While the half-emptiness of our economy has caused many to despair, we progressives tend to look at the proverbial glass as half-full — especially when we have the power to tax or confiscate it. Never has this been more apropos than in the curious case of Nat Hentoff.

Hentoff, the iconic columnist who worked for the Village Voice since 1958, stood in the forefront of just about every liberal cause since that time. He was a lion — a man respected by almost everyone regardless of political perspective, but especially by those of us who matter. That is, until he lost his purity.

For Hentoff came to the beguiling and divisive conclusion that life actually means something — that an unborn is more than a choice — that it is not a thing to destroy at will; that it is, well, human.

Just imagine — if this were accepted — what the implications would be for those of us who consider ourselves humanists.

What’s worse, he came to this epiphany well after we in the know definitively decided this issue and hence closed all debate, and he refused to renounce his error even when confronted by the wisdom of his unassailable peers.

So when Mr. Hentoff was laid off last week, as if he were a mailroom attendant, there was no great outcry from the left. There were neither protests, nor rallies in his support. Many of us were probably happy, knowing that in times like these unity and conformity of thought must be the rule — a rule that can have no exceptions.

In many ways Hentoff is a modern-day Malcolm Muggeridge — who for some odd reason felt inclined to expose the so-called “Ukrainian famine” — when today’s world requires journalists like Walter Duranty, who when reporting on the same event — in the great tradition of the New York Times — decided that progress was far more important than a few million dead kulaks, and kept his eyes and his mouth shut.

What was true then is even more true now when it comes to the tens of millions of dead unbabies. They are nothing but a statistic — as Duranty’s idol would’ve termed them — an inconvenience that can be ignored if we just will it so — an inconvenience that gets in the way of much more important issues, such as who’s giving an invocation at the inauguration.

The economic downturn, then, can be seen as fortuitous. Under the guise of cutbacks, perhaps more unreliable journalists can be “laid off,” as there’s no place for the Nat Hentoffs, the Camille Paglias, and the Mickey Kauses in our bold new world. Instead of lamenting the downfall of the press perhaps we should embrace it as necessary pruning of the body journalistic.

And this is only the beginning. Just wait until the government inevitably “rescues” the media, and journalists become de facto government employees. Just wait until the Employee Free Choice Act passes, and reporters, columnists, and bloggers are unionized without so much as a vote, and become answerable to those most enlightened bosses.

Just wait until the curious case of Nat Hentoff is of a type that exists only in history books.

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© Copyright 2009 by Colin Cohen. All Rights Reserved.

This column was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 9:40 am. You can follow any responses to this column through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.