The Dave Weigel Flap and Why You Watch What You Write to Complete Strangers

The scandal du jour in the press concerning Dave Weigel has journalists--who claim superhuman strength to separate their personal biases from reporting--up in arms.

The bareboned facts of the story are this: Weigel was (past tense) a reporter supposedly covering the Republican Party. Weigel's contempt for the GOP was palpable, and some intemperate comments on the leftwing list serv Journolist prove it.

Now we're being told that e-mails to that list were and should be considered private, and that it is unfair that Weigel's nasty remarks have cost him his job. Unfortunately, I can't really have any sympathy for a guy who makes his living as a writer, specifically a writer on the internet. How anyone can correspond on computers and think it's like calling your buddy late at night is beyond me. There's nothing secret that you say in internet forums, period. And that includes wishing people dead for disagreeing with the president. Weigel likes to use the term "ratfucking" when discussing Republicans. Seems to me he's the ratfucker that's been ratfucked.

UPDATE: After reading that asshole TBogg, I have even less sympathy for David Weigel. After all, according to nutbag TBogg, an important part of journalism is digging dirt on whoever you're covering. Sadly, that dirt seems to only hit Republicans (a coincidence, I know), and Weigel's donkey pom-pons prove it. Even some on the right argue that Weigel separated his ideology from his writing, but I'm a big consistency buff, and I doubt conservative reporters who ranted about their whacko subjects (and stratagized about spinning events for the GOP) would be given the same leniency. We've seen it before, after all.

UPDATE: I suppose the real lesson here is that "off the record" is meaningless, for generals and for journalists.

Would That Andrew Sullivan...

Put this much effort into tracking the lies of Teh One.

Many of the things on this list are either merely Sullivan's definition of lie (such as "Palin lied when she claimed in her convention speech that an oil gas pipeline "began" under her guidance; in fact, the pipeline was years from breaking ground, if at all." We all know that "began" can mean a lot of things other than breaking ground.) or simply unimportant (such as Trig Palin trutherism). Some are legitimate concerns (such as claims of abuse of power), while others are so insignificant as to be laughable (ZOMG1!!1!! Harry Potter!!!!).

The real chicken bone sticking in Sullivan's craw, and the reason for his Palin hatared, is this one:

Palin lied when she told Charlie Gibson that she does not pass judgment on gay people; in fact, she opposes all rights between gay spouses and belongs to a church that promotes conversion therapy.

How dare she not support gay marriage or belong to a church that offers an alternative to gay solidarity! In Sullivan's world, not embracing gay marriage means you are, in fact, "passing judgment" on gay people. Which is the real reason Sullivan doesn't spend his time tracing the many, many lies and flip-flops of Barack Obama, but, instead, worries about Trig Palin's parentage.

More on CNN's "Objectivity"

Video and more at Hot Air.
They teach that arrogance in J-school in Snobbery 101.

Covering the Nutroots

I put it in an update in an earlier post, but this really deserves a post all on its own. All right-thinking liberals know that the traditional media is all owned by wingnuts and the Left has no influence, right? That's what we hear from the Pandagonistas and others. So, if the wingnuts control traditional MSM, how did the moonbats get the Austin American-Statesman to pull its front page story on the convention?

Miracles, I suppose. Except they don't believe in God. Random chance?

Here's the original story as it was intended before the nutroots went ballistic:

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Name-dropping Al Gore and his call for a switch to clean, renewable energy within 10 years was enough to pull whoops of approval from the 2,000 or 3,000 marauding liberals gathered for Netroots Nation at the Austin Convention Center on Saturday morning.

So when the former vice president and Nobel Prize co-winner made a surprise -- and cleverly scripted -- appearance during U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's talk, it looked like the conference might turn into a faint-in.

Talk that Pelosi (who is arguably so left-leaning that her parenthetical should be D-Beijing) would have a Very Special Guest had been buzzing about the conference of liberal bloggers, pols and media types since it began Thursday (it concludes today). But it wasn't clear to attendees that something was afoot until a schedule change handed out Saturday morning indicated the speaker's talk would last 45 minutes longer than previously indicated.

Not that Gore's appearance was necessary to whip up the troops.

From the beginning, it was clear these people were convinced the electoral map would be repainted with a brush sopping with blue paint come November.

The believers will tell you it's morning, that they smell the napalm. And it smells like, oh, yes, victory.

