Omniscient Gentlemen of The Atlantic (Takedown of Atlantic Monthly in New Baffler)

http://thebaffler.com/notebook/2012/04/omniscient_gentlemen_of_the_atlantic

bam!

Ha, I thought this was going to be a poll of their regular bloggers on the site. (Ta-Nehisi by a landslide, obv.)

"Of course The Atlantic is a turgid mouthpiece for the plutocracy, a repository of shallow, lazy spin, and regular host of discussion forums during which nothing is discussed. It is, in every formal trait, a CIA front."

OH NO SHE DIDN'T!

more like Maureen TURGID amirite?

this is v. humiliating indeed:

Irving Kristol’s cofounder at Encounter, the British poet Stephen Spender, was the sole member of the CCF clique to be truly traumatized by the revelation that his beloved project was a CIA front. Then, in the early aughts, he was doubly insulted, via the revelation that George Orwell had on his deathbed listed his name on a painstakingly compiled list of “fellow travelers” whom the author suspected would conspire with the enemy in the event of a Soviet invasion—but only because he was “impressionable” that way.

I think this could have been done a lot better.

it was all over the place in the middle and kept sort of coyly flattering me for knowing cool cold war stuff i don't know. but the zings at the end were good and some of the quotes were pretty damning/hilarious.

Deng Xiaoping as the Chinese Steve Jobs was pretty amazing, regardless of what you even think of Deng Xiaoping

yeah that one in particular.

I found it a little hard to discern the critical vantage point of the author beyond just somewhere-on-the-left

so much space is spent exposing the CIA funding of 60s campus protests and then i couldn't figure out how much of an equivalence was being drawn between that and the castrated corporate labor-ejecting social leftism of the modern atlantic, like if the accusation was that SDS were imperialist stooges too, but to be honest i skimmed in places

think this could have been done a lot better.

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2),

^^^^^^^

is the atlantic even 'important'?

I liked this part:

For all the ostensible objectivity and scientific rigor of the magazine’s questing spirit, The Atlantic’s definition of talent seems to correlate to: a current fellowship at the New America Foundation or any of the other indistinguishably centrist think tanks, though, preferably, one with a brand (i.e., “Daniel Indiviglio is the 2011 Robert Novak Fellow at the Philips Foundation”); an ability to channel one’s talent into the mastery of meritless and preposterous (“counterintuitive”) arguments, deliberately obtuse rebuttals, and miscellaneous pseudointellectual equivocation/noise on topical issues; and proven senior-level mastery of aforementioned mastery as demonstrated either by radical shamelessness or the pious and deeply felt earnestness of a motivational speaker.

That "miscellaneous pseudointellectual equivocation/noise on topical issues" describes something I feel every time I read the Atlantic, like I am getting my signal jammed on whatever issue I am reading about.

can't even understand what that article is trying to say

maybe they are culture jammers

the baffler: “Fear not,” says the Brooklyn Rail, “while the guard may have changed, the mission—to undress the Emperor and perform a full and unflinching diagnostic—has not.”

I can't tell if they got worse at doing that or if I just don't get the same giddy thrill out of it I did in college anymore.

i read this thing as some sort of freestyle battle rap written by someone who has read a ton of books i would never read. so, in a way, i kind of like it.

and she did make the crazy conference she went to in the beginning sound pretty frightening.

Atlantic sonned by a chinese girl in Baffler beef

http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/scientology/archive/2013/01/david-miscavige-leads-scientology-to-milestone-year-/266958/

lmao

As a Scientologist, I am so proud of the work our churches are doing in their communities to help with lowering crime rates and getting to kids with the truth about drugs before they get in trouble. Unfortunately, good news like this rarely gets the coverage it deserves from mainstream media. So it was great to see this story!

someone ask james fallows about it

lmao this is wonderful

the scientologists own some pretty cool old buildings.

this is really bizarre though

that is somehow vile and hilarious all at once

wow I didn't think the 2013 Sponsored Content awards would be locked up so quickly but damn

