Sigh of relief

I have long wondered where Eric Alterman dug up the nerve--the nerve!--to ever insinuate that Jewish organizations (like, for instance, the one called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) hope to convey the idea that they speak on behalf of American Jews. So thank goodness Jamie Kirchick* is here to set the record straight.

*I asterisk his name because, as commenter colablease points out, "when this post came in over my RSS feed, it had Jamie Kirchick's signature at the botton--but the header proclaimed the author as 'M. Peretz'."

To the best of my understanding, the whole point of "The Spine" was to allow TNR staffers to distinguish their collective works from the writings their... we'll say eccentric... editor-in-chief. It was an odd gambit. Obviously TNR is what TNR publishes, and even its imperfect attempt to sequester the worst material in its basket of goodies hasn't done much to change peoples' perceptions of the magazine as a whole. Now, though, we see that TNR didn't so much pull Marty Peretz out of the main stable, as give him his own prominent blog on a well-read website, and charge his successor with filling the content hole created by that move.