The conservative media world has been rocked with the ouster of American Spectator Publisher and President Alfred S. Regnery, a titan in center-right book and media publishing, in a fight over the direction of the 45-year-old monthly with founding editor R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. The bottom line: Regnery felt it was time for a younger focus, new staff and eventually a younger editor to revive the conservative thought magazine. Tyrrell and the American Spectator Foundation board, satisfied with the staff, print publication and daily website, wanted a different marketing focus to draw in new readers and advertisers.
Regnery, former president of Regnery Publishing and author of “The Ascendance of American Conservatism,” the authoritative history of the movement, said that to stall further circulation declines he was urging changes to reach younger audiences. Also, to stake a claim to a larger part of conservative thought, he wanted longer, more impactful stories.
In a memo to friends, Regnery said the changes he was advocating would help the Spectator “fill a void in American right-of-center political journalism.” Nonetheless, he added, “as the editor-in-chief remarked, he has edited the magazine for the past 40 years and is entirely competent to continue doing so, and needs no assistance.”
The Spectator board, meanwhile, said changes were needed on the business side, Regnery’s territory. At the board’s request, Regnery resigned effective Feb. 20, telling friends that his ideas were rejected and the magazine preferred to continue “without my help.” A new publisher hasn’t been named.
Tyrrell said he’s already moving past the controversy. “The magazine is continuing and all’s well,” he said, adding that Regnery “did a great job.”
Obese? Blame the Oscars
Americans have something new to blame for their obesity and general lethargy: movie and sports stars. “Fun usually means bad food,” said Dan Glickman, the former president of the Motion Picture Association of America that runs the Academy Awards.
Glickman is part of a group at the Bipartisan Policy Center trying to make it easier for Americans to live and eat better. But he concedes that it’s hard to do when nobody from the entertainment industry helps out. “The people who are in movies and professional sports, the people folks pay to see in sports and entertainment, are all healthy, glamorous, and beautiful and yet the food that’s served in the venues they go to see them in is by and large high sugar, high fat and high cholesterol.”
He’s hoping some of the stars come out against bad theater and stadium food, and he wants the venues to offer healthier menus. Of course, Glickman added, people like to escape at the movies with a box of Goobers or a warm tub of buttered popcorn, but “there are alternatives to candy.”
NFL, meaner than Congress
He’s played in two bruising professions, but former Rep. Steve Largent, a Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver, said the NFL is worse than Congress. In a closed-door symposium sponsored by the centrist GOP Ripon Society this month, he urged top Hill aides to treat Democrats as “opponents, not your enemies.”
It’s a message the former Seattle Seahawk said he followed even when playing the rival Oakland Raiders. “It was important to remember — most of the time anyway — that the guys across the line were just like me, playing hard and trying to win,” he said in comments provided to Washington Secrets.
“That’s true here, too,” added Largent, president of CTIA-The Wireless Association. “Except that no one in Congress has ever tried to poke me in the eyes on the bottom of a pile after a tackle as they did in Oakland.”
Paul Bedard, The Examiner’s Washington Secrets columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears each weekday in the Politics section and on washingtonexaminer.com.
