National Review Ends Relationship With John Derbyshire
With outrage mounting after National Review contributor John Derbyshire penned a shockingly racially provocative and insensitive post in an unrelated web magazine, National Review announced on Saturday evening that they are terminating their relationship with Derbyshire.
Editor Rich Lowry released the statement on the National Review’s “Corner” section:
Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream,” or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.
Derbyshire’s offending post was strictly beyond the respected bounds of appropriate dailouge — not to mention healthy thought — and National Review made the correct decision to sever any professional ties.
Frances Martel’s column on the internet reaction from National Review contributors and editors as well as commentators all across the political spectrum suggests that there has been nearly universal revulsion and condemnation of Derbyshire’s conduct. That is certainly appropriate.
Whatever possessed the writer to pen that racist screed, William F. Buckley’s legacy publication is certainly in damage control mode today. They made the right move to end their relationship with Derbyshire – that may not be enough, though, for many still outraged that anyone harboring such sentiments ever had a relationship with the publication in the first place.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