HI!

http://i.imgur.com/qMNYf.jpg

hi resolution photos of david miscavige are one of my favorite things on the internet

I've never noticed Atlantic's sponsored content before, but there is plenty of it. Here's one from Bank of America:

http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/bank-of-america/archive/2012/10/small-business-big-use-of-social-media/263544

http://api.ning.com/files/ESWwCTGQVmbI*jnj15HsggNAJo2jR14-G91t4RzpB3RAiWgVL*dp5yi-YP9qB1-hU1jTEhCtJZixVkv-x16vHdBj6J66UAS2/david_miscavige_resistance2010.jpeg

http://www.scientologynews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_popup/07-david-miscavige-seattle-scientology.jpg?no_lang_process=1

he kinda looks like danny kaye and a ferret fucked

http://www.scientologynews.org/sites/default/files/church-of-scientology-dallas-opening-david-miscavige.jpg

https://static.prtst.net/asset-proxy/4c2c68a256a9ae2160bd0ef7b61b7c1e7fffc9b7/687474703a2f2f7777772e696e64796261792e6f72672f75706c6f6164732f323030382f30382f32332f7365615f6f72675f6d656d626572732e6a7067/http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/08/23/sea_org_members.jpg

http://www.scientologynews.org/sites/default/files/church-of-scientology-rome-opening-speaker-david-miscavige.jpg

http://f.edgesuite.net/data/www.scientology.org/files/David_Miscavige_speaking_in_Las_Vegas.jpg

http://www.scientologynews.org/sites/default/files/church-of-scientology-london-opening-david-miscavige.jpg

lol @ every one of those backdrops

c.o.s. must have some kinda loaner program with the syfy props department

they are magnificent, I would like to hire the scientologist interior decorator

he's a smug-looking motherfucker with some dark secrets

starship troopers aesthetics + blingee

hahaha I was just googling for starship trooper pics =(

scientology buildings all look like they have the vague smell of industrial solvents

I wonder how much these sponsored articles cost. Would they let the Koch bros run some?

fuck this terrible magazine forever

Extremely good that Helen Lewis is writing for them now.

does that offset the "thought-provoking" articles like "Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture"?

(serious question, I realize they run good stuff sometimes but I just can't take the chin-stroking anymore)

Why did the Industrial Revolution start when it did? Why did Silicon Valley happen in California rather than Japan or Boston? Human progress is understudied, and @patrickc and @tylercowen want to change that. https://t.co/do55DQ5yHi

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) July 30, 2019

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EEsPDccXUAEr7Ps?format=jpg&name=small

look at all the idea-havers

interviewin' bob

they call him that on accounta all the interviewin' he does

https://i.imgur.com/cU6EYR7.jpg

man she has really been knocking it out of the park lately

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fn5mTnJXEAEgl57?format=jpg&name=small

https://i.imgur.com/YI5skM5.jpg

oh lol they hired Christine Emba too. she's the WaPo writer who wrote a couple of batshit pieces about masculinity last year

That magazine has shit the bed so hard in the last few years.

It's really leaning hard into this Serious Centrist bullshit.

Williams is a fucking joke, right? I can't believe anyone pays him for his 'journalism'. but they already pay Noah Berlatsky (who works with a pro-pedophilia group) so it's not like the Atlantic has any credibility whatsoever anymore.

Afaict Berlatsky hasn't had an Atlantic byline since 2015

Their basic persona — and maybe this has always been true? — is exactly MLK's "white moderate."

the titular post, for posterity

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/omniscient-gentlemen-of-the-atlantic

The Atlantic cuts ties with prominent contributor after rape allegation

The Atlantic magazine has cut ties with writer Yascha Mounk, one of its prominent contributors, after a woman accused him of rape, the magazine announced in a statement Sunday.

“We have not published any new work by the freelance contributor since being made aware of the allegation,” the Atlantic statement read, adding that the magazine “suspended our relationship” with the writer last month.

