest slight and are not shunned and arrested by other Muslims, but in fact they act like the women had it coming. Not to mention the attacks and killings between Muslim groups, sects and tribes.

Do you really believe, despite all evidence that all of this Muslim violence is due to Israeli occupation
of a few dozens square miles of territory??

Can you not admit that in fact there is something much larger that has gone wrong within the Muslim faith, and just maybe, maybe its not all the Wests and the Jews fault, and the Muslim world needs to be held just as accountable as any Western countries would be for their barbarism.

My family was run out of Bavaria by the French in 1720...where's my right of return??

I thought this post was about Kirchick -- where do the Muslims come into it? The innuendo about Kirchick's sexuality was in the use of quotations around the word "assistant". Marty Peretz' "assistant."

Anon,

I think the "" around assistant was just implying that it is unclear exactlky what being Peretz's assistant means, that it is basically a made up posiiton to give an unqualified guy a position at TNR.

You are reading alot of homophobia into one comment. Which even if that was the intent it is just one comment, not throughout the thread which is what you originally said

Anonymous, that was deeply buried innuendo -- as someone who is reasonably sensitive to homophobia, but had never heard of Jamie Kirchik before reading this post, I had no thought about his sexuality until you mentioned it. The use of the quotations around "assistant" I assumed to signify that Kirchik holds the title but does little such work.

My family was run out of Bavaria by the French in 1720...

Not likely, in the aftermath of the War of Spanish succession and the Treaty of Utrecht.

Calling Kirchik gay is an offensive homophobic act. He's not one of ours. Ewww!

Innuendo? I thought that was where you put an Italian suppository.