In a not entirely surprising development, John Derbyshire has been fired by National Review in the wake of his racist rant from yesterday:
Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer.
(…)
His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.
It was the right decision, of course.