It didn't seem to matter that the conservative and much smaller Defending the American Dream Summit -- featuring syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr -- was going on in Austin at the same time. That was miles from downtown, so there was little chance for a rumble.

With the current administration's low approval rating, a charismatic presumptive Democratic nominee and a Republican opponent some in the GOP have been reluctant to even air-kiss, the energy was palpable and, like the political blogosphere, terribly self-confirming.

They went to panels about how the presidential election would be won house by house, block by block. They staged mock media interviews and critiqued themselves, and showed films ("Crawford") and Internet videos ("Harry Potter and Dark Lord Waldemart"). They attended panels on the war, health care, online social networks, volunteer organizing and expanding the networking power of something called an "Internet."

There was even one panel Friday featuring Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (wearing, as if to galvanize stereotype, what appeared to be Birkenstocks) that was essentially about how the media weren't liberal enough.

As they say, only in Austin.

Filmmaker Paul Stekler, who teaches film production and politics at the University of Texas, said:"As you have greater democratization (through the use of technology to distribute one's message), you also have a greater degree of what's called confirmation bias. We live in a very different and weird world in terms of dissemination of information right now."

Indeed, you couldn't find anybody who disagreed that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were "two ignoramuses," a label hurled by Parag Mehta, the Democratic National Committee's director of training.

Big names? Got 'em. There was Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the Daily Kos political blog, who hatched the idea a few years ago to get his like-minded pals together and who, in a Friday lunchtime keynote with Harold Ford Jr., chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, seemed amazed at what the notion had unleashed.

"We're going to keep growing; we're going to keep pushing for an unapologetic Democratic Party," Moulitsas said.

Then there was John Dean, the former Nixon White House counsel who has made a second career of railing against what he considers right-wing excesses the way recovering alcoholics preach against strong drink.

"I have deep fear of my former tribe, and what they might do particularly in the law," Dean said, before going on to refer to former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani as "Richard Nixon on crystal meth."

It's plinking bass in a barrel to paint liberals as overly intellectual types incapable of having fun unless reading Noam Chomsky counts, and it sure does for them. And there were a handful of colorful characters, including some men from Cedar Creek who looked like bikers and represented the Warrior Wolf Society, which they described as "a group of pagan warriors with wolf totem spirit," and a guy in a Bush mask and clothing with prison stripes.

But for the most part, these were serious-minded people, and decorum prevailed.

When a few people had the temerity to shout at Pelosi and Gore, they got shushed as mercilessly as they would have at a Nanci Griffith concert.

The no fun thing? Maybe it's because, as Democrats, they're not used to having it.

The incredible imploding presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry were used as textbook examples of what not to do. As political ad man John Rowley put it, he's been in the business for 15 years and only the last two have been good in terms of the political tide. Still, he said, "We've got to get ready for the day when we're not swimming downstream."

In other words, what a pendulum does is swing. But technology is power, and the left has been quicker to adopt it. As Gore put it Saturday morning:

"You are at the cutting edge of a new era of history. You will look back many years from now and tell your grandchildren about coming here to Austin, Texas, and about the first two meetings of Netroots Nation, and you will tell them that this was the beginning of an effort that was the start to reclaim the integrity of American democracy."

That is exactly what Joe Trippi had in mind. It was the one-time Howard Dean campaign aide who saw, perhaps a little too early and a little too enthusiastically, the transformative power of the Web. As he walked from one place to another Friday afternoon, he got stopped every 20 feet or so by people who knew him or at least knew of his ideas. And this is what they had wrought; this is what he had predicted.

"It's amazing," Trippi said. "I knew it was going to happen, but I'm still blown away that it happened."

pbeach@statesman.com; 445-3603

"Worst Person in the World?" Really?

I overuse the word "stupid" sometimes to describe behavior that lacks rationality, but Keith Olbermann really must be a stupid man. Beyond stupid. Moronic. Idiotic. Doltish. And that's on a good day.

Now, via Hot Air, I find out that he called Mary Katherine Ham the "worst person in the world" (gosh, that huuurts, doesn't it? I guess he thinks that's a good insult) for saying that

But, you know, I think he’s sort of a victim of the — or not a victim, but he’s getting used to the 24-hour news cycle. When he was president, he was not subjected to quite as much scrutiny, and I think he got a lot of passes, and now he’s mad he’s not getting them anymore.

