Katha Pollitt’s review of It Takes A Village
Katha Pollitt is now a big fan of Hillary Clinton, but she wasn’t always one, as this review of her dreadful book It Takes A Village shows (although the opening is a portent of the future). In the spirit of my earlier reposting of Katha’s polemic on the repeal of welfare, here’s her view of HRC’s pieties from twenty years ago. Clarification: the business with the ghostwriter, Barbara Feinman is serious; Hillary and the White House tried to stiff her out of her last payment, and she wasn’t acknowledged in the book. For more, see Carl… Read More
Katha Pollitt, 1996 vs. 2016
[What a difference 20 years can make. Here’s the full text of column that Katha Pollitt wrote for The Nation as welfare was being repealed. It’s full of sharp criticism of the Clinton administration, the awfulness of the Dems, the treachery of lesser-evil politics, the limits of elite advocacy—and even a little mockery of Supreme Court fetishism. Today, Katha is a big fan of Hillary Clinton and has forgotten all this. Too bad, because this is very good.] The Nation — August 26-September 2,1996 The Strange Death of Liberal America Katha Pollitt I woke… Read More
Katha Pollitt on My Turn
Katha Pollitt reviews My Turn in the January 25 issue of The Nation. I suppose it’s undignified for an author to take issue with a reviewer, but I’m confident that I can transcend such petty concerns. I should say right away that Katha is a friend; not only am I very fond of her personally, I’ve admired her writing (both prose and poetry) for more years than either of us would probably like to count. But she got some things wrong, which I will enumerate politely. It’s funny how often defenses of Hillary Clinton begin with confessing a… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 