Monday, January 9, 2017

One of the last honest journalists/columnists has passed.


Columnist Nat Hentoff  died at 91
Associated Press January 9, 2017

NEW YORK — Free-thinking author and columnist Nat Hentoff has died.
His son, Tom Hentoff, said his father died on Saturday from natural causes at his Manhattan apartment. He was 91.
Hentoff was a Village Voice contributor and columnist for 50 years and also wrote for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Down Beat and the Wall Street Journal. His more than 25 books included jazz and First Amendment works, novels and memoirs.
A bearded, scholarly figure, Hentoff was as likely to write a column about fiddler Bob Wills as a dissection of the Patriot Act, and to have his name appear in the liberal Voice as the conservative Washington Times.
(Now youse guys know that nobody hates the mainstream media and the press more than me. But Hentoff was an exception. I remember reading his column's in the Voice for many years. Before the Internet I would read every paper I could get my hands on. Every day I would read the Post, Daily News and the Times. The Voice every week. Then I would hit the newstand in Times Square for out of town papers like the Boston Globe or the Chicago Tribune. The Voice had the best listings in town for entertainment and restaurants and stuff.
Hentoff was very liberal but he was honest and fair. If you wanted to know how liberals thought he was a good guy to read. He was vilified for some of his out of the box thinker by fellow libs. Which just illustrated that he wasn't a rigid ideologue in the manner of most of the press today. We won't see his ilk ever again.)

2 comments:

chickelit said...

There is a "finding the good in liberals" tag which would be appropriate.

Methadras said...

I've read Hentoff. Was he honest and fair? That's debatable. Considering his leftist world view, what we would consider honest and fair was usually an assessment of the indictment of American values. He was a contrarian that fancied himself a 'devil's advocate'. More of an antagonist for the sake of antagonism. I'm a fan of the unvarnished truth, but rather, not from any one point of angle, but literally from an unapologetic point of view. Just the raw data, no context sensitivity whatsoever.