Liarmann goes off on Ham, berating her for being young (the last refuge of the petty) and rants that because Clinton lied under oath, lied to the American people, and parsed language like a lawyer and was caught that he didn't get a pass on any number of other things he said and did. Hell, there are whole websites devoted to cataloging Clinton's lies. And yes, he did get a lot of passes on them.

It's tough being as dumb as Keith Olbermann. He can't even claim, like Stephen Colbert, that he's playing a character. Being dumb is Olbermann's character.

Fabricated Stories from Iraq? It's Not Our Fault Our Reporters Are Unreliable!

That's the gist of Franklin Foer's explanation of the Scott Beauchamp affair.

Protein Wisdom has a nice analysis.

Matthew Yglesias Will Tell You What You Need to Know

Matthew Yglesias has his underwear bunched up tight that so many journalists admire Tim Russert's tough questions approach to journalism.

The crux of the matter is this reputation for being a "tough questioner" and the notion that Russert's brand of toughness is worthy of emulation. And it's true that Russert is a tough questioner. Watch any Russert-moderated debate or a typical candidate appearance on Meet The Press and you'll see that he goes way out of the way to put the politician in a tough corner -- he'll ask about some unimportant issue that's politically awkward, he'll drag up a quote from five years ago to try to trip you up, he'll ask about stuff your husband said, he'll harp on whatever recent story has most damaged your candidacy -- he's tough.

The fact that the candidate's answers don't square with either the public's opinion (say, on giving driver's licenses to illegal aliens) or with one's husband--the potential First Man--on the threat of global terror--doesn't seem to bother Yglesias at all. Don't ask a question that is potentially embarrassing unless it's about...global warming.

Climate change, for example, is a hugely important question. As a result, candidates ought to be subjected to questions about their climate change plans. And as it happens, the plans released by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards are all based on good science and good economics. So asking them questions aimed at elucidating their plans shouldn't lead to any embarrassing incidents. Shouldn't, that is, unless the candidates are unprepared to discuss their own plans in an intelligent manner which really would be worth knowing about.
John McCain, by contrast, might or might not end up embarrassed by serious questions about his plan, which moves in the right direction but on a schedule that's too slow and in a way that's too inefficient. Serious questions would give him the opportunity to make the case for half-measures and whether or not he winds up embarrassing himself would turn on whether or not he can give a convincing rationale for what he's doing -- which is at it should be. His Republican counterparts, by contrast, would almost certainly wind up embarrassed by serious questions about their views of climate change since their policies are badly at odds with reality.

Oddly enough, Tim Russert asks the sorts of tough questions voters are interested in; he asks candidates' views on immigration and terrorism. I suppose to Yglesias, these aren't areas we should be concerned about at all. Only global warming--which is still being debated among scientists as to its origins and effects--is worthy of questioning.

It's a good thing we don't have Yglesias asking the "tough" questions. He's more interested in advancing his left-leaning agenda than in finding out candidates' stances on issues Americans are concerned about.

Because They Don't Recognize Sarcasm Unless It's Their Own: More Media Matters Blather

It gets tiresome watching Media Matters make mountains out of molehills. Take their latest shriek:

On the October 22 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, host Glenn Beck stated, "I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today."

Media Matters isn't known for its subtlety. Nor is it known for truthfulness. Take this latest "scandal." I was listening to Glenn Beck this morning and actually heard this portion of his show. The fact is, Beck was being snarky.

Oh, I know the left would never engage in snark. No, they never wish ill on people. Nope!

I guess George Soros is getting his money's worth out of the Media Matters hacks.

Dan Rather Sues CBS

It was bound to happen. Dan Rather is suing CBS.

Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005. He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed Guard broadcast and, in the process, “seriously damaged his reputation.” As plaintiffs, the suit names CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Sumner Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News.

In the suit, filed this afternoon in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt “to pacify the White House,” though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect. To buttress this claim, Mr. Rather quotes the executive who oversaw his regular segment on CBS Radio, telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ”

It's odd that Rather took so long to file his suit if his cause is so just. Did it take him two years to get mad enough? Maybe he's blaming CBS for becoming the face of liberal media bias.

According to Dan, it's not his fault that he presented fake documents to support a specious story about President Bush's air national guard service a month before the 2004 election.

By his own rendering, Mr. Rather was little more than a narrator of the disputed broadcast, which was shown on Sept. 8, 2004, on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes” and which purported to offer new evidence of preferential treatment given to Mr. Bush when he was a lieutenant in the Air National Guard...

