07-22-2010, 04:04 PM
[quote]To me this is a bigger story now than an injustice of character assassination. You have NAACP denouncing her based on their own video tape, and responded by saying, "The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action." Then hours later, after viewing the entire tape (in their possession) retracted their position claiming they were snookered.[/quote]
I think the reaction to this was highly disturbing. Some right-wing slime-monger releases an obviously edited tape, and moments later, she is condemned by the NAACP, fired by Vilsack, possibly even with the nod from the top? Has the noise machine become so fearsome that it can get someone fired just by hooting and hollering now?
[quote]Yeah, I guess so was everyone, including Breitbart.[/quote]
Oh, so you're apologising for Breitbart now? You really think this was good faith on his part gone wrong? Yeah, you sure are cynical... about everyone who isn't from the right.
[quote]The biggest share of the blame goes to the head of the chain, but... Hardly any news organization waited even an hour or a day to do even cursory fact checking before reacting.[/quote]
Um, the full story was debunked, on CNN, within what, a couple days? Vilsack didn't do his job - and that is both sad and frightening. But the media did a fine enough job of seeing through Breitbart's horsecrap.
[quote]Doesn't she have the right to at least a meeting with her boss to figure out what happened here? What does it say about our Nation, when convictions come before hearings due to appearances?
[/quote]
It tells me the noise machine works, and that the administration is more careful about its perceived image than about fairness. The first angers me greatly, the second is just downright depressing.
[quote]Now, do you see the connection?[/quote]
There is no connection, unless we're wiling to Kevin Bacon this thing.
[quote]But, the NAACP convicts them without a fair hearing regarding the facts.[/quote]
See? Breitbart wins. Now it's about the NAACP - their problem. Hey everyone, look how unfair the left is! Nevermind that we only got there because he hacked a video apart and released it to destroy this woman's career in the first place.
[quote]The Arizona Law was branded as racist, and falsely characterized as allowing cops to stop any person and ask for papers.[/quote]
That doesn't sound very false to me. There are a hundred reasons a cop might have for stopping someone, of having "reasonable" suspicion of something or another. But if we want to talk Arizona law, that should probably be another thread.
[quote]This was the essence of the Jeremiah Wright case in the first place (tainting Obama with his associations), and in the Journolist's collusion on how to deal with it. [/quote]
As I've said about a dozen times now, Jornolist is nothing but an e-mail server. It is a discussion amongst liberal journalists, bloggers, columnists, and other opinion makers. Your own links show perfectly well that, while some on the list advocated accusing the right of being racially motivated (Which, for what it's worth, still seems correct to me), and others, that they should avoid that tactic and stick to the issues, which they saw as Obama's advantage.
"Collusion" is a dirty word, if you're businesses "colluding" to fix prices, nations "colluding" to sign secret treaties. But if a bunch of liberal columnists (not owners... there is no Rupert Murdoch giving marching orders here...) talk to each other about how they think they should react? How is this even news?
[quote]Race bait. Now, how can you take anyone who plays the race card seriously, when it is clearly a political weapon of last resort on the left? Whenever they cannot argue on substance, they resort to defamation.[/quote]
If you read the Journolist e-mails, those advocating framing this in terms of race are not saying that because they want to make noise. They're doing so because they believe that the Jeremiah Wright controversy, like this one, is dog whistle politics - that the whole point of both scandals is a big "wink wink don't you see how black people are really scary and they're taking yer jerbs and raising yer taxes and blargetyblarg". They saw what was happening as racially motivated, and thought the correct tactic was to shout that from every rooftop. I agree with their conclusion, but disagree with their tactic, as did many on the list.
[quote]This was a albeit closed listserv, but still, you are posting an e-mail to a group of about 400 people. Each person represents a risk in keeping your secrets, secret.[/quote]
It's not even a question of secrecy. There were no big secrets on Journolist, unless Ezra Klein and Paul Krugman being liberal was some kind of secret. The "story," insofar as there is one, is that a group of liberals had a listserv, and they spoke frankly with one another. Some of them use salty language, don't like their opponents, and talked tactics. Zomg.
