50
PARTISAN REVIEW
IV
In the class war the
New
r
orker
is ostentatiously neutral. It
makes fun of subway guards and of men-about-town, of dowagers
and laundresses, of shop-girls and debutantes. It refuses, officially, to
recognize the existence of wars, strikes, and revolution, just as it doesn't
mention the more unpleasant diseases or the grosser aspects of sexual
passion. Deliberately-for these gentlemen know very well what they
are about-its editors confine their attention to trivia. This is not to
say they oppose change, since that too would commit them. They
affect a gentle bewilderment toward the social system, as if it were
some labyrinthine, and potentially dangerous, piece of machinery.
With shrewdly calculated vagueness, they pronounce that it is all very
complicated, that only experts can understand it, and that they are
not, Thank God, experts.
The
New rorker's
position in the class war, however, is not so
simple as its editors would have us believe. Its neutrality is itself a
form of upper class display, since only the economically secure can
afford such Jovian aloofness from the common struggle. In times like
these there is something monstrously inhuman in the deliberate cul-
tivation of the trivial. "Jeanette MacDonald marries Gene Ray-
mond in a church, of all places. Hay-fever people can have their
nostrils ionized. Seventy shop-girls swoon en masse in France. The
midsummer ice season starts in the Adirondacks. A new purge in
Russia. A Fascist gain in Spain. Will Hays authorizes a six-foot kiss."
Only a neurotic, a well-fed neurotic, could thus desensitize himself.
But even the
New
r
orker
cannot pass over certain crying social
injustices. Even the
New rorker
has its moments-March 13, 1937,
and July 10, 1937, to be specific. On the first date it boldly denounced
President Roosevelt for his infamous Court Plan, and on the second
it gave its support to the newspaper publishers in their conflict with
the Newspaper Guild. It is good to know that when the foundations
of society are imperilled, the
New
r
orker
may be depended on to quit
fooling around and get down to business. Among the thousands of
editorials which the
New
r
orker
has printed in its thirteen years of
existence, these are unique on several counts. For one thing, they are
almost painfully in earnest, with only the most perfunctory touches of
humor.* For another, they are quite badly written-perhaps because
it is hard to maintain the elegant-trifler pose when one's deepest emo-
*
Quite different is the
New Torker's
manner when its editorial conscience bids
it take a liberal position. Several years ago there was a great sensation in ad·
vertising circles: the
New Torker
had come out in favor of the Tugwell bill for
federal regulation of advertising! But, to quote
Fortune:
"When the advertising
gentry read the item they found it so swathed in whimsey that not even the
staunchest Tory could take affront."