Mr. Rather says in the filing that he allowed himself to be reduced to little more than a patsy in the furor that followed, after CBS — and later the outside panel it commissioned — concluded that the report was based on documents that could not be authenticated. Under pressure, Mr. Rather says, he delivered a public apology on his newscast on Sept. 20, 2004 — written not by him but by a CBS corporate publicist — “despite his own personal feelings that no public apology from him was warranted.”

I doubt seriously that Dan would have considered his role to be so small and inconsequential had the scheme worked and John Kerry won the November elections. Dan's not known for his humility, after all. And his "fake but accurate" defense has become television history. Why not believe that he didn't wish to apologize? It just goes with his reputation as a pompous ass.

He now leads a weekly news program on HDNet — an obscure cable channel in which he is seen by only a small fraction of the millions of viewers who once turned to him in his heyday to receive the news of the day.

The bottom line: Dan messed up and now wants to blame CBS for his downfall. He claims that the network denied him staff and exposure for his stories after the fake document debacle, as though it is uncommon for an employer to want to be rid of incompetent personnel. This isn't surprising. It's always someone else's fault with the left.

Newsbusters has video of Dan decrying lawsuit-happy Americans.

Why Get Bent Out of Shape By 9/11 Propaganda?

In the comments at this post on 9/11, a guest suggested that the 3,000 Americans killed in a terrorist attack are no more significant (perhaps less significant?) than civilian deaths in the Iraq War. If you go to Pandagon, you'll find more along the "America deserved it" and "It's our fault" line of argumentation.

But I have to admit that this explanation of 9/11 on the BBC children's website might be the worst of all.

The way America has got involved in conflicts in regions like the Middle East has made some people very angry, including a group called al-Qaeda - who are widely thought to have been behind the attacks.

In the past, al-Qaeda leaders have declared a holy war - called a jihad - against the US. As part of this jihad, al-Qaeda members believe attacking US targets is something they should do.

When the attacks happened in 2001, there were a number of US troops in a country called Saudi Arabia, and the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, said he wanted them to leave.

What a nice way of saying that terrorists attacked a free country and killed thousands of uninvolved citizens for no reason recognized by intelligent humans!

The Future of Newspapers

I like this column by Michael S. Malone, where he discusses both the James Lileks flap and the Digg.com debacle.

What I was interested in was his discussion of what Lileks and the Strib should do.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune should simply let its employees go work at home or at Starbucks, sell off its building and printing plant, and use the resulting revenues to buy editorial space on Lileks.com.

Lileks already got more readers than the Strib, and they are certainly more loyal. And, of course, his site is actually growing. But best of all, his business judgment seems far superior to the clowns currently running the newspaper.

It's sounds squirrelly on one level, but makes sense on another. With the web, everybody can become their own reporter, but most blogs don't get much attention. This is where the branding of newspapers is valuable because they give exposure to writers who might have a harder time otherwise.

Allowing reporters to work from home without having to go to the office is a perk most people would be willing to take a paycut for. It would be like a world of freelancers, where reporters were beholden to finding fresh news rather than making sure they had enough facetime with an editor (I saw a situation where the boss wanted all the reporters to sit in their cubes waiting for his command, rather than going out and finding news...I'm not making this up).

As for editors, there's no reason this can't be done either from home or a much smaller office.

Regardless, almost all management would be unnecessary. So, those layers of "managing editors" and "assistant managing editors" would be gone. And fewer business people in newspapers might result in better journalism.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune Kills Lileks' Column

The story about James Lileks' losing his column in the Strib is a story that two groups of people would care about.

1. Readers who enjoy his work.

2. Journalists who have seen this before.

The first group of mourners is adequately covered by both the Hugh Hewitt link above and this Hot Air post by See Dubya (read Lileks' own thoughts on the event here. Contact the reader's rep here).

It's the second group--journalists--that I thought to post about. As I've said previously (at least, I think I have), I started working for newspapers when I was in high school and continued doing inky wretch work until my mid-30's. I loved (and still do) newspapers with the irrationality of a college girl sleeping with her professor. It doesn't matter how much they hurt you or that you know it will end badly, you just love 'em anyway.

I spent 10 years working for the local major metro daily (the Fort Worth Star-Telegram). I never achieved the lofty titles of reporter or editor, for a lot of big and little reasons, but I played both roles at different points for different reasons. And I loved the fun stuff I got to do (covering a beat, doing concert and movie reviews, handling production for the weekly entertainment guide) in between the boring stuff (answering phones and mail, bleh). In that 10 years, I met and worked with a lot of very talented reporters from the more famous ones (Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Thompson and Tim Madigan) to more local celebrities (Bud Kennedy).

