Clay Risen’s obituary for the conservative British writer David Pryce-Jones could not be a clearer illustration of the New York Times’ imperial, establishment agenda. I suppose we should be thankful that he demonstrates this agenda so openly. Brimming with code words for excusing racism and imperial lackey-ism, Risen’s piece is a pathetic, slavish elegy for a mythical past – the Good Ol’ Days when, in Risen’s most wistful phrase, Pryce-Jones “was what was once known as a man of letters.”

Ah, yes, wasn’t it great when we had almost exclusively white, only male, “men of letters” who rubbed shoulders with, well, “He seemed to have known everyone.” A few other “men of letters” are named, including that racist fraud Bill Buckley, of course. (Perhaps for local color, Risen also names V.S. Naipaul.)

But back to the hagiography. Pryce-Jones was a writer whose “world-spanning interests, balanced by a rock-ribbed opposition to communism and support for the state of Israel, made him a powerful and longstanding conservative voice.” Translation: He was a staunch champion of the imperial project, in the “West” and in the Middle East. “’He was a man of the right, but he was quite broad in his social circle,’ said Daniel Johnson, a writer and the editor of TheArticle, an online journal, ‘as long as he didn’t feel you were betraying the deep values of Western civilization.’” It’s always a boon when you can find someone to extol the virtues of “Western civilization.”

“’He had an expansive humanity about him,’ Roger Kimball, who as editor of The New Criterion and Encounter Books published much of Mr. Pryce-Jones’s later work, said in an interview. ‘He knew how the world worked.’” Let me guess, those “leftists” toward whom Pryce-Jones “held great antipathy” didn’t know jack, if you read between the lines.

Risen goes on, “In the years following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Pryce-Jones became a leading figure of what might be called the Islamo-pessimists, a loose group of writers and thinkers — among them, the historians Bernard Lewis and Elie Kedourie — who believed that the Muslim world was largely antagonistic toward Western ideas about democracy and human rights, and that conflict between the two sides was inevitable.”

“Islamo-pessimists.” That’s such a nice way to describe blatant racism, Islamophobia, and the journalistic hacks who promoted them and fueled the warmongering of the political classes. Did you think of that all by yourself, Clay? Bravo, you!

The piece of drivel concludes with another wistful testimonial. “’There used to be a type like David Pryce-Jones,’ the writer Jay Nordlinger said in an interview. ‘They were mainly British. They were generalists. They kind of knew everything. There aren’t people like that anymore.’”

Ah me, oh my. So sad that we shall never see their likes again. They were mainly British. They were mainly white. They were men. Men of letters. They kind of thought they knew everything. They were racists and imperialists, snobs and idiots.

I only wish there weren’t people like that anymore.

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