Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

in this story but no cigar.

Somebody on Journo-List didn’t like Dave Weigel and decided to publish his most furious and incendiary remarks that he thought — unwisely — that he was expressing in confidence.

this jibes with Stacy’s remarks about Washington:

Anyone who has ever worked in DC can testify that in Washington, the more you succeed, the more knives will be aimed at your back.

Geraghty continues:

So what else is on there that, if revealed, could make life difficult for Ezra Klein or Jeffrey Toobin or Paul Krugman or Ben Smith or Mike Allen? Or is the idea that as long as they stay in line, they’ll never have some remark they regret publicized to the world? Did Journo-List evolve into a massive blackmail scheme that ensures no one inside the club will ever speak ill of another member?

This is where he is wrong. There is nothing Ben Smith, Mike Allen, Ezra Klien, Jeffrey Toobin or Paul Krugman could say about conservatives that would get them in trouble. In fact it would only endear them to their customer base. That is why such revelations would never harm them, but for Dave they proved fatal. Why? Remember what I said this morning:

I see no reason why we should give him more consideration than any other journalist. If he gives us a fair shake then we should act accordingly, if not then not.

Unfortunately his job depends on us giving him more consideration than we would give another journalist. It depends on us not considering him a foe. Ann Althouse explains the issue:

So David started letting his need for lefty approval express itself on the email list, the Journolist, where the cool kids were being intimate and snarky. But those other kids were not tasked with covering conservatives. While they might have been embarrassed if the mean things they wrote in the email were ever leaked, they didn’t have careers founded on their suitability for covering conservatives. The risk poor Dave took was of an entirely different nature. Why, Dave, why? Why did you risk the plum job?

Why? Because he trusted his “friends” on the left.

And memeorandum has gone wild on the subject. The Funniest is Ezra Klein:

It was ironic, in a way, that it would be the Daily Caller that published e-mails from Journolist. A few weeks ago, its editor, Tucker Carlson, asked if he could join the list. After asking other members, I said no, that the rules had worked so far to protect people, and the members weren’t comfortable changing them. He tried to change my mind, and I offered, instead, to partner with Carlson to start a bipartisan list serv. That didn’t interest him.

In any case, Journolist is done now. I’ll delete the group soon after this post goes live. That’s not because Journolist was a bad idea, or anyone on it did anything wrong. It was a wonderful, chaotic, educational discussion. I’m proud of having started it, grateful to have participated in it, and I have no doubt that someone else will re-form it, with many of the same members, and keep it going. Hopefully, it will lose some of its mystique in the process, and be understood more for what it is: One of many e-mail lists where people talk about things they’re interested in. But insofar as the current version of Journolist has seen its archives become a weapon, and insofar as people’s careers are now at stake, it has to die.

Or in other words , “God forbid the public see what was really said by us.” Kind of funny for people whose job it is to get to get people to share with them.

Klein would doubtless say we are being paranoid about what Journolist actually was. It seems to be that he is asking for a consideration that the people on the left that he allowed on “journolist” doesn’t give to the right or the government when republicans are in power.

I also like the implication that Carlson got what he was trying to get. You had better hope that wasn’t what Tucker was after because if it was then he would have already downloaded the lot and is sitting on it. Perhaps Breitbart has it right now and is simply editing with video now to be released to its best effect.

Sooner or later it is all going to come out so, assuming I am wrong about the damage it would cause to your friends. you might as well get it out now, because if we conservatives DO have the content you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be released at a time of our best advantage. After all the left is going to be stuck by disaster this election anyways, might as well get the disaster out of the way when it can cause the least overall damage.

But I don’t think that’s what happened, I think a “friend” of his was pissed over something and decided to nail him, but you never know Ezra I might be wrong, maybe you should release the archives now.