But regardless of the talent pool, there seems to be an almost feudal system within newspapers that causes them to chew up the talent in meaningless pissing matches designed to bring down the big egos necessary to write and edit.

In my experience, this is a uniquely newspaper situation. I've never worked in another business (and I've worked in more than a few) where people who were good at one thing were moved from that job to an entirely unrelated position solely for the purpose of pissing off and punishing the employee (this may not be the problem in Lileks' case, but I smell the stinky, overbearing hand of bad management in the move).

The worst scenario I saw was when a new Sports Editor was brought in. He was Just the Right Man for the Job, according to the top brass; a guy who would Whip the Department into Shape. Unfortunately, this man's idea of improvement was to piss off and demoralize the staff through a series of ridiculous and unnecessary staff changes. Examples included:

1. Reassigning beats to reporters who had no expertise in the new area (such as assigning a basketball reporter to cover hockey or a NFL reporter to cover high school baseball--I'm not making this up).

2. Changing shifts--at the time the Star-Telegram put out a morning paper (which was produced at night) and an evening paper (which was produced during the morning). So, for Sports, there were two shifts: roughly 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. One poor guy got assigned to work from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m.

3. Moving people out of the department--good writers and editors were either reassigned to other departments or voluntarily moved once the writing was on the wall. I actually saw a sports reporter assigned to the Living/Lifestyle section of the paper, a move akin to assigning a pediatrician to a urology clinic; both require expertise but not much of it overlaps.

I don't know if this peculiar mental illness is behind the move of James Lileks from columnist to beat reporter, but it has all the fingerprints of such a case. I also don't know why newspapers seem to work so diligently to piss off the talent that the readers enjoy. With plummeting circulation, you would think the Strib would be trying to find ways to increase circulation, not drive off more subscribers.

UPDATE: Another take on the Lileks demotion, this one served with a big slice of bitterness.

UPDATE x2: The Minneapolis Star-Tribune announces layoffs.

Bowing to the pressures of declining circulation and falling revenue, the Star Tribune Monday announced a sweeping program of buyouts across the company that will send 145 employees out the door, either through buyouts or, if enough people don’t volunteer, layoffs.
The cuts represent 7 percent of the company’s 2,100 positions and include 50 positions out of 383 people in the newsroom and editorial departments.

Publisher Par Ridder delivered the news in a company-wide meeting in which he laid out the increasingly bleak fortunes for daily metro newspapers. The company’s annual advertising and circulation revenue has fallen by $64 million over the last three years. Classified advertising was down 23 percent in the first quarter over last year. If current trends continue, Ridder said, the paper would begin to lose money in a year to 18 months.

Green with Envy

No, this is not about environmentalism or the Oscars. It's about Eric Boehlert's whine, whine, whine about the Washington Post feature on Michelle Malkin.

Boehlert's main problem with the feature is that it isn't the typical hit piece on Malkin.

(S)he's ambitiously unserious, and her work is treated accordingly by most people in senior positions within the mainstream media (except at Fox News and the Post). That's because her daily blog is built on a foundation of hatred that literally knows no bounds -- namely, Malkin's unbridled, name-calling disdain for Democrats, peace activists, journalists, immigrants, and Muslims. Yet inside the Post newsroom, or more specifically, at the Post Style desk, Malkin is seen as a rising media star worthy of focused, fawning attention.

But Boehlert isn't just upset that Malkin wasn't eviscerated in the article (Boehlert, who has seemingly made a career out of nitpicking through Malkin's work, lists a variety of sins committed by Malkin. Would that he put forth the same effort when discussing liberal bloggers who shall remain nameless). He's absolutely hysterical that the Post isn't giving the red carpet treatment to his cronies.

