The American Spectator

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p> Michael Kelly, RIP (posted 4/7/03 1:21 a.m.) br> All the good things being written about Michael Kelly are true, even though it’s safe to say that the full impact of his horrible death in Iraq will not be felt for another many months and years. He really was that good. /p>

Among liberal reactions a special tip of the hat goes out to the New York Times. An editorial last Saturday noted, “His death deprives us of a man who excelled as a reporter, columnist and editor, as well as the generosity and humor of a cherished colleague.” His friend and one-time colleague Maureen Dowd’s Sunday column was deeply felt and moving. Only once did she slip into her snide mode, when she mentioned how Kelly “maintained an angry outsider posture in his column even as he was embraced by the conservative mandarins of Washington.”

But at least Dowd didn’t hold Kelly’s political views against him. Not so at the magazine Kelly briefly edited, the New Republic, where several former colleagues posted by and large very friendly tributes to Kelly. Yet at the most human moment possible, those few you even cared to write about Kelly were also very careful to insist on the natural superiority of their own political views to his. “Like many of my colleagues, I found much of Mike’s writing politically disagreeable,” one wrote. Another said, “If I had known him only as a reader I probably would have hated him.” Or this: “The affection that I had for Mike came as a shock to my friends, especially my liberal friends, who knew him through his columns.” What is wrong with these people? Here a friend has just died yet they can’t help thinking he was some kind of freak.

But even that was nothing compared to the final tribute paid Kelly by a New Republic colleague. For reasons best left to liberals in the privacy of their superiority, the first three TNR’ers passed on mentioning the unpleasant fact that their magazine’s owner had fired Kelly for his strong criticisms of indictable and impeachable Clinton-Gore. So leave it to the fourth TNR-er, Gregg Easterbrook in this case, to have brought the firing up in a manner that made him sound like toady of management if not chief enforcer at the magazine’s re-education camp. As Easterbrook puts it, there was Kelly’s “fiasco at The New Republic, where he was fired after a year, and even those who loved him knew the firing had to happen.” It was for his own good, you see. As Easterbrook continues, “Mike examined himself, corrected his own faults, and went on to do unqualifiedly magnificent jobs at both National Journal and The Atlantic.” As I say, what is wrong with these people?