[quote]I belong to lots of listservs and have for along time. I always represent myself and the organizations I represent in a positive manner. We discuss items of substance, and there isn't the kind of casual backstabbing, and "gossip" I observed on JournoList. But, then, I'm not a journalist, so maybe their profession is less professional.[/quote]
I have no idea what gets discussed on listservs you are a part of. Maybe they could fall into the hands of your worst enemies, and yield absolutely nothing. But it's amazing what drops of blood you can squeeze from a stone, if you're looking to smear someone.
[quote]Well, not quite true; [Quote=By Chris Moody - The Daily Caller]"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us,” Ackerman wrote on the Journolist listserv in April 2008. “Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”[/quote]
I don't agree with Ackerman's tactical suggestion, and neither did many on JournoList. What he is advocating is related to what Breitbart did here - throw mud to change the topic to something that hurts your opponents, not you. But again - not everyone agreed with him.
[quote]While many members of the group voiced concerns about Ackerman on strategic grounds, there seemed to be no clear disagreement with the substance. The strongest repudiation came from Mark Schmitt, now at the liberal magazine the American Prospect, who said the tactic of calling conservatives racist would do nothing to advance the argument."[/quote]
What substance are you accusing them of agreeing upon? That the attacks on Wright were motivated by a desire to reinforce the "black is scary" subtext? That sounds correct to me. That the pick of Sarah Palin was a cynical and insulting grab for female voters? It was. And so on, and so forth.
You may disagree. No doubt you do. JournoList is all about opinions, about liberal opinionmakers talking amongst one another about their jobs, their ideas, the issues and stories of the day. These are not editors. These are not owners. There is no Rupert Murdoch, no Ted Turner. Their only power is the one everyone already knew they had - to write their columns.
[quote]Here is what was said. Let's see, Matt Drudge should set himself on fire, trash talking a colleague Byron York, the Washington Examiner’s chief political correspondent, and calling Ron Paul supporters Paultards. Nope, nothing racist there. Just dumb.[/quote]
These are his personal opinions, no doubt saltier than he would express them in public, but Dave Weigel was not a shrinking violet. If he believed the opposition to gay rights was motivated by bigotry (I agree), then he'd say so. If he believed Matt Drudge was a bucket of slime who should be thrown into the fires of Mt. Doom (I agree), then he'd say so.
[quote]“There’s also the fact that neither the pundits, nor possibly the Republicans, will be punished for their crazy outbursts of racism. Newt Gingrich is an amoral blowhard who resigned in disgrace, and Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite who was drummed out of the movement by William F. Buckley. Both are now polluting my inbox and TV with their bellowing and minority-bashing. They’re never going to go away or be deprived of their soapboxes,” Weigel wrote.
Of Matt Drudge, Weigel remarked, “It’s really a disgrace that an amoral shut-in like Drudge maintains the influence he does on the news cycle while gay-baiting, lying, and flubbing facts to this degree.”[/quote]
If you're looking to provide examples of how Dave Weigel is a clear-sighted judge of character, then great! Truth is a defense against slander. Matt Drudge *is* slime who uses the media exactly like Breitbart, with race baiting, gay baiting, outright slander and whatever else he can find to warp the discussion to serve his ends. Pat Buchanan *is* an anti-semite who *was* drummed out by Buckley. Newt Gingrich *is* an amoral blowhard, who *did* resign in disgrace.
But no, saying so is over the line. No, you have to treat anti-semites with respect. You have to smile politely when Matt Drudge throws buckets of mud at whomever is in range. You have to make mealymouthed apologies for Newt Gingrich's almost laughable hypocrisy.
[quote]And... This was the guy hired to cover conservatives.[/quote]
Do you not want someone reporting on conservatives who is not afraid to call hypocrites hypocrites and assholes assholes? I know I do. It's not like Dave Weigel was a raging leftist. He was a wonky libertarian type who had idiosyncratic opinions and spoke his mind.
But, no, in private, he didn't kowtow, so out he goes.
[quote]Again, looking specifically at Dave, he was destroyed by those on Journolist left of him, because he was not liberal enough.[/quote]
Perhaps I haven't read things thoroughly enough, but we know how that his career was destroyed "because he was not liberal enough"? I mean, it's Tucker Carlson publishing these e-mails, and he's about as thoroughgoing a Republican hack and you can get. Do we know who sent them to him?
[quote]If he hated conservatives so much, then getting booted from the job of covering them day after day was an act of liberation.[/quote]
Yeah, and I'm sure that Woodward and Bernstein would have been so pleased to have been taken off the Nixon beat. Journalists are not (repeat: not, not, NOT) required to like their subjects.
