{"id":92558,"date":"2016-04-03T16:34:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T00:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=92558"},"modified":"2016-04-03T16:38:17","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T00:38:17","slug":"observer-1997-john-podhoretz-leaves-neocon-nest-to-play-murdochs-man-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=92558","title":{"rendered":"Observer 1997: John Podhoretz Leaves Neocon Nest To Play Murdoch\u2019s Man in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warren St. John wrote<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Mr. Podhoretz, the chubby 36-year-old son of neocon pioneers Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, recently quit his job as deputy editor at Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Washington-based Weekly Standard -the gleefully contrarian conservative journal that he co-founded in 1995 with Dan Quayle\u2019s former chief of staff, William Kristol, and former New Republic editor Fred Barnes-to take over the editorial page of Mr. Murdoch\u2019s New York Post . Despite two successful years at The Weekly Standard , Mr. Podhoretz grew weary of working in the shadow of the mediagenic Mr. Kristol. \u201cIt\u2019s Bill Kristol\u2019s magazine,\u201d Mr. Podhoretz explained over tea at the Algonquin on a recent Sunday. \u201cI wanted to run my own shop.\u201d<\/p>\n

…Politics weren\u2019t the only thing that brought Mr. Podhoretz back to the city he grew up in. His brief marriage to fellow inside-the-Beltway conservative Elisabeth Hickey unraveled this fall in a very public way. The two were married in May after a courtship of only 10 days, and thanks in part to Mr. Podhoretz\u2019s declarations of love in his Weekly Standard column-he ended one column with the words, \u201cin her calm, there is the permanence I seek\u201d-the relationship had become the talk of Washington\u2019s small conservative media clique. The couple split after three months. Mr. Podhoretz would say only that the breakup was a \u201csad disruption in my personal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

…But whatever ends up on the page, Mr. Podhoretz\u2019s former colleagues said, his light touch often comes with a heavy hand behind the scenes. He is described alternately as \u201cbrilliant\u201d and \u201ca monster\u201d by Standard staff. His writers report that he regularly derides them by saying their copy \u201csucks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn is smart and he\u2019s a good editor,\u201d said Lisa McCormack, who wrote for Mr. Podhoretz at The Washington Times . \u201cBut he finds people\u2019s weak spots psychologically and gets a hot poker and sticks it in there and breaks them.\u201d<\/p>\n

…Under the eccentric editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, Mr. Podhoretz\u2019s colleagues joked that his last name was \u201cNormanson,\u201d because Mr. de Borchgrave frequently referred to him as \u201cJohn Podhoretz, Norman\u2019s son.\u201d <\/p>\n

…But by 1989, Mr. Podhoretz was back editing at The Washington Times . His colleagues from those days have said that many staff members under Mr. Podhoretz left. \u201cHe\u2019s a bully. He\u2019ll take an elephant gun to a fly,\u201d said Ms. McCormack. \u201cHe\u2019d tell people they were idiots if they misplaced a comma.\u201d (Mr. Podhoretz responded, \u201cLisa McCormack is an idiot, but otherwise I don\u2019t think it\u2019s true that I\u2019ve said that. I\u2019ve been known to misplace a comma myself.\u201d)<\/p>\n

…Mr. Podhoretz lived the life of a media junkie. \u201cHe\u2019s a compulsive TV watcher, he gets every magazine from Spin to Creme , and he watches every infomercial,\u201d said a Standard staff member. \u201cA number of times, he\u2019s had to go cold turkey from television.\u201d<\/p>\n

…Members of the Standard staff, like some at The Washington Times , had some problems with Mr. Podhoretz\u2019s style. They objected to his withering assessments and were miffed last year when he gave a cover assignment to his then-girlfriend Wendy Shalit (sister of journalist Ruth Shalit) and paid her more than The Standard \u2018s regular freelance rate.<\/p>\n

Staff members also said Mr. Podhoretz had a long memory of personal slights. \u201cJohn holds grudges,\u201d said one staff member. \u201cThere are certain people he still hates for, say, insulting his father in 1972 in The New York Review of Books .\u201d (Indeed, Post media critic [and Observer art critic] Hilton Kramer was fired soon after Mr. Podhoretz arrived, and Standard staff members believe Mr. Podhoretz fired Mr. Kramer because the latter once wrote a Post column dismissing The Standard as \u201ca snooze.\u201d)<\/p>\n

…Over time, Mr. Kristol emerged as The Standard \u2018s media face, and Mr. Podhoretz said he felt it had become \u201csomebody else\u2019s magazine.\u201d Then love struck: In February 1997, Mr. Podhoretz ran into Ms. Hickey at a party thrown by Arianna Huffington. Mr. Podhoretz soon circulated news of his engagement in an e-mail to friends headed \u201cThis is not a put-on.\u201d The couple was married in May. Three months later, Mr. Podhoretz told friends he hadn\u2019t been in love after all. Said a friend of the couple, \u201cthey cut their losses.”<\/p>\n

…Podhoretz. \u201cOutrageousness is one way of getting attention, but it\u2019s not the only way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warren St. John wrote: Mr. Podhoretz, the chubby 36-year-old son of neocon pioneers Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, recently quit his job as deputy editor at Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Washington-based Weekly Standard -the gleefully contrarian conservative journal that he co-founded in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42742],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-podhoretz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92558"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92565,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92558\/revisions\/92565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}