The liberal crocodiles at The New York Times are shedding tears for National Review magazine. The headline of media reporter Tim Arango’s piece is "At National Review, a Threat to Its Reputation for Erudition." It is a curious topic for the Times, which usually treats the idea of intellectual conservatism as oxymoronic.

Arango mourns that the tenor of debate at National Review Online, the magazine’s Internet sister, "devolved into open nastiness" over the question of Sarah Palin’s fitness for the vice presidency, "laying bare debates among conservatives that in a pre-Internet age may have been kept behind closed doors." Arango claims that the coarsening effect of the Internet has damaged NR’s "reputation as the cradle for conservative intellectuals and home for erudite and well-mannered debate prized by its founder, William F. Buckley Jr." [Full disclosure: my uncle.]