Andrew Sullivan on Navasky/CJR

Andrew Sullivan does not hide his thoughts today about Columbia Journalism Review and Victor Navasky:

It turns out that the Alger-Hiss-loving lefty, Victor Navasky, has been running the Columbia Journalism Review for a year already! Nick Lemann was instrumental in hiring the almost comically old left dinosaur as a "distinguished journalist" to supervise the publication. It remains, of course, strictly unbiased, if a lot less transparent than, say, blogs. Mediacrity has the details. Now can you imagine the fuss if they had hired Bill Buckley? And kept it on the DL for so long?

By the way, Sullivan is not the first to bring up the Buckley comparison:

But, Navasky is not suited to be running a non-partisan media watchdog. I would say the same of William Buckley or any other pundit known largely for holding ideological views strongly slanted to one side.

(And an off-topic question about Sullivan's post: What does on the DL mean? In my world it is a place where a post-steroid Jason Giambi spends far too much time. Presumably Sullivan is using some sort of Britishism for secretly or on the QT. Help, anybody?

Update: Reader John Henderson writes, "DL = "Down Low" as in "Keep this on the down low." A modern version of "keep this under your hat.")