Recently, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker published a nasty hit piece attacking Art Pope, whose foundation provides much of the funding for the John W. Pope Center on Higher Education Policy. It’s a long article claiming that Pope is “buying” North Carolina through his funding of groups such as the John Locke Foundation and the Pope Center. Mayer is clearly playing to leftist readers who lap up the notion that whenever a person with wealth uses some of it in an effort at slowing or reversing the growth of governmental power, that is something dangerous and intellectually disreputable. Mayer is using the same “two minute hate” tactics as in Orwell’s 1984.
Emory’s Mark Bauerlein, in a Chronicle blog post, finds her approach to be poor journalism. That’s being charitable.