-Jester
I think the reaction to this was highly disturbing. Some right-wing slime-monger releases an obviously edited tape, and moments later, she is condemned by the NAACP, fired by Vilsack, possibly even with the nod from the top? Has the noise machine become so fearsome that it can get someone fired just by hooting and hollering now?
[quote]Yeah, I guess so was everyone, including Breitbart.[/quote]
Oh, so you're apologising for Breitbart now? You really think this was good faith on his part gone wrong? Yeah, you sure are cynical... about everyone who isn't from the right.
[quote]The biggest share of the blame goes to the head of the chain, but... Hardly any news organization waited even an hour or a day to do even cursory fact checking before reacting.[/quote]
Um, the full story was debunked, on CNN, within what, a couple days? Vilsack didn't do his job - and that is both sad and frightening. But the media did a fine enough job of seeing through Breitbart's horsecrap.
[quote]Doesn't she have the right to at least a meeting with her boss to figure out what happened here? What does it say about our Nation, when convictions come before hearings due to appearances?
[/quote]
It tells me the noise machine works, and that the administration is more careful about its perceived image than about fairness. The first angers me greatly, the second is just downright depressing.
[quote]Now, do you see the connection?[/quote]
There is no connection, unless we're wiling to Kevin Bacon this thing.
[quote]But, the NAACP convicts them without a fair hearing regarding the facts.[/quote]
See? Breitbart wins. Now it's about the NAACP - their problem. Hey everyone, look how unfair the left is! Nevermind that we only got there because he hacked a video apart and released it to destroy this woman's career in the first place.
[quote]The Arizona Law was branded as racist, and falsely characterized as allowing cops to stop any person and ask for papers.[/quote]
That doesn't sound very false to me. There are a hundred reasons a cop might have for stopping someone, of having "reasonable" suspicion of something or another. But if we want to talk Arizona law, that should probably be another thread.
[quote]This was the essence of the Jeremiah Wright case in the first place (tainting Obama with his associations), and in the Journolist's collusion on how to deal with it. [/quote]
As I've said about a dozen times now, Jornolist is nothing but an e-mail server. It is a discussion amongst liberal journalists, bloggers, columnists, and other opinion makers. Your own links show perfectly well that, while some on the list advocated accusing the right of being racially motivated (Which, for what it's worth, still seems correct to me), and others, that they should avoid that tactic and stick to the issues, which they saw as Obama's advantage.
"Collusion" is a dirty word, if you're businesses "colluding" to fix prices, nations "colluding" to sign secret treaties. But if a bunch of liberal columnists (not owners... there is no Rupert Murdoch giving marching orders here...) talk to each other about how they think they should react? How is this even news?
[quote]Race bait. Now, how can you take anyone who plays the race card seriously, when it is clearly a political weapon of last resort on the left? Whenever they cannot argue on substance, they resort to defamation.[/quote]
If you read the Journolist e-mails, those advocating framing this in terms of race are not saying that because they want to make noise. They're doing so because they believe that the Jeremiah Wright controversy, like this one, is dog whistle politics - that the whole point of both scandals is a big "wink wink don't you see how black people are really scary and they're taking yer jerbs and raising yer taxes and blargetyblarg". They saw what was happening as racially motivated, and thought the correct tactic was to shout that from every rooftop. I agree with their conclusion, but disagree with their tactic, as did many on the list.
[quote]This was a albeit closed listserv, but still, you are posting an e-mail to a group of about 400 people. Each person represents a risk in keeping your secrets, secret.[/quote]
It's not even a question of secrecy. There were no big secrets on Journolist, unless Ezra Klein and Paul Krugman being liberal was some kind of secret. The "story," insofar as there is one, is that a group of liberals had a listserv, and they spoke frankly with one another. Some of them use salty language, don't like their opponents, and talked tactics. Zomg.
[quote]I belong to lots of listservs and have for along time. I always represent myself and the organizations I represent in a positive manner. We discuss items of substance, and there isn't the kind of casual backstabbing, and "gossip" I observed on JournoList. But, then, I'm not a journalist, so maybe their profession is less professional.[/quote]
I have no idea what gets discussed on listservs you are a part of. Maybe they could fall into the hands of your worst enemies, and yield absolutely nothing. But it's amazing what drops of blood you can squeeze from a stone, if you're looking to smear someone.
