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Foster Kamer has a post up at the village voice about who smeared Dave Weigel, a gem from the piece:

I’m of the idea that Journolist was a bad idea in practice — because there is always a rat, always — but think that writers should be allowed to be sentient human beings with, you know, opinions about things. Otherwise, hold them in for seven presidential administrations, and the next thing you know, you’re Helen Thomas and your incredible legacy is now marred because you expressed an opinion about your job for the first time in your life that you’ve held in for way too long, that ends up being a “shocker” to people, and costs you your rep.

Take a look at that paragraph and the willful blindness it contains and it tells you a lot about the author. Poor Helen Thomas if only nobody knew what she really thought, we could have admired her in ignorance, just like Alger Hiss.

What annoys me is the title and the premise, Who smeared Dave Weigel? Smeared?

You might say who betrayed Dave Weigel, who outed Dave Weigel, who exposed Dave Weigel who embarrassed Dave Weigel but not smeared.

Smeared implies a falsehood, there is no falsehood here, Weigel wrote what he wrote of his own free will and said what he said.

Calling tea party activists racists, that is a smear. Exposing Weigel’s and Thomas’ true feelings in their own words to the light of day can be called many things but smear is not one of them.

So in the words of Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

If Foster wants to defend Weigel he should take a page out of Stacy McCain’s book:

Ali Akbar called me to discuss WeigelGate and pointed out something: Weigel hung out with us in NY-23, in Boston during the Brown campaign, at CPAC and at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

During all that time, Ali remarked, not once did Weigel do a “gotcha” by disseminating reports of the off-the-record stuff he saw and heard. Whatever vicious snark and gossip Weigel dished out via his blog, or e-mails or Twitter, he did not abuse his journalistic privilege by burning the people who gave him access.

That is the defense of a friend rather than of an ideologue. Weigel is really lucky that he has Stacy McCain as a friend. Stacy will fight for his friends till hell freezes over and then will fight on the ice.