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Institutional
Affiliations
Hoover Institution: Media Fellow (1997) (3) (4)
New York Post: Editorial Page Editor and Columnist (1997-current) (1)
Fox News Channel: Contributor (1997-current) (1)
National Review Online: Columnist (1)
ReganBooks: Consulting Editor (1)
West Wing Television Show: Consultant (3)
Weekly Standard: Co-founder, former Deputy Director (1995-1997), and current Contributing Editor (1)
U.S. News and World Report: former Contributing Writer (1)
Insight Television Magazine: former Contributing Writer (1)
Washington Times: former Contributing Writer (1)
Time Magazine: former Researcher and Reporter (1) (2)
Government Service
Office of the President: Speechwriter for President Reagan (1988) (1); Speechwriter for George H.W. Bush (1989) (2)
Office of National Drug Control Policy: Special Assistant to William Bennett (1)
Corporate Connections/Business Interests
White House Writers Group: Co-founder (1)
Education
University of Chicago: degree not specified (5)
Right Web Connections
Individuals
Elliott Abrams
William Bennett
Midge Decter
Rupert Murdoch
Norman Podhoretz
Organizations
Hoover Institution
Weekly Standard
Fox News Corporation |
Highlights
& Quotes
John Podhoretz, the son of Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, is a second-generation neoconservative. He came of age during the rise of the neoconservative camp to political prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At the University of Chicago, Podhoretz came under the influence of Alan Bloom, the neocon author of The Closing of the American Mind, and founded a conservative newspaper. (5) Family connections secured him positions in the Reagan administration. The Greater Talent Network, which promotes Podhoretz, says that he "was wholeheartedly attracted to the conservative atmosphere that permeated the city of Washington," which "seemed like Mecca of sorts to the neoconservative Podhoretz, still an impressionable young man in his early twenties." According to Podhoretz, Washington in the 1980s was "the red-hot center of the United States for the people of the right." (8)
Podhoretz enjoyed a brief stint in government service as speechwriter for Reagan in 1988 and George W. Bush in 1989. He also was special assistant to Drug Czar William Bennett during 1989.
In 1994-1995, Podhoretz, "with the backing of telecommunications mogul Rupert Murdoch," helped launch the Weekly Standard. (8) However, Podhoretz did not take well to being constantly overshadowed at the Standard by Kristol and Fred Barnes, and in 1997 he became an editor and columnist for one of Rupert Murdoch's many enterprises, the neoconservative New York Post.
John Podhoretz has been described in the New York Magazine as a narcissist who has "inherited his father's literary narcissism, but without the ideological vigor." (5) Eric Alterman, The Nation's media critic, writes that Podhoretz "has spent virtually his entire life supping at the table of strange right-winger foreigners seeking to buy their way into respectability by courting the American right." Alterman, among others, notes the poor quality of Podhoretz's writing. Because of this, he worked at U.S. News and World Report for a short time "and published next to nothing" since the editors there were "real journalists." Podhoretz was then "rescued by comrades in the Reagan/Bush speech writing office." (6)
Podhoretz, described by Jim Lobe as a "ubiquitous booster of the hawks," has written two books: Hell of a Ride (1992) and Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane (2004) (7). He has also written for Time, U.S. News and World Report, Washington Times, Weekly Standard, American Spectator, and National Review Online. In addition, he is a consulting editor of the right-wing imprint of HarperCollins called ReganBooks, which published his mother's autobiography, An Old Wives Tale: My Seven Decades in Love and War (2001).
According
to Hanna Rosin, writing in New York Magazine, the staff
of the Washington Times joked that people thought his
name was "John P. Normanson," "because the paper's editor, Arnaud
de Borchgrave, a friend of his parents', walked around the office
introducing him as John Podhoretz, Norman's son." (5) Podhoretz,
one of the young neocons known as "mini-cons," is also related
to Elliott Abrams and Steven C. Munson, who are also family members
of the Podhortez-Decter clan.
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