I'm Confused by Sam Tanenhaus, But There's Nothing Confusing About Why I Shared Information About My Substack Deal
I'm Confused by Sam Tanenhaus, But There's Nothing Confusing About Why I Shared Information About My Substack Deal
none of this will be addressed, because the Times is the Times
Sam Tanenhaus’s review of my book is pretty weird! Weird in that I’m not sure what its thesis is or why any one paragraph follows another, weird in that (as is common with Tanenhaus) it’s written from a schizophrenic ideological position that nevertheless represents itself as the voice of sanity, weird in that its arguments and observations congeal across its length with no internal coherence or purpose whatsoever. Tanenhaus is a guy who forced Politico to issue a correction saying that Tanenhaus is not a conservative, but who could not then actually articulate his politics to Politico in a minimally coherent way. And he writes similarly, his books yawing back and forth from one comfortably middlebrow observation to the next, peddling one chin-stroking bromide after another, keeping the reader in the safe quasi-profundity of his warmed-over ideas, a Barnes & Noble of the mind. I am confused by the review, not offended, because to be offended I would have to know what the review is arguing; its headline makes a valiant effort at locating a thesis, but as far as I can tell that headline has literally no engagement with the piece it hangs over.
Now, I have a bit of an objection to assigning Tanenhaus to review my book: in maybe 2017 I very publicly insulted him on Facebook, and I was told at the time that it had gotten back to him and he was mad. Specifically, I said “I wouldn’t have lunch with Sam Tanenhaus if my dick was on fire and he had the last glass of water on Planet Earth.” I admit that’s a little crude, but it doesn’t change the fact that he maybe shouldn’t have been given this task.
The bigger issue is this: he makes a very big deal of pointing out that I shared the details of my Substack deal two and a half years ago, and particularly mocks the fact that I said so that I was doing so in the name of gender equity. But he includes no links to my doing so to make the context comprehensible. At the time, there was a huge controversy over who was being given these contracts, what their terms were, and why they appeared to only be going to white men. In that context, I opened the books and shared what my deal was, and in that context, I said that doing so was in the interest of gender equity. Of course it looks weird when you start a review of a book published in September 2023 with a totally irrelevant reference to a newsletter post from March 2021, without describing that context at all! His readers have no idea that I shared that information during a raging controversy that made my sharing it make sense. It’s a deeply deceptive way to begin a review, and without a link, it’s inexcusable. He further mocks my “47K+ SUBSCRIBERS,” designed to make you think that I had bragged about that, when in fact he’s pulled it directly from Substack’s CMS, something that I can’t control. He also makes fun of the fact that I say I’m trying to provide value for my paying readers because… well, I’m not sure. I am in fact trying to provide that value. I work for a living, Sam.
Personally, I think the lack of context here - no acknowledgement that I shared those financial details two and a half years ago and in the midst of a loud public controversy where people were calling for transparency - constitutes dishonesty large enough to merit a correction. But I shall receive no such consideration. The subhead derisively refers to me as a “Substack pundit,” but I have written for most of the biggest newspapers and magazines in the world, including for The New York Times on multiple occasions. If I’m not a freelancer with sufficient credits to avoid the condescension, who is?
The review was snarky. I dislike book reviews that refuse to thoughtfully consider arguments made by the author and only then critique them. Neither you nor Yascha Mounk received any careful consideration. I don't care what people said years ago about one another, or some quote about the contract you received from Substack. I read your book because I wanted to examine your ideas about elites and how they have failed the social justice movement. I'm not a Marxist; probably "Christian socialist" is more accurate, but your analysis was often spot on. Let your readers decide about the validity of your arguments and more important, use your ideas to more effectively work to better the lives of the poor.
I'm surprised people were confused by the thesis of the review. I'm especially surprised that Freddie was confused by the thesis of the review, as his response to it is very much a direct response to the thesis.
The thesis of Tanenhaus's review is this: these people -- deBoer and Mounk, yes, but presumably all the critics of wokeness -- are in it for the money. From Tanenhaus's point of view, this is especially clear with the Mounk book, because its clarity of expression and end-of-chapter bullet points render it perfect for middle-brow businessmen to read while they're bored in a layover. But the same goes for deBoer's book, as deBoer is a substack writer (i.e., he needs to satisfy his fans' preferences to make money), he's exhibitionist (as evidenced by his showing how much money he makes and how many subscribers he has), he's attacking woke (which sells well, and therefore means that its critics don't really mean it, but only want money), and he's a "self-described" marxist, which makes the attack-of-the-left-by-the-left all the more marketable (the "self-described" bit is curious; what, is there a council you're supposed to appeal to in order to get your credentials?).
The idea, then, is that by pointing out the moneyed interests, you can make an end-run around actually having to respond to the arguments in anything like a deep way. After all, this is the NEW YORK TIMES -- they don't have to actually respond to the arguments, they just have to tell the readers whether anyone needs to respond to the arguments. That said, Tanenhaus does make something of a passing effort to attack deBoer, but it's just to show that you don't need to take a grifter like Freddie seriously.
Given this, Freddie's response is completely responsive. He points out how the NYT, owing to its vast financial security, doesn't have to actually engage in any critiques of it. Like Zeus, it can throw thunderbolts from Mount Olympus without worrying about any reprisal. Whereas Freddie has to actually produce valuable content to make money, the Times can just flatter its readers, all the while telling them they're not like those yucky air-headed businessmen whom Mounk is sadly reduced to appealing to.
The whole thing reminds me of Socrates (the Times) making fun of the Sophists (deBoer and Mounk). Socrates didn't need to worry about making a living, so he could say that while he was in it for truth's sake, the Sophists just told you what you wanted to hear. The Sophists, in turn, could say that Socrates was just appealing to "wealthy conservative patrons" while they had to "live the life of commercial scrambling" (as Randall Collins put it on p. 88 of _The Sociology of Philosophies_).