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RealClearPolitics, the polling data aggregator, is undergoing a round of cuts.
In a letter to staff last Wednesday, seen by Cockburn, publisher David DesRosiers writes: “Good people, our people, and the families that they serve will be impacted. We are sorry.”
While cuts to media are nothing new given the challenging business environment, the reasoning behind RealClear’s reductions is somewhat unusual. “We find ourselves under attack from a shadowy new threat – this time from the Right,” writes DesRosiers.
“A cabal of so-called conservatives is now attempting to stamp out independent voices. They have persuaded some of our previous benefactors who supported RealClearFoundation while it benefited them to withdraw philanthropic support. Their desired endgame is a hostile takeover with a mind toward debasing, if not killing, RCP.” The RealClearFoundation is the nonprofit wing of RealClear through which their websites are funded.
Cockburn reads RCP on a daily basis. Their aggregation of stories draws from all sources. For example, this morning the offering includes the New Republic, the American Prospect, Fox News and the American Mind. The heterodoxy is very Spectator in spirit. Whether that crucial selling point would remain intact under new “conservative” leadership is unclear.
Who are these prospective new owners? Cockburn understands RealClear is another target of John Solomon and Mark Meckler’s proposed roll-up of right-leaning outlets. Perhaps that explains where they plan to get the audience from…
On our radar
TANKS VERY MUCH A collection of tanks and self-armored guns is being amassed on the National Mall ahead of Saturday’s parade to commemorate the US Army’s 250th anniversary (which happens to be on President Trump’s birthday).
BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES Civil unrest is ongoing nationwide after Trump deployed the National Guard at the end of Saturday’s “anti-ICE” protest in Los Angeles. There are reports of looting in the city.
FETTERWORTH’S Senator John Fetterman, the Democrat from Pennsylvania, stopped by “MAGA haunt” Butterworth’s last night. This evening the bistro will host Francis Fukuyama at a sold-out Wisdom of Crowds event.
New York mag gets Maced
In a new docuseries about Alex Cooper, the Call Her Daddy podcast host accuses her former coach Nancy Feldman of sexual harassment during her time playing soccer for Boston University. Step forward New York magazine, who poured kerosene on the story with a Freudian slip for the ages. In a Monday X post sharing an article about the allegation, the magazine referred to “Boston University soccer coach, Nancy Mace.”
Naturally Congresswoman Mace reacted with the measured resolve you would expect from someone who represents the austere office of– oh, who are we kidding?
“NOT ME. WRONG PERSON,” Mace wrote, alongside a screenshot of the error. “Let me be absolutely clear: I’ve never met her. I’ve never coached soccer at Boston University. And I have never – ever – sexually harassed anyone. @NYMag, and anyone repeating this lie: Take it down or lawyer up. We are demanding an immediate retraction and full correction. You don’t get to smear me with a lazy, dangerous typo.” She then quote-tweeted her own tweet to say, “So sick of the lamestream media.” A postscript was then added to the article that reads, “Cooper’s coach was Nancy Feldman. A post on X incorrectly identified her.”
Cockburn was wondering – did anyone else see Mace’s screenshot post on social media long before they’d come across the Cooper story? And are any of his readers familiar with the Streisand Effect?
The Buck stops here
Cockburn spent Sunday evening up in Friendship Heights at the house of his Spectator comrade Jacob Heilbrunn and his wife Sarah Despres, who were hosting a book party for Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited biography of William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America is a thousand-page doorstop that took 27 years to complete – “closer to 30,” noted one guest. “This book,” wrote Christopher Sandford in his recent Speccie review, “is the product of immense learning and shows a rare familiarity with its subject and his times.” The host, dapper as ever in his Neapolitan jacket, introduced his friend Tanenhaus by quipping that Buckley’s biographer was dressed as though he were auditioning for membership in Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society of which Buckley was a notable member.
Guests supped white wine and snacked on samosas and chicken satay – and later, pizza. Future soirées may find themselves catered by Oscar Heilbrunn: the 19-year-old son of the hosts has ambitions to open a restaurant in DC one day. Heilbrunn Sr. also showed off the monstrous sound system in his basement to a few attendees, blasting Shostakovich and Duke Ellington.
In attendance: Deputy Director of National Intelligence William P. Ruger, Modern Age’s Daniel McCarthy, the Atlantic’s David Frum, the Washington Post’s Damir Marusic, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, Newsmax’s James Rosen, the Atlantic Council’s Melinda Haring and Rachel Rizzo, Steve Clemons, David Klion, James Kirchick and The Spectator’s Freddy Gray.
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