Walter Duranty was a liar and the NYT should be ashamed.
As the play presents it, he didn’t lie out of ideological
commitment or even, strictly speaking, for money.
The play seems to be torn between him lying for access (as
did, allegedly, various more contemporary reporters about the regime of Saddam
Hussein) or for professional esteem, success, and celebrity.
If the play was trying to say the Western press today
whitewashes Islam as it whitewashed communism, back in the day, it didn’t do a
very good job – and certainly not a convincing
job.
As a certain segment of the left complains in chorus about
lies nobody ever told anybody in high school, a certain segment of the right
complains with one irate voice the press whitewashes Islam and shills for
Obama, the Marxist Muslim.
Phooey.
Update, November 2.
The play recognizes the role of Jewish hatred of the Russia of pogroms in the Bolshevik revolution and the whole history of Western communism.
A like hatred is reflected in Jewish liberalism and left-wing radicalism in America, today.
Indeed, gay and non-white and even feminist politics reflect analogous motivations.
Imagine how fiercely Glenn Greenwald would hate America if he were black as well as gay and Jewish.
Not all politically important hatred is class hatred.
Not by any means.
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