Leon Wieseltier is the Washington Diarist in the new New Republic.
“Dread of Winter” is a typically thoughtful, provocative, and stylish article about —among many other things— the recent “humorous” New Yorker Obamas-as-terrorists cover.
There is also a new (at least to me) feature available: a podcast of the article with the strong, sinuous prose being read, at a quick pace, by a generally uninflected but borderline chipper female voice. I know that I’ve still got one and a half feet firmly planted on Gutenberg ground, but I find this new format distinctly unsettling — although not so much for its intention (at least I don’t think so) as for this incongruously inappropriate execution.
And then I think — maybe this is exactly the kind of joke he’s writing about and I’m not getting it and it’s just another dark night in the bridge and tunnel of my soul.