Where, in the last two years, has the Post's Style section run a feature on Markos "Kos" Moulitsas Zuniga, whose DailyKos.com is the most popular political blog in the world? Where was the feature on progressive wunderkind organizer Matt Stoller, one of the forces behind the widely read MyDD website? Or pioneers like Eric Alterman (a Media Matters for America senior fellow) and Josh Marshall, who were among the first to establish progressive outposts online? Or John Amato, who revolutionized political blogging by posting video clips on his Crooks and Liars website, which, according to one recent survey, was the 10th most-linked-to political website in the world? Or Jane Hamsher, who founded influential firedoglake.com, and who's been leading a team live-blogging the Scooter Libby trial? Or Duncan Black (a Media Matters senior fellow), whose hugely popular blog, Eschaton, remains an online must-read? Or John Aravosis, the progressive activist who runs AMERICAblog and just a few weeks ago forced the candy giant Mars to yank online Snickers ads after Aravosis and others tagged them as anti-gay? (Full disclosure: I know most of those bloggers on a personal basis.)

What a shock. Boehlert knows these bloggers who have been overlooked for features by the Washington Post! Hand around the Kleenex box, dears.

This is one of the shrillest and whiniest columns I've read by Boehlert (and it isn't like he isn't prone to whining and crying). Even trying to discredit Malkin as a serious blogger is only a side issue of this column. No, the main point is that it is so unfair (foot stamp here) that the Post hasn't done loving stories on leftist bloggers. Unfortunately for Boehlert, I would suggest that perhaps the Post couldn't find a leftist blogger whose work was printable.

UPDATE: Echidne at the Snakes, of course, agrees with Boehlert but adds this to the mix:

It's because us careful and thought-provoking bloggers are a) boring, b) too obtruse and c) deficient in talk about anal sex, breast sizes, the desirability of a genocide of all darker skinned people or the best ways of lynching the members of the Supreme Court.

Maybe Echidne doesn't read the Liberal Avenger or Pandagon. She'd find plenty of discussions about those things there.

They're Toast

When the Grey Lady finally weighs in on your blogging controversy, it's all but over.

Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language.

The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions.

According to the Times, the Edwards campaign is "reconsidering" hiring the two bloggers. That's politicalese for "they're out."

The Times story is hilarious in its uptight, toned-down description of Amanda and Melissa McEwan, blogger for Shakespeare's Sister.

Ms. Marcotte wrote in December that the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to the use of contraception forced women "to bear more tithing Catholics." In another posting last year, she used vulgar language to describe the church doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

She has also written sarcastically about the news media coverage of the three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexual assault, saying: "Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair."

I guess the NYT can't print anything close to what Amanda actually says--repeatedly--about Christians in general and Catholics in particular. Well, here's a sample of Amanda's "insightful, issue-driven commentary," as she put it. First, there's this:

The very good news is that Phil Kline, who was thrown out of his office as attorney general of Kansas because his anti-choice views alarmed the voters so much, has failed in another one of his missions to use the government to harass doctors who help women make reproductive choices Kline does not approve of. This time around, Kline was harassing Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors left in the U.S. who will perform late term abortions, mostly because he seems to be a brave motherfucker who will face down endless death threats from “pro-lifers”. The charge was that Dr. Tiller was aborting pregnancies that involved fetuses that Kline felt were viable (meaning no doubt that Kline thought these women getting abortions were depriving some white, middle class couple of a baby to adopt). Kline forgot that the right to abortion is not based on fetal viability, but on the woman’s right to medical treatment, despite her criminal possession of a vagina, which is why his harassment suit was thrown out of court.

I'm curious to know if Amanda's view on this parallel's John Edwards'. It would be an interesting question for a press conference.

JOHN EDWARDS: Next question.

INTREPID REPORTER: Mr. Edwards, your blogmaster has stated previously that pro-lifers want to ban abortion so that there will be more white babies for adoption. She has also stated on your blog and her own that you and she agree on many issues. Do you agree with her that pro-life supporters are only interested in having more white babies for adoption?

JOHN EDWARDS: Anyone else?

Ah, yes. The press conferences we wish we'd see.

But there is more from Amanda about Catholics specifically, such as this:

Perhaps Savala can speak to the archbishop, who makes it clear that losing his wife is just the price he has to pay in order to make sure the sluts just don’t get away with Teh Sex...

I’d like to ask the archbishop what the acceptable number of deaths is every year. Is there a number of dead women too high before the church reconsiders its position on mandatory childbirth? Probably not, considering the church’s opposition to condom use, despite the staggeringly high number of deaths from AIDS every year. The fear that people might get away with fucking is just too much to bear...

Unlike the belligerent Catholic church officials in Nicaragua, American anti-choicers know that they have no legal options if they simply come right out and say their opposition to abortion is based on the principles that no one should escape punishment for fucking and that women’s god-given role in life is to push out babies, full stop, and therefore abortion is an alarming demonstration that some women might think there’s more to life, including having one. So they say that their opposition to abortion has something to do with “life”. When faced with the fact that their beloved abortion bans kill actual human beings, they say, "Nuh-uh!"

