{"id":325,"date":"2004-01-27T02:45:41","date_gmt":"2004-01-27T09:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=325"},"modified":"2004-01-27T02:45:41","modified_gmt":"2004-01-27T09:45:41","slug":"marshall-in-the-new-yorker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2004\/01\/marshall-in-the-new-yorker\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshall in The New Yorker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joshua Micah Marshall, of Talking Points Memo<\/a> fame, has what he calls<\/a> “a review essay on the new literature of empire” out<\/a> in The New Yorker<\/em> today. Is this the first time a blogger gets to write for something so prestigious on account of a reputation made by their blogAndrew Sullivan doesn’t count — he made his name at The New Republic<\/em>. Marshall did not<\/em> make his name at The Hill<\/em>.<\/span>?<\/p>\n

I think he makes some wonderful points. The whole piece is a deft rejoinder to the televised debate<\/a> he had with Richard Perle last month. This in particular had me smiling:<\/p>\n

What makes a state a state is its monopoly over the legitimate use of force, which means that citizens don’t have to worry about arming to defend themselves against each other. Instead, they can focus on productive pursuits like raising families, making money, and enjoying their leisure time. In the world of the Bush doctrine, states take the place of citizens.
 
[…]
 
In other words, if America has an effective monopoly on the exercise of military force, other countries should be able to set aside the distractions of arming and plotting against each other and put their energies into producing consumer electronics, textiles, tea. What the Bush doctrine calls for\u2014paradoxically, given its proponents\u2014is a form of world government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m ambivalent about the actual writing, however, because, well, it’s a bit bloggy. I’m not sure if, despite all my cheering on of blogs, I am ready to see The New Yorker<\/em> — or any magazine I want to read — adopt the shoot-from-the-hip breeziness of tone we know and love on a blog. Whenever Marshall mentions one of the books he is “reviewing”, you feel him wanting to link to it and be done with it, with the reader free to explore that particular nook should the fancy strike him. But of course Marshall can’t link in this article, not on the printed page.<\/p>\n

Previously, I’ve lamented<\/a> the book review as executive summary. Marshall’s approach veers too much to the other extreme: He comes to the task armed with a ready docrine to propound, then pecks at the books to illustrate a point or else raids them for interesting anecdotes. These books are not the subject of this review; his thesis is. This makes for great blogging, but a less convincing New Yorker<\/em> piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joshua Micah Marshall, of Talking Points Memo fame, has what he calls “a review essay on the new literature of empire” out in The New Yorker today. Is this the first time a blogger gets to write for something so … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-york","category-politics-economics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-5f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}