Shattered Glassman - Letters - Letter to the Editor

Washington Monthly, March, 2004

I found your piece on James Glassman ("Meet the Press" by Nicholas Confessore, December) especially amusing, since I remember an essay by Glassman in the Harvard Crimson ages ago, in which he ranted and raved as the leftist student radical to end all leftist student radicals. Luscious, succulent irony.

Edward Meadows

Jerez de la Frontera, Spain

Fabulous job on the piece about James Glassman. The article captures the Glassman I know from working with him in New Orleans in the '70s: a brillian mind and mien whose personal magnetism has gotten too close to his moral compass, giving wacky readings.

Tim Lyman

via email

For years, The Washington Post published an op-ed column by Jessica Mathews, always identified at the end, as I recall, as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. After her column stopped running, for whatever reason, Glassman's began running on the Post's op-ed page. Unlike Mathews, however, he was not identified--until a friend of mine, knowing of Glassman's affiliation with AEI, pointed nut the affiliation in a letter to Donald Graham. Try to imagine the Post running a regular op-ed column by someone affiliated with, say, the AFL-CIO without mentioning the affiliation. I can't imagine it. I dare-say you can't.

Morton Mintz

via email