Ross Douthat in The Atlantic re: Gopnik

In The Atlantic Ross Douthat mildly defends G.K. Chesterton against Gopnik's charges published by the New Yorker. Earlier posts about Gopnik's article are here and here.

But the whole point of the "in the context of his times" argument is precisely that by the standards of the '20s and '30s, it was morally impressive for a political writer to reject both fascism and communism, to praise Zionism, and to speak out forcefully against Nazi anti-Semitism - and not in its eliminationist phase, but in its very earliest stages.

more on the New Yorker article

The Times of Malta posted a piece against the slanderous New Yorker article mentioned earlier:

Gopnik's allegations have been dismissed by Dr William Oddie, whose book Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy will be published in November. While admitting that Chesterton's views on Jews were "eccentric" he holds that they were no different from those of Zionists, who maintained that Jews were exiles and would never be happy until they had their own country. (Chesterton died in 1936 before the state of Israel was created in 1948.) Dr Oddie states that "Gopnik is quoting grotesquely out of context" and that on several occasions in the late 19th century, Chesterton had passionately attacked anti-Semitism and that he particularly disliked the persecution of Jews.

Also, Nancy Brown posted Dale Ahlquist's response to the New Yorker at the ACS blog along with some more details on Chesterton's beliefs about the Jews.

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New Yorker article

This showed up at the NR Corner:

The Jolly Journalist [Rick Brookhiser]: Adam Gopnik has an interesting piece on G.K. Chesterton in the current New Yorker. I know Adam a little bit, and I enjoy his writing. I also share many of his reservations about Chesterton. But there is always a sense in Adam's pieces, as he rounds the club house turn, of making himself the measure of all things. Yet the world would be such a smaller place if we were all like Adam Gopnik—or all like any one of us.

The New Yorker article "The Back of the World: The genius of G. K. Chesterton" is not available online. Can any reader of C&F comment on it?

UPDATE:
the Commonweal mag's blog has some comments about the New Yorker article here. Some interesting points in this writeup, but the criticisms are the same old things one comes to expect.

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