Radosh.net

Nitpicker really hates my new book, which is not as disappointing to me as you might think because I don't have a new book; he's confusing me with my father. "Your worst nightmare has come true," chuckles dear ol' neocon dad informing me of this mix-up. But it gets worse, because now I'm in a position of actually defending dad from this blogger (said with tongue-in-cheek Landesmanesque shudder) on two points. Well, one and a half.

Nitpicker is grumbling about Marty Peretz's review of my father's (and step-mother's) book about the Hollywood blacklist. "I haven't read it yet," he says, "but, considering Radosh's previous writing, I'm sure it's going to be an encomium to Joseph McCarthy." Now, this is only half a defense because I haven't read the book yet either (though unlike Nitpicker, I do actually intend to). So while I hate to say I'm sure about anything, I am reasonably persuaded that the book is not an encomium to McCarthy, partly because in the very review that Nitpicker HAS read, Peretz writes, "Let's make one thing clear: They have contempt for those who banished and ostracized anyone for his or her political views." Which would seem to fall short of encomium.

Ah, but Nitpicker points out that my father is the guy who "once wrote that 'America is rent by two cultures,' the 'traditionalists' and 'self-described progressives steeped in existential depravity.'" And here my unqualified defense of dad is based not on the argument that this article, on the web site of the think tank he's affiliated with, is in any sense defensible (not with sentences like, "For them rap is music and manners are arbitrary rules," and "Can skateboarders convert insouciance into war-fighting ability?"), but rather on the fact that my father didn't write it, any more than I wrote Red Star Over Hollywood. Yes, it has his byline, but he assures me he's never even seen it before -- and it really doesn't sound like him. Some intern at the Hudson Institute is so about to get fired.

All that said, Peretz does indeed goes off the rails in his last graf. That part, Nitpicker nails.

Update: I notice that Amazon's shop-bot recommends The Politically Incorrect History of the United States to people who buy Red Star. An irony that I hope isn't lost on dad.

Posted by Daniel Radosh

2:06 PM