In his essay on the homepage, Peter Wood makes The New Republic writer a case study in the evolution of what Wood calls “the new anger.” I don’t think that’s right.

Wood contrasts the new anger to the bitter partisan writing of the past thus:

As far as I can tell, the partisan writings of 1800 never venture into the logic of, “Listen to me because I am really, really angry,” or, “The extremity of my anger proves the righteousness of my cause,” or, “Behold my disdain! It is a thing of wonder.” Those are some of the ways to tell the difference between the traditional forms of political anger and New Anger in its political manifestations. New Anger is about flaunting one’s anger as a kind of credential. It is a way of asserting one’s authenticity and, according to its own cultural logic, moving from authenticity to authority. Its essential message is, “I am to be believed and reckoned with because I am angry.”

Wood may be right about ostentatious anger as a contemporary cultural style. But I don’t think that in Chait’s anti-”liberaltarian” essay, he was using anger as a credential. I think he was using sneering as a form of entertainment, a kind of garnish to his points. Likewise, in his I-hate-Bush article, he wasn’t offering his anger as an argument; the point was to offer arguments for his anger. I disagree with those arguments, and don’t think we should hate any person, but I don’t think Chait has played the role that Wood thinks he has.