Look: it's easy to condemn The New Republic's editor, Franklin Foer, for his gutless caving yesterday, leaving Scott Beauchamp to twist in the wind. "When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that."

But moral courage, if you've been around the block at all, is an impossibly rare commodity, and the fact that the smallish magazine (circulation = less than 100,000) held out against the unrelenting assault of the flying monkeys of the Blogosmeanr™ has to count for something. We EXPECT moral cowardice from most Americans.

It's how an election was stolen in 2000, and again in 2004, it's how we were bullied into two imprudent wars (in case you hadn't noticed, Afghanistan is falling apart, and we're losing provinces), one of which was actively and irrefutably a war crime. It's how we've been bullied into submission to widespread wiretapping, surveillance, secret search warrants and searches, gag orders, extraordinary renditions, torture, extra-territorial prisons, etc. etc. etc.

In light of it all, it would seem hypocritical in the extreme for condemning yet another non-flying monkey, in the light of our own national collusion with the thugs and bullies of the right.

It would be ironic if Foer lost his job, of course, since his mea culpa seems calculated to ensure just the opposite, but then, the willingness of the catamite media to mindlessly rebroadcast the non sequitur "Stephen Glass" story with every update on the Beauchamp story (Foer didn't come to work for TNR until, literally, years after the Glass scandal -- which was about Glass, and not TNR, again, the victim made to appear guilty for being victimized).

No: moral courage is a commodity in short supply, and it ill behooves us to form into yet another "circular firing squad" to condemn anyone on the "left" for lacking moral courage or spine.

Far more appropriate to celebrate those rare few who DO exemplify that rarest quality, nowadays. Like Glenn Greenwald, for instance, but there are others.

Meanwhile the flying monkeys are dancing around their bonfire (of the vanities) and howling at the waning moon.

The Sudetenland has, once more, been annexed.

And nary a word from those who would appease the flying monkeys of Greater Wingnuttia.

I don't question Goldberg's ability to generate media buzz, and land the choice interviews -- his mother IS, after all, Lucienne Goldberg, she of the Linda Tripp machinations and a dirty trickster for Nixon back in the day. And Jonah cut his "journalistic" teeth as a pro-impeachment apologist, ginning up mendacities out of whole cloth, much like this leaden tome.

What I find ironic is that Doubleday/Random House's parent company, Bertelsmann is a German media company that was busted for covering up its Nazi past by the BBC back in 2002.

I suppose Goldberg's high ethical stance doesn't have any qualms about that -- just pumping a disinformation meme that muddies the waters most recently clarified by Naomi Wolf's “ten signs of impending fascism” and requiring a rightie muddling of such dangerous truths.

Climbing in bed with ex-Nazis to accuse "liberals" of being fascists isn't self-contradictory. Not in the least.