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In other words, Reason, which has verged between okay and awful since in various ways since the Gillespie/Welch era, has gotten just plain Trumpy.
A lot of us who are alum aren't surprised. @soledadobrien @daveweigel @RobGeorge @KerryHowley https://twitter.com/radleybalko/status/1326197715353604096
A lot of us who are alum aren't surprised. @soledadobrien @daveweigel @RobGeorge @KerryHowley https://twitter.com/radleybalko/status/1326197715353604096
Some of this is certainly tied to the problems within libertarianism (which has always been an ally of White Supremacy) and the White privileged imbued within it.
Let's also keep in mind that Reason is highly dependent on the very donors who are also fans of Trumpism. It can't just count on Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Drew Carey to keep the doors open.
But the bigger problem lies also with how Reason itself has long ago tethered from its the moorings put up by longtime editor Virginia Postrel.
Gillespie tried the odd experiment of promoting libertarianism as a lifestyle, not simply an ideological framing. It was a failure.
Gillespie tried the odd experiment of promoting libertarianism as a lifestyle, not simply an ideological framing. It was a failure.
It was helpful for Gillespie in landing higher-profile gigs after leaving Reason. But it was adrift, basically back to the days when it would publish conspiracy theories about FDR and Pearl Harbor.
Welch made things slightly better. But he himself has become an ideologue and nihilistic (the latter being the tendency of your typical Center-White/conservative/libertarian White Gen-Xer who came of age in the 1990s). So neither the thinking or the writing really improved.
Keep in mind this all came just as nearly all of Reason's best and most-thoughtful writers moved on. Balko left for the Washington Post. Weigel left for the Post, then Slate, then back again. My pal, Jeremy Lott, to the Spectator and parts beyond. Howley doing her thing.
What you have left at Reason is Jesse Walker (whose cultural work and coverage of conspiracy theorists is great), Jacob Sullum (the great civil libertarian), Brian Doherty - and a whole lot of jokesters and dregs. And Robby Soave.
Walker, Sullum and Doherty were Virginia Postrel's hires. So you expect them to be good and great. The rest? Well, they were hired by inferior editors-in-chief, who occasionally lucked out in finding a Balko or Howley or Weigel or Lott. But that luck is gone.