Back to the press conference.

INTREPID REPORTER: Do you agree with Ms. Marcotte that American pro-life supporters' opposition to abortion "is based on the principles that no one should escape punishment for fucking and that women’s god-given role in life is to push out babies, full stop, and therefore abortion is an alarming demonstration that some women might think there’s more to life, including having one"?

JOHN EDWARDS: Next question.

It's too bad there aren't any reporters gutsy enough to ask Mr. Edwards those questions. I would do it, but then I always was the student who got in trouble for pointing out the obvious idiocy and hypocrisy of certain views.

And it's really too bad the NYT in describing this kerfluffle didn't use any of the more exemplary quotes by Amanda. I'm sure they just couldn't find any.

UPDATE: Captain Ed has more on this and points out the obvious: what were they thinking?

Catholics have overcome bad weather that had more impact on our faith than either blogger, but Edwards wants to court the Catholic (and Evangelical) impulses for social justice and peace to bolster his populist campaign. Surely someone on his staff had the responsibility to actually read the bloggers' previous work to see if it matched the tone Edwards wanted to set with the on-line community and voters in general. That someone should be fired right along with Marcotte and McEwan.

UPDATE x2: The shrieking Left is getting antsy now. Zuzu at feministe is almost incoherent with rage.

the very idea that the Edwards campaign would even consider hanging these two bloggers out to dry to appease people who won’t even be voting in the primary, much less for him, turns my stomach.

Obviously, Zuzu doesn't get that firing the flipped out feminists is to prevent Edwards from looking like a complete moonbat to that portion of the population inclined to vote for his health care proposals or other issues. In other words, Amanda and Melissa are distractions from the message and that's not a good thing for any candidate.

"Nothing new is being said here"

But that won't stop William Arkin from droning on about how everybody who disagrees with him is wrong and he is right.

This last column is filled with his categorizing the various comments he's received about the previous two columns and then marginalizing and shooting down any arguments those comments present.

But then there's this jewel:

On the advice of my editors, this is the last column I will post for awhile on this subject. My impulse would be to continue to fight back and answer the critics, but I see the wisdom in their observation that nothing new is being said here and the Internet frenzy is adding nothing to the debate or our understanding of our world. I also see that I cannot continue to write about humanity and difficult questions if indeed what I wish is to vanquish those who attack me.

Mr. Arkin, it isn't that you can't write about humanity. It's that you can't label the soldiering part of our humanity "mercenaries" and tell them they don't have a right to criticize the American anti-war crowd and expect it not to have an effect. And then don't write column after column insisting how right you are to think these things about them. It's time for you to admit you lost and move on. This is your little Vietnam.

Arkin Tries to Get His Foot Out of His Mouth...And Fails Miserably

William Arkin just won't shut up.

Having made a mess all over himself, the Washington Post, and much of the blogosphere with his first two posts (see here and here), Arkin is obviously trying to cover his butt with his latest post.

He starts out apologizing for calling our soldiers "mercenaries" and proceeds into some meaningless pablum about how

When we in society make war and consent to war, we accept the righteousness of those who fight on our behalf with the knowledge that they are a part of an organized and disciplined military force that operates lawfully and chivalrously. We also accept that they kill only as a last resort, and that they are engaged in a just endeavor that in its existence and though their conduct presents the prospect of restoring peaceful relations once the enemy has been defeated.

Unfortunately, like so many people, Arkin can't simply apologize for being a complete ass and let it go. No, he has to try to make his obnoxious point a different way and so, having extricated the left foot from his mouth, sticks the right one in its place.

When I hear soldiers and war supporters expressing their frustrations about the American public or the news media, something doesn't quite seem right -- even when the soldiers and war supporters aren't talking about me. I know that those in uniform would like to bring the war to an honorable conclusion, but are they blaming those who are against the war and the news media for having tied their hands under a Bush administration which is certainly the most warrior-oriented in the past 20 years? Is there no space for respectful acceptance of the possibility that people who also love the nation and care about our security think that the country is wasting national treasure - lives and money - on an unwinnable cause?

In the middle of all of this are the troops, the pawns in political battles at home as much as they are on the real battlefield. We unquestioningly "support" these troops for the very reasons that they are pawns. We give them what we can to be successful, and we have a contract with them, because they are our sons and daughters and a part of us, not to place them in an impossible spot.