[quote]Well, not quite true; [Quote=By Chris Moody - The Daily Caller]"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us,” Ackerman wrote on the Journolist listserv in April 2008. “Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”[/quote]
I don't agree with Ackerman's tactical suggestion, and neither did many on JournoList. What he is advocating is related to what Breitbart did here - throw mud to change the topic to something that hurts your opponents, not you. But again - not everyone agreed with him.
[quote]While many members of the group voiced concerns about Ackerman on strategic grounds, there seemed to be no clear disagreement with the substance. The strongest repudiation came from Mark Schmitt, now at the liberal magazine the American Prospect, who said the tactic of calling conservatives racist would do nothing to advance the argument."[/quote]
What substance are you accusing them of agreeing upon? That the attacks on Wright were motivated by a desire to reinforce the "black is scary" subtext? That sounds correct to me. That the pick of Sarah Palin was a cynical and insulting grab for female voters? It was. And so on, and so forth.
You may disagree. No doubt you do. JournoList is all about opinions, about liberal opinionmakers talking amongst one another about their jobs, their ideas, the issues and stories of the day. These are not editors. These are not owners. There is no Rupert Murdoch, no Ted Turner. Their only power is the one everyone already knew they had - to write their columns.
[quote]Here is what was said. Let's see, Matt Drudge should set himself on fire, trash talking a colleague Byron York, the Washington Examiner’s chief political correspondent, and calling Ron Paul supporters Paultards. Nope, nothing racist there. Just dumb.[/quote]
These are his personal opinions, no doubt saltier than he would express them in public, but Dave Weigel was not a shrinking violet. If he believed the opposition to gay rights was motivated by bigotry (I agree), then he'd say so. If he believed Matt Drudge was a bucket of slime who should be thrown into the fires of Mt. Doom (I agree), then he'd say so.
[quote]“There’s also the fact that neither the pundits, nor possibly the Republicans, will be punished for their crazy outbursts of racism. Newt Gingrich is an amoral blowhard who resigned in disgrace, and Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite who was drummed out of the movement by William F. Buckley. Both are now polluting my inbox and TV with their bellowing and minority-bashing. They’re never going to go away or be deprived of their soapboxes,” Weigel wrote.
Of Matt Drudge, Weigel remarked, “It’s really a disgrace that an amoral shut-in like Drudge maintains the influence he does on the news cycle while gay-baiting, lying, and flubbing facts to this degree.”[/quote]
If you're looking to provide examples of how Dave Weigel is a clear-sighted judge of character, then great! Truth is a defense against slander. Matt Drudge *is* slime who uses the media exactly like Breitbart, with race baiting, gay baiting, outright slander and whatever else he can find to warp the discussion to serve his ends. Pat Buchanan *is* an anti-semite who *was* drummed out by Buckley. Newt Gingrich *is* an amoral blowhard, who *did* resign in disgrace.
But no, saying so is over the line. No, you have to treat anti-semites with respect. You have to smile politely when Matt Drudge throws buckets of mud at whomever is in range. You have to make mealymouthed apologies for Newt Gingrich's almost laughable hypocrisy.
[quote]And... This was the guy hired to cover conservatives.[/quote]
Do you not want someone reporting on conservatives who is not afraid to call hypocrites hypocrites and assholes assholes? I know I do. It's not like Dave Weigel was a raging leftist. He was a wonky libertarian type who had idiosyncratic opinions and spoke his mind.
But, no, in private, he didn't kowtow, so out he goes.
[quote]Again, looking specifically at Dave, he was destroyed by those on Journolist left of him, because he was not liberal enough.[/quote]
Perhaps I haven't read things thoroughly enough, but we know how that his career was destroyed "because he was not liberal enough"? I mean, it's Tucker Carlson publishing these e-mails, and he's about as thoroughgoing a Republican hack and you can get. Do we know who sent them to him?
[quote]If he hated conservatives so much, then getting booted from the job of covering them day after day was an act of liberation.[/quote]
Yeah, and I'm sure that Woodward and Bernstein would have been so pleased to have been taken off the Nixon beat. Journalists are not (repeat: not, not, NOT) required to like their subjects.
-Jester