Magisterialness

They had the wit, the tact and the clout to have, let's say, warned Bruce Bawer off premature magisterialness; teased Scott Malcolmson into an occasional macho or Eurocentric fling; put Christopher Hitchens on a strict budget of abusive epithets; fed David Denby some intellectual red meat; coaxed Walter Kendrick and Ellen Willis into giving sex, theory and rock 'n' roll a rest now and then; persuaded Barbara Ehrenreich and James Wolcott to cool the wisecracks; forbidden Paul Berman to mention Parisian intellectuals.