Commentary Magazine

''Commentary'' is a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism, Israel and politics, as well as social and cultural issues. It is currently headed by John Podhoretz. Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945 under Elliot E. Cohen, editor from 1945 to 1959, ''Commentary'' magazine developed into the leading post-World War II journal of Jewish affairs. The periodical strove to construct a new American Jewish identity while processing the events of the Holocaust, the formation of the State of Israel, and the Cold War. Norman Podhoretz edited the magazine from 1960 to 1995.

Besides its coverage of cultural issues, ''Commentary'' provided a voice for the anti-Stalinist left. As Podhoretz shifted from his original ideological beliefs as a liberal Democrat to neoconservatism in the 1970s and 1980s, he moved the magazine with him to the right and toward the Republican Party.

History

Founding

''Commentary'' was the successor to the ''Contemporary Jewish Record'', which was published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and ran from 1938 to 1945, when its editor, AJC executive secretary Morris Waldman, retired.

20th century

In 1944, with the ''Record''s editor retiring, the AJC consulted with New York City intellectuals including Daniel Bell and Lionel Trilling, who recommended that AJC hire Elliot Cohen, who had been the editor of a Jewish cultural magazine and was then a fundraiser, to start a new journal. Cohen designed ''Commentary'' to reconnect assimilated Jews and Jewish intellectuals with the broader, more traditional, and very liberal Jewish community.

At the same time, the magazine was designed to bring ideas of the young Jewish New York intellectuals to a wider audience. It demonstrated that Jewish intellectuals, and by extension all American Jews, had turned away from their past political radicalism to embrace mainstream U.S. culture and values. Cohen stated his grand design in the first issue:Ehrman, John (June 1, 1999
"Commentary, the Public Interest, and the Problem of Jewish Conservatism"
''American Jewish History''

Although many or even most of the editors and writers had been socialists, Trotskyites, or Stalinists in the past, that was no longer tolerated. ''Commentary'' articles were anti-Communist and also anti- McCarthyite; it identified and attacked any perceived weakness among liberals on Cold War issues, backing President Harry Truman's policies such as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO. The "soft-on-Communism" position of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and Henry A. Wallace came under steady attack. Liberals who hated Joseph McCarthy were annoyed when Irving Kristol wrote at the height of the controversy that "there is one thing that the American people know about Senator McCarthy: he, like them, is unequivocally anti-Communist. About the spokesmen for American liberalism, they feel they know no such thing."

In the late 1950s, the magazine quality sagged, as Cohen suffered from mental illness and committed suicide.

A protégé of Lionel Trilling, Norman Podhoretz took over in 1960, running the magazine with an iron hand until his retirement in 1995.

Podhoretz said, ''Commentary'' was founded to lead the Jewish intellectuals "out of the desert of alienation...and into the promised land of democratic, pluralistic, and prosperous America". Cohen brought on board strong editors who themselves wrote important essays, including Irving Kristol; art critic Clement Greenberg; film and cultural critic Robert Warshow; and sociologist Nathan Glazer. ''Commentary'' published Hannah Arendt, Daniel Bell, Sidney Hook, and Irving Howe.

The emergence of the New Left, which was bitterly hostile to Johnson, to capitalism and to universities, angered Podhoretz for what he perceived as its shallowness and hostility to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Articles attacked the New Left on questions ranging from crime, the nature of art, drugs, poverty, to the new egalitarianism; ''Commentary'' said that the New Left was a dangerous anti-American, anti-liberal, and anti-Semitic force. Daniel Patrick Moynihan used ''Commentary'' to attack the Watts riots and liberals who defended it as a just revolution.

21st century

In 2007, the magazine ended its affiliation with AJC when Commentary, Inc., an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit enterprise, took over as publisher.

In 2011, the journal donated its archives from 1945 to 1995 to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. These included letters and essay revisions.

Popular culture

Films

''Commentary'' has been referred to in three Woody Allen films:

*In 1971, in ''Bananas'', as an old lady is threatened on a subway car, Allen hides his face by holding up an issue of ''Commentary'' in an image now featured at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn Heights.

*In 1977, in ''Annie Hall'', Allen, as character Alvy Singer, makes a pun by saying that he heard that ''Dissent'' and ''Commentary'' had merged to form "''Dysentery.''"

*In 1989, in '' Crimes and Misdemeanors'', an issue of ''Commentary'' lies on a character's bedside table.

Television

Between 1989 and 1992, in the ABC sitcom '' Anything but Love'', stand-up comedian Richard Lewis was often shown holding or reading a copy of ''Commentary''.

Reception and influence

American-Israeli journalist Benjamin Balint and former editor at ''Commentary'' described the magazine as the "contentious magazine that transformed the Jewish left into the neoconservative right". Historian and literary critic Richard Pells said that "no other journal of the past half century has been so consistently influential, or so central to the major debates that have transformed the political and intellectual life of the United States."Quoted from Murray Friedman (ed.):
''Commentary'' in American Life
', Philadelphia 2005, p.1, Temple University Press.

Notes

References

* Podhoretz, Norman. ''Breaking Ranks'' (1979), memoir
* Nathan Glazer, Thomas L. Jeffers, Richard Gid Powers, Fred Siegel, Terry Teachout, Ruth R. Wisse et al. in ''Commentary in American Life'', ed. Murray Friedman. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005

Bibliography

* Balint, Benjamin. ''Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left Into the Neoconservative Right'' (PublicAffairs; 2010) 290 pages
* Ehrman, John. "''Commentary'', the ''Public Interest'', and the Problem of Jewish Conservatism", ''American Jewish History'' 87.2&3 (1999) 159–181. online in Project MUSE, scholarly article by conservative historian
* Franczak, Michael. "Losing the Battle, Winning the War: Neoconservatives versus the New International Economic Order, 1974–82," ''Diplomatic History,'' Volume 43, Issue 5, November 2019, Pages 867–889
Losing the Battle, Winning the War: Neoconservatives versus the New International Economic Order, 1974–82

* Jeffers, Thomas L. ''Norman Podhoretz: A Biography'' (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Further reading

''Weekly Standard'' article on ''Commentary''

''The New York Sun'' article on who attends the annual ''Commentary''-hosted gathering




Nathan Abrams, ''Commentary Magazine 1945–1959: 'A Journal of Significant Thought and Opinion''. Bio on Cohen and ''Commentarys early history]

External links

*

"Commentary Magazine: An Inventory of Its Records"
at the Harry Ransom Center

{{Authority control

1945 establishments in New York (state)
American Jewish Committee
Conservative magazines published in the United States
Jewish magazines published in New York City
Magazines established in 1945
Neoconservatism
Political magazines published in the United States