I’ve been a big fan of John McWhorter, but his piece over at The New Republic is sad commentary both about him and the magazine in which it appears. He writes:

Jones was wrong, actually, in disavowing his support for 9/11 conspiracy theory. He signed the document, which can only mean that he supports the idea that 9/11 was planned, or that the Bushies knew something more than they have said, or at least that the charge is plausible enough to require investigation.
But support for that idea is hardly unknown among people of the left – and often gestural in its own way; look one of these types in the eye and ask “Do you really think George Bush and his cabinet engineered the murder of thousands and have kept the secret for eight years?” and watch the nervous pause and the look off into the distance. Speculations in this vein hardly meant that Jones was not sincerely committed to working within the government to do good.

Just a few years ago, Peter Beinart wrote a TNR cover story (which became a book) on how intellectually serious “fighting liberals” needed to confront their own anti-American left flank. Now TNR is running pieces insisting that just a little trutherism is okay in the liberal big tent. Good to know.

I hope this means we will hear fewer meditations about the right wing’s coddling of the lunatic fringe and the “paranoid style” of the Right from The New Republic.