I’m sympathetic to Ross Douthat’s argument that a center-right version of Newsweek could be a force for good, but his suggestion that Newsmax (a bidder for the newsweekly) could carry out that strategy is lunacy:

If Meacham had wanted to play to what seems like Newsweek’s business strength — its large audience outside the Acela corridor — he would have tried to tilt the magazine toward the center-right rather than the center-left, in the hopes of becoming the go-to outlet for the millions of Americans who think that the elite media is too liberal but find Rush Limbaugh too conservative…

Meacham didn’t do any of this, but maybe a Newsweek owned by Newsmax would. True, the Newsmaxers are hard right, not center-right: They’re more Rush than Rauch, more Levin than Labash. But they’re also insisting that if they buy the magazine, “Newsweek would continue in its mission to objectively report the news and provide analysis from a wide spectrum of perspectives.” This sounds like a philosophy that would be compatible with a gradual rightward shift for the newsweekly, rather than a sudden wrench into Sarah Palin territory. And that shift might — might! — be what it takes to save Newsweek from extinction.

Unfortunately, Newsmax’s claims about how it would operate the magazine are cheap talk — they have every incentive to try to appear respectable at this point in the process. The reality is that the magazine has a long history of using nasty rhetoric and promoting misinformation. Among other examples, here’s what we wrote at Spinsanity about the Deck of Weasels cards sold by Newsmax during the Iraq war:

The most explicit comparisons [to Iraqi leaders depicted on the now-famous deck of cards issued by the Pentagon to troops in Iraq to help them identify top Iraqi officials], however, have been made by NewsMax.com and Greenpeace, who have both issued their own decks of cards featuring their political enemies. The NewsMax [deck] includes a picture of a politician or celebrity doctored to include a beret bearing the logo of the Iraqi Republican Guard and a “quote revealing his anti-American, pro-Saddam ranting”. Prominently featured are French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac as the Ace of Spades (Saddam Hussein’s position in the Pentagon deck) and “Sen. Robert ‘KKK’ Byrd” as the Ace of Diamonds.

I wouldn’t expect this company to engage in “a gradual rightward shift for the newsweekly,” and you shouldn’t either.