Good-Bye, Friend: RIP, IHT's John Vinocur

If there ever was a pundit worth quoting from the International Herald Tribune (which used to be jointly owned by The New York Times and The Washington Post), it was John Vinocur. 

The lone conservative pundit who rose to become the executive editor of the IHT (amazing, as he was a conservative) was always worth reading, as I discovered through the years that it became more and more evident that the plethora of liberals there (half from the Times and half from the Post) were often boring and oftenpredictable (not to mention flat-out wrong). 

And No Pasarán linked to John's pieces in the IHT many a time over the years, — not least when he seemed to be the only man in the MSM not to feel "a thrill go up the leg" about Barack Obama — and he was the true red-blooded conservative (not the David Brooks type) in a liberal newspaper.

I communicated with him once or twice — precisely because our blog would be quoting large swathes of his pieces. When I started blogging, indeed, I decided that I would not only link to pieces on the internet but regularly quote extensive excerpts on our blog (which turns 18 this month), because you never knew when a website would disappear.

I communicated this to him at the time, and he seemed happy about it as well as intrigued.

But I admit that I never believed that the website of a major newspaper like the IHT (the descendant of an American-language newspaper founded in Paris in 1887) would suffer that fate. But because the Times did nothing to save it, the IHT's online presence is gone from the web (probably for all time) — that is, with the exception of Vinocur from the early 21st century, if you are a reader of No Pasáran.

I'll be honest: I cannot deny that I'm damn proud that I started copy/pasting long quotes, or the IHT's Vinocur would be lost on the internet (perhaps for all time?).

God bless you, John Vinocur. And godspeed.

• Related: Not John Vinocur, Who Was a Breed Apart: “Journalists used to act like cynics but at heart we were idealists; Now we’re often cynics masquerading as idealists”

PS: Here is a piece mentioning Joe Biden that dates from the election of 2004 (on this occasion, Instapundit is — again — involved):

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Europe in for a letdown if it's counting on Kerry, says Vinocur

Via Instapundit and Just One Minute: the IHT's John Vinocur, who went to Oberlin, had an article to-day on a U. Michigan seminar (thanks, Mr. Minuteman, for the link) attended by ranking Dems and European diplomats. Vinocur has Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman Joe Biden making the following remarks:

Recalling that he had talked to six European government chiefs about the war, Biden caricatured how they would have done things better. "Blah blah blah, international cooperation," the senator mimicked. He added, in his own voice, "Give me a break, huh."

When Biden offered the possibility, beyond more civility, of a future in contrast to the Bush administration, it was in a plague-on-your-houses context. He said of the two, Europe and Bush, "You have fallen in love with international institutions to the extent that this administration has fallen in love with unilateral action."

For good measure, Biden threw in the view that the European Union will not have a unified foreign policy, and with it, the phrase, "I hope you do, I wish you well, but I see no evidence you're going to spend the money needed" to create a serious European military force either.