I suddenly find it a little bit harder to despise Podhoretz the Younger:
Twenty years ago in Insight, I wrote the worst article of my life (and that’s saying a lot—in 27 years of published pieces, a lot of duds have come from my pen) about Denby and a piece he wrote for New York magazine about the declining quality of American movies. He was right and I was very wrong, and I’m glad to have this chance to correct the record and congratulate Denby for this one.
The ability of pundits and the news media in general to pretend that they are never wrong is one of the most infuriating things about reading the news. Before I quit reading the Star & Sickle, it used to drive me nuts how they would blithely make a prediction I absolutely knew would be wrong, never admit it once events failed to come to pass as foretold, then make exactly the same prediction again the next time around.
Well, I shall have to console myself with the certain knowledge that PtY will write something prodigiously ludicrous in the near future… but doggone it if he hasn’t taken all the joy out of it.