Two weeks ago I wrote an article, headlined “The Media’s So Bored With the USA,” which took issue with a New York Sun editorial that speculated today’s anti-Israel protests on campuses and political events could lead to a repeat of the Democrats’ disastrous 1968 late-August convention. This ponderous speculation led me to believe, and still does, that the media is itching for the digital ratings bonanza that Chicago Redux might provide. The editorial struck me as so far-fetched, including the absurd line that “Biden’s coronation… will make the 1968 Vietnam protests look like a game of Tiddlywinks,” that I assumed it was a younger man or woman who authored the opinion. As it turned out, the writer was Seth Lipsky, 78, and he emailed me, without revealing it was his editorial, and was polite.
I’ve met Lipsky on many occasions—his brave (in the face of declining newspaper readership) 2002 founding of The New York Sun was a remarkable undertaking. The daily broadsheet was teeming with talent (Ira Stoll, Tim Marchman and Robert Messenger stick out), and I was happy to contribute around 40 articles to the paper—my only beef with Lipsky was his spiking my critical review of a David Frum book, resolved amicably—and I looked forward to reading The Sun each morning, after The Wall Street Journal and before The New York Times. The paper shuttered its print edition in 2008. Lipsky’s had a distinguished journalistic career, including 20 years with The Journal, a stint at The Forward and then The Sun. An affable man, I remember meeting him at the Harvard Club in 2006, and he laughed when a concierge there upbraided me for allowing my Blackberry to ring.
He didn’t care much for my April 15th essay, and responded last week in The Sun, taking umbrage at my line that the original editorial was “so stupid, speculative and provocative,” and gave me a spanking. That’s fair, and I have no beef with Lipsky sticking up for himself. Trouble is, his rejoinder wasn’t at all robust, writing, “It turns out, though, that we weren’t the only ones wondering what’s in store in the Windy City this summer,” pointing to subsequent columns and analysis in the Journal and Times that came to the same conclusion. That’s still called “pack journalism.” And I expect the fascination with Chicago this summer will continue every week, mostly because it’s easy to write—lazy, I think—and will draw interest from senior citizens.
Lipsky’s defense—other organizations agree!—reminded me of a conversation I had with a writer at my Baltimore City Paper in 1978. I told the young fellow (I was his senior by a year) that his latest pop music review was sloppy and “phoned-in.” He objected to the numerous edits and said a lot of people “really liked it.” I asked who, and he gave me the names of two CP staff writers with whom he was friendly.
None of the articles Lipsky refers to mention how vastly different political convention planning—due to the ’68 Chicago mayhem—is today. There’s no Mayor Daley bully, and access to the United Center and the hotels where politicians and reporters bunk will be cordoned off, and, like recent conventions there will be a specified area, probably a mile from the action, for protestors. Television coverage won’t be gavel-to-gavel, but rather, for those Americans who still watch the evening news, presented in two-hour summaries. I wouldn’t put it past Biden to take an unrehearsed stroll into the scrum, maybe trying to explain to the incensed (mostly) young dissidents that he once drove an 18-wheeler and like Sen. Eugene McCarthy, mopped the bloody brows of those brutalized by Daley’s cops in 1968. One can only hope for America’s foremost comedian to follow through!
The Times’ Jeremy Peters was more muted than The Sun, quoting David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist who’s worrying about the optics of “Genocide Joe” chants, but not a single protest “leader” and allowed that times have changed as to how conventions are run. It was essentially another history lesson about 1968, and thin on Lipsky-like doom. (I’ve no idea if Lipsky is a Biden supporter; I suspect he prefers him over Trump.)
The only really disruptive tactic of the pro-Palestine thousands likely to show up in Chicago is blocking O’Hare Airport entrances to prevent the grandees of the Democratic Party arriving on time, and lie-ins on busy bridges and highways. And it’s likely scores of protesters will suffer knocks on the skull from Chicago cops, but four days of wild-in-the-streets chaos and a “the whole world is watching” atmosphere (not to mention Yippie-like theater) doesn’t fit into today’s political calculus.
Lipsky also overstates William McGurn’s “agreement” with The Sun in his April 15 Journal column. Although McGurn concluded that Biden might be in the same bind as Hubert Humphrey in 1968—the President’s Israel “problem” compared to HHH’s Vietnam conundrum—asking “Sound familiar?”, he focused more on the “obnoxious” chaos the protesters are causing on campuses and elsewhere. He says that “progressive activists” have pledged to “march on the Democratic National Convention” on August 19th and 22nd. Two days out of four: that doesn’t sound very energetic to me.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023