One could say that there is a lesson here for the Post and journalists but I think the real lesson is for conservatives in general and the tea party in particular. The mainstream media is not and never will be your friend. Until and unless the MSM print, paper or net are willing to hire people who we know are not hostile to us we should not give and they should not expect our cooperation.
Considering that he has now been hired by MSNBC it looks like this advice is pretty good.
As always you can find the archive of my examiner columns here.
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 AlgerHiss.
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.
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.
Panetta is making the case of “self radicalization”, people who decided to become radicals on their own.
This is a great example of denial and for some it is absolutely vital. If you actually suggest that there is an actual connection to radical Islam and terrorism, including in the United States then that puts you in the uncomfortable to have to make a decision to do something or not.
Ignorance is bliss because it allows you to ignore things that you don’t want to face.
Update: The unwillingness to face reality makes one spectators to events. Mark Steyn writes today about how well that is working in Canada:
Because he puts these two sentences back to back concerning Weigel/journolist situation:
If there is something that should be kept sacred in journalism it’s a non-biased reporting of the facts(often times questionable today) and that items “off the record” stay off the record. While Weigel’s remarks give us insight into how the left are willing to talk about conservatives from within the protection of their own echo chambers, the true scoundrel here is whoever released his comments.
When two sentences earlier he writes this:
According to the story about the list, often times this is where news is first developed and then echoed out to the country through blogs and editorials. Up to this point however, no one has been outed for their participation and what they’ve said.
So let me get this straight, this “echo chamber” is where news is “developed” and the “echoed” to the world, by a group of hard liberals in a “secret and secure” group to paint things a particular way to influence the American people and we are worried about a scoundrel who leaks e-mail about some guy venting?
It’s like saying Tessio is a scoundrel and Clemenza is not. They’re all friggen Mafia! They are by definitionall scoundrels.
We need to be much more worried about how they are trying to spin the news as a collective than if Dave lost his temper and some guys decided to be a pain over it.
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