And 'know-nothingism' has a specific historical meaning, one that makes perfect sense in this context. >is it bad that a non-native speaker who is comfortable

And 'know-nothingism' has a specific historical meaning, one that makes perfect sense in this context. >is it bad that a non-native speaker who is comfortable reading CNN has trouble with the New Yorker Not especially - they have different audiences: CNN targets a wide demographic and the NYer targets older, affluent liberals, who tend to have advanced levels of education. And I'd argue that even their readership might find some of the stylistic choices made in the NYer annoying - eg: spelling out numerical amounts rather than using Arabic numbers.