Sunday, November 25, 2007

Why I Canceled My Newsweek Subscription

Rove has is now a columnist for Newsweek, and I wrote the editor and canceled my subscription. (And the person answering the phone knew why I was calling and indicated they'd been getting lots of calls doing the same thing for the same reason).

Dear Mr. Meacham –

With all due respect, Karl Rove is no George Will or George Stephanopoulos or Mary Matalin. I canceled my subscription immediately upon receipt of my issue on Tuesday, and I’ve been a reader of Newsweek for over 20 years.

On Charlie Rose, Tuesday night, Mr. Rove protested he had no idea why he was such a lightening rod. It stretches credulity that he is unaware that his particular brand of partisan policy, ruling from the base, produced the most divided country since the Vietnam War and yes, made him much maligned. He lied repeatedly in that interview on other matters as well.

Rove is responsible, more than anyone, for the incivility that poisons so much of our civil discourse. The act of hiring him goes against the very purpose you state – to conduct debate and disagreement civilly. Impossible with this man You give a liar and a criminal a forum to spread his mendacity and venom.

Even Eugene Robinson, columnist and associate editor at the “Washington Post,” noted how Rove is still a spokesperson for Bush. In an interview Tuesday night on MSNBC on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Olbermann asked: What does this tell us about the relationship of the truth to now, not to the administration of George W. Bush, but the legacy of George W. Bush?

Robinson: I think it will be a tenuous relationship, at best. I think clearly, if you look at everything Rove has said and written since leaving his office in the White House, it‘s been designed to do two things, I think, kind of burnish and preserve the image and reputation of George Bush and burnish and preserve the image and reputation of Karl Rove. That‘s what he‘s doing. I think they‘re intrinsically linked, those two.

I will miss the weekly, and I will particularly miss Evan Thomas, Michael Isikoff (who did terrific work on the Lewinsky scandal), Howard Fineman, Fareed Zakaria, Sharon Begley, Christopher Dickey, Anna Quindlen and Jonathan Alter – great minds and terrific writers and reporters whose names are now sullied by association.

Shame on you and shame on Newsweek. It was a very, very bad judgment call, and Newsweek should reconsider. I find what you did an outrage and an assault, and I am much sadden further about the state of journalism that seems to think any points of view are valid, including those not based on facts, objective facts.

With deep regret -

Cassandra Metzger

Typically, Rove was too busy (self-important) to comment for Politico. And I couldn't agree more with what Paul McLeary of the Columbia Journalism Review had to say about the subject.

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