You know you’re a neocon when…
…you go to the library to read Commentary and find yourself spending four dollars to xerox the entire issue instead.
Maybe it’s even time to get a subscription. It’ll go nicely with my New Yorker.
The New Neo
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“You know you’re a neocon when…”
… others find out, then reach for your hand and talk to you in mock mournful seriousness, as if you just said you had terminal cancer or something like that.
Of course, that’s just my friends pushing my buttons… usually the grins break out seconds afterwards, then the loud name calling begins. After an hour or so: Beer pouring over the head.
We are brutal teasers. 🙂
You know, you just gotta go to the right library if you wanna copy. Our public one in my town allows for a number of free pages before they start charging you. Of course, given the density of Commentary, even if you had 50 free pages, you’d still need to shell out 4 or 5 bucks to copy the whole damn thing. I just cop out and go to their online site. I think I end up a month behind, but durn it, I got enough expenses.
Commentary is also about the only place these days to find new pieces from David Berlinski, the quirky intellectual’s Q.I.
Shades of Norman Podhoretz. Read his book “Ex-Friends” if you haven’t already read it .
Thanks for the strong recommendation Neo! (I’ll take your having felt compelled to photocopy the entire issue as a strong recommendation!) I haven’t picked up Commentary before but now look forward to giving it a read. I see they have Victor Davis Hanson on board – that can only be good.
A copy of another publication I hadn’t encountered before, the Claremont Review of Books, recently appeared in my mailbox at random (maybe because I’m on Cato’s mailing list as a donor?), and I’ve already found enough gems in it, barely having gotten halfway through the issue, that I think they’ve already hooked me as a soon-to-be subscriber. Especially top-notch are Mark Helprin’s “Herd Animals” and Charles Kesler’s “The Crisis of American National Identity” – more good stuff to read … in case you ever run out. 🙂
Get a hard copy subscription, and make a charitable contribution in addition to your subscription cost. It’s worth it, and then some.
Oh dear, mizpants! Probably the young pierced person behind the counter thinks it’s all a lot of garbage, anyway.
It was actually that forum issue–November–the one on the Bush doctrine–that I ended up xeroxing more or less in its entirety.
unknown blogger–Good one! I’d forgotten that.
I buy Commentary myself, at my local Barnes and Noble. The recent forum issue is particularly terrific. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m self-conscious about paying for it at the checkout — I’ve even stooped so low as to buy a New Yorker or a New Republic to make myself seem “balanced.” Why should I care what the young pierced person behind the counter thinks of me anyway?
I can’t hear that name without thinking of the line from Annie Hall:
“Oh, really? I thought Commentary and Dissent and merged and formed Dysentery“
UB
Re Commentary:
As an alternative, you could subscribe to the online version. It’s a little cheaper and you have access to it from any computer.