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Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Podcast for today, May 10th, 2022.

I am Noah Rothman, the Associate Editor of Commentary Magazine and with us.

As always, is Executive Editor, Abe Greenwald, Hayab, Senior writer, Christine Rosen,

and Contributing Editor of Commentary Magazine and our friend Eli Lake.

Eli, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Kind of a sad day at Commentary Magazine today, Midge Dector, an intellectual giant,

very influential conservative cultural critic and liberal cultural critic over the course

of her storied career. Also, the matriarch of the Pothorid family, mother to John, wife

of Norman Pothorid's passed away yesterday, just shy of her 95th birthday, an incredible

life and legacy. John is obviously going to be out for the remainder of the week and he

is in our thoughts and the families and our thoughts and prayers.

We were performing a retrospective on some of the work she had done for commentary over

the many decades that she had worked in intellectual life and contributed to intellectual life.

There's too much to recount in this or any other podcast.

What we'll be doing a little look back over the course of the week.

I plucked out one essay that she had written examining, sort of critiquing and taking

apart, I guess in the modern parlance, we call it a take down, but it really wasn't.

It was just an analysis, but a critical analysis of Irving House intellectual journey, which

doubles as a history of the intellectual evolution of the American left in the mid 20th century.

It's a fascinating document of a particularly interesting and influential political movement,

...