Mounk, an author and political scientist, told The Washington Post, “I am aware of the horrendous allegation against me. It is categorically untrue.”

The Atlantic’s announcement, which a magazine spokeswoman issued on social media, came hours after writer Celeste Marcus accused Mounk of raping her in her own post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Marcus’s post included a screenshot of Jan. 7 email exchange she had with Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, in which she accused Mounk by name of assaulting her in her apartment in June 2021.

Mounk, a German-born scholar of democracy and populism at Johns Hopkins University, has gained renown for his writing skeptical of “woke” ideologies and “cancel culture.” His 2023 book, “The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time,” which decried what he sees as an overemphasis in liberal politics on race, gender and sexuality, received positive mentions from several writers with large audiences, including New York Times columnists Bret Stephens and David Brooks.

the free-speech lover has logged on

Dear NYPD: Please, please, please arrest these faculty members. https://t.co/6zfgluNRwz

— Caitlin Flanagan (@CaitlinPacific) April 23, 2024

https://i.imgur.com/2yUIpg9.jpeg

LMAO WHUT
in what world was he ever an exemplar of “black cool”? dude was always corny. how old was this person in Diddy’s prime? Five?

also that headline bwahaha

It’s TCM he is the corniest person alive

TCW

371.2k followers

https://i.imgur.com/4O6tp9N.png

hmm you know i don't want to start a fight but i think eliminating 95% of academic jargon from political discourse and i think it would boost progressive causes. also it's long overdue that we started using dog whistles like the right does

(would be good to eliminate 95% i meant)

i vote for 'cat guy'

Words and phrases that actually need to be eliminated from Democratic political discourse:

- kitchen-table issues
- the middle class
- people who work hard and play by the rules
- it's a distraction from [x]
- my respected Republican colleague
- bipartisan cooperation

These seem a weird mix of the overused and the parodic. I don't think I've come across 'the unhoused' or 'involuntary confinement' before.

Though when I say overused I think 95% of the time it's people complaining about these phrases rather than actually hearing the phrases for real.

The words/phrases are

* Some words used almost entirely by conservatives when they're mocking woke people
* Some words which have no other useful synonym and which Tom Nichols presumably thinks people should just forget about
* A few technical/academic terms which are used mainly for the sake of clarity

The one thing they all have in common is that Democrat politicians already don't use them.

This is simply concern trolling, that's all.

Oh, in that case I get it. I feel like a lot of the time I see these things where people should stop doing this thing, and I think "I didn't know they did that thing". But I couldn't tell because some seem very familiar and some I wasn't sure if real or not

https://dcinboxinsights.substack.com/p/was-it-something-the-democrats-said

Politicians don't often use that kind of jargon, but they have been imported into government agencies via academia. Professions value jargon and the top officials at many government agencies hold post-graduate degrees in their professional field. Their professional jargon gets pushed down into their agencies via hiring policies that emphasize specialized academic degrees. Democrats are, for good reasons, associated with this trend toward expansion of government agencies and their professionalization in ways that Republicans have distanced themselves from. The public understands this and so do conservative politicians. There's no easy way for Democrats to deflect these kinds of attacks.

counterpoint: I will donate $1000 to the first Dem politician who uses the phrase "critical theory" correctly/meaningfully in a sentence

I do and do not want to know what the third way/tom nicholses of the world want to replace LGBTQ with

Can’t believe a centrist media guy searches Twitter for nonprofit words in order to make himself mad.

Aimless, maybe they could try, I dunno, making the case that people who have studied things are the best people to be making policy about those things? Fight against the narrative that they're all fifth columnists for the "deep state" - because that's not true? Not let minority voices be silenced just because they sometimes make some white people feel uncomfortable? Talk about the injustices of the culture rather than pretending they don't exist or even going along with conservatives when they blame them on minorities?

https://dcinboxinsights.substack.com/p/was-it-something-the-democrats-said

― jaymc, Sunday, 24 August 2025 22:29 (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks, thought this summed it up well -

Looking at actual usage, the Third Way memo reads less like an audit of Democrats’ language and more like a list of terms Republicans tell us Democrats are saying. The data show that many of these phrases barely exist in constituent communications, and when they do, Republicans are often the ones writing them either to lampoon Democrats or to spotlight them as proof of “wokeness.”