Translation: Don't blame us for not supporting you. It's all Bush's fault.

This is a really cheap rhetorical trick Arkin has employed here. He's toned down the rhetoric a bit but is still making the same point: Military people, you don't have a right to be frustrated with the media, the left, and the American people who have no stamina for war and who want instant solutions to long-standing conflicts.

In other words, this apology isn't one.

UPDATE: Hot Air has video of Black5 responding.

More Ethical Behavior from the New York Times

How would you like to see your son or daughter, a soldier in the U.S. military, die on the streets of Baghdad?

What if it were a photograph published in the New York Times, or a video of him/her dying was published on their website?

I can't write what I might think about doing to the person(s) who approved this. I can't even imagine my pain and suffering if this were to happen to me. Fortunately, my children are all too young to become subject matter to increase subscriptions at the NYT.

But the same can't be said for Domingo and Manuela Leija, whose son was featured in a NYT story in print and on the website...before they were notified of his death.

Michelle Malkin has a column detailing the event, including the rules journalists must adhere to when they are in Iraq.

The Times has covered this up, removing the offending material from their website, but the damage is done. And the Times has said it will send a "letter of regret" to the family. But my question is, why didn't they bother to think about the family before they ran this material? Or maybe they agree with William Arkin that it doesn't matter about the feelings of the family of the "intolerant and arrogant few."

Lifestyles of the Arrogant and the Clueless

William Arkin just won't shut up.

It was bad enough when Arkin called our soldiers mercenaries and said that while he recognized their right to free speech, they don't have a right to disapprove of people who say they support the troops but not the mission.

Now he's mad because a lot of people wrote back. It's probably the first time he's had more than four comments on any thread and he's a little, shall we say, shell shocked.

I know what it's like to write something that's a bit unpopular with the subject matter. When I quoted real live feminists who said abortion was "no big deal" and "just a 20 minute procedure," they got really, really mad and bombarded my site calling me anti-woman, a fascist, and a phallic worshipper (I'm sure my husbanad wishes I was!). It's tough when you have 50 comments on a thread and 48 of them are blasting you and your views, but such is the life of a person who puts their unvarnished opinions out on the internet.

In other words, don't whine, Mr. Arkin. You can't say you honestly didn't expect to take some heat for saying the soldiers "should be grateful" that the public doesn't blame them for Abu Gharib and "every rape and murder" in Iraq. Or that soldiers wouldn't take umbrage at you writing

So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

Or

I'll accept that the soldiers, in order to soldier on, have to believe that they are manning the parapet, and that's where their frustrations come in. I'll accept as well that they are young and naïve and are frustrated with their own lack of progress and the never changing situation in Iraq. Cut off from society and constantly told that everyone supports them, no wonder the debate back home confuses them.

America needs to ponder what it is we really owe those in uniform. I don't believe America needs a draft though I imagine we'd be having a different discussion if we had one.

It's inconceivable to me that you expected responses to your arrogance to be dignified and polite. To be frank, you haven't earned that, Mr. Arkin.

Arkin responds to his critics by cherry-picking comments to make his points. Perhaps they really are emblematic of the others, but it seems that, instead of realizing why so many people would lash out at him, he has taken the stiff-necked approach and decided to tell them where to get off.

Again, I understand the frustration of those in uniform and the supporters of the war. But these are not the only people who have a valid opinion, and there is great danger for the nation - as Bush-Cheney and company have already demonstrated - when people arrogate to themselves the sole determinant to make a judgment about national security.

And this:

But there is such contempt for civil society in these words and I wonder where it comes from?

Well, gee, I don't know. Maybe if Arkin spent a little time with our friends at Pandagon, he just might figure out why there seems to be such contempt for civil society.

But according to Arkin, it is only the military who are contemptuous of civil society. He brings up the molding of esprit de corps but somehow makes it sound more like brainwashing. Worse, he ends with this:

The notion then that we should defer to the military to fight when and how and where they want is absurd. As the debate about the Iraq war demonstrates, war-making is a shared endeavor and the arrogant and intolerant few who think they are above the people seem to be those who are wearing the uniform.

I don't think anyone advocates the military do whatever the hell they want. What they were attacking was his notion that it is possible to support the troops and not support the mission. Arkin has proved that those who say this really don't support the troops or the mission.