National Review Fires Columnist John Derbyshire for Racist Screed About Blacks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The National Review fires columnist John Derbyshire because of his racist screed about blacks that appeared on Taki’s Magazine. Well, I guess Roger Ailes will find a spot for him on Fox Nation. It’s pretty disturbing that Rich Lowry could associate with someone who has written racist and homophobic articles in the past. In fact, John Derbyshire has a long history of racially provocative comments and writings, and once said during an interview, “I am a homophobe.” I’m pretty sure Rich Lowry was well aware of his past. Here’s Lowry’s post on John Derbyshire firing:
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.
The problem for me is why it took Rich Lowry an entire news cycle for him to fire John Derbyshire for his despicable rant on Taki’s Magazine, considering he wasted no time lambasting former Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry for his anti-Asian comment about “dirty shops” in his Ward 8 district. You can’t have it both ways.
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