Aimless, maybe they could try, I dunno, making the case that people who have studied things are the best people to be making policy about those things?

This isn't about policy, but politics and sociology. Professionals and academics use jargon. It's part and parcel of how they operate, largely because they have studied things and found finely-grained distinctions and created specialized categories and an insular language through which they communicate their knowledge and recognize one another's expertise.

otoh, in a democracy the people feel a proprietary interest in their government. This is part and parcel of how a democracy operates when it is functional. They want to feel they are of primary importance and that government is their servant, not their master. And, understandably, they want to be in charge of "making policy".

There is a fundamental tension between the role of citizen, who is always a generalist no matter what they do for a living, and professionals who are operating snugly within the core of their livelihoods. This tension is what drives the conservative narrative about "elites", whose methods are opaque, their language is "other", and their motives are suspect.

Basically, making the case that people who have studied things are the best people to be making policy is going to amount to "trust us we know what we're doing". That argument will appeal to to those who hold professional degrees, but it is a tough sell to the ordinary generalist citizen.

The "elites" conversation isn't a naturally occurring phenomenon, it's a device used cynically by the political & journalistic class to deflect from their own crimes and create a convenient scapegoat.

Within the context of politics, it is a very naturally occurring conversation, because cynical devices are a natural part of politics and this device works as well as it does for the reasons I tried to identify.

I'd discount the fact that there are people outside of clinical and academic spaces who do use these phrases -- they're not widespread, and one of the main offenders would be the consulting companies that create corporate curricula for training. But the people saying these phrases more than anyone else are the hosts on Fox News!

I think speaking plainly is overall good, but the Third Way dingdongs are not the ones to lead that charge, considering they're as culpable as any group in advancing jargon to begin with.

I think the worst jargon in the government comes from the military and the hangers-on that make up all of the self-styled "operators" who, regardless of whether they were in the special forces, act like they're very special. If I have to hear about our "warfighters" one more time, my eyes are going to roll out of my head

yeah my terrible heuristic on those terms is that 1. there is absolutely great reason for the terms to exist, and that 2. the persons using it for general distribution/discussion are almost surely useless puds, regardless of political side.
i use the terms all the time with known audiences or with friends, but i have neither of those things so it's easy.

https://dcinboxinsights.substack.com/p/was-it-something-the-democrats-said

― jaymc, Sunday, August 24, 2025 4:29 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is great. it's nice to see somebody take a look at the stats instead of yet another long piece (or post, heh) about what "feels" true

Centrist dopes going on about this kind of stuff or “abundance” when there soldiers in the streets and political opponents being arrested and having their homes raided are just like a sad lol at this point.

“Sure, the trains are running on time. But wouldn’t they be more efficient if we cut a car from each train?”

xps There is a defensible anti-jargon position, as laid out by Aimless, but that isn't a position that anyone actually holds. The right wing line isn't "You don't understand these words and that makes you less able to participate in democracy," it's "Here are seven key words you can use to out people who are part of the secret conspiracy against you." The logical policy outcome of this position is DOGE cutting 'woke' agricultural grants that encourage crop diversification.

The right wing line isn't "You don't understand these words and that makes you less able to participate in democracy,"

Nor is that what I said was the line of attack. I specifically said, "the conservative narrative about 'elites', whose methods are opaque, their language is 'other', and their motives are suspect."

iow, the attack is that elites have hijacked your democracy. They speak a secret language among themselves that we can interpret for you. Their motives are nefarious, even criminal, and the Democrats are behind it all. You have to wrest it back from them at all costs.

I think their take is not that it's a "secret language" that needs decoded but that it's a distortion of "regular" language, which tries to make non-normal things seem normal, or bad things not bad.