Letters to the Editor
-
Che Pasa:
It's an excellent point. Obstruction of justice is a different crime than perjury, and purely duplicative counts are not allowed. And it is completely unsurprising that other journalists jumped in to do Tony Snow's job for him ("lying" - "perjury").
I had some positive interaction, though I can't recall the details, with Weldon at BTC News. I went over there just know to try to find his e-mail to send him the link to your comment, but see that you already commented there.
It's those few, rare moments when we have real journalism that highlights so vividly how much we are missing.
-
DC Law1
Mostly on your repeated and enthusiastic recommendations here, I bought and read Al Gore's book and am very glad I did. But I see know why the media stars hated it -- it's the same reason they hated Stephen Colbert's speech. It's because the critique applies to them and what they do more than anything else.
-
It's worse than during Watergate
In 1974, Doonesbury showed two Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee exasperated with their Republican colleagues who kept saying "no impeachable offense" to every disgusting item of Nixon's conduct during Watergate. One finally says to the other, "If only he'd knock off a bank or something," and the other replies with glee, "Then we'd have him!"
In 2007, I can see the editorial in the Wall Street Journal: "Vice President Cheney may have been caught red-handed at the Bank of America branch in downtown Cheyenne, but we must look more closely at the facts. Yes, he was carrying a shotgun, but that was his right as an American. Yes, he demanded that the teller hand over all her cash to him. But as Vice President, who are we to say that the use to which he intended to put the money--financing an invasion of San Marino--was not an appropriate and Constitutional one. We do not intend to live in a country where a mere county prosecutor, even one who was prosecuted abortionists and gays, can decide whether the Vice President of all the people, the co-commander-in-chief, has broken the law. That power resides only in Congress, and Congress has not spoken. Free Cheney now!"
-
@jtp
But just as a rhetorical method, might it not be more effective to introduce a little wit or humor? Or at least the appearance of even-handedness? I can imagine a Republican or centrist reading your posts and just (incorrectly) dismissing them as extremist liberal hackery ... you might get a wider readership with a little less vitriol!
-- jtp118
So you think Glenn would do well to lie or pussy foot around so that the "centrists" (Whateverthefuckacentristis) and the so called "Republicans" would read his writings?
Take it on the road, jt. Been there, done that. It ain't for shit.
-
natural byproducts
"Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations." - Joseph Pulitzer, The North American Review (May 1904)
-
A vote for vitriol
Amen, DCLaw1. Politesse has its limits, especially when it interferes with candor about the gravity of the situation facing us. To paraphrase Brecht, he who is still laughing has not yet heard the terrible news.
-
On false equivalencies
I want to add one more thing about the traditional media's reporting of the Libby commutation. Already, with a bland and depressing predictability, we are seeing news shows and articles portraying the commutation as just some unremarkable, non-partisan, Washington-as-usual phenomenon.
While I would be the first to point out that government corruption is far from new, the media false equivalency between what Bush has done and what "Clinton did too" is pernicious to its core. I think that Dan Froomkin said it best:
We don't know why Libby decided to lie to federal investigators about his role in the leak. But it's reasonable to conclude -- or at least strongly suspect -- that he was doing it to protect Cheney, and maybe even Bush.
***
All of this means that Bush's decision yesterday to commute Libby's prison sentence isn't just a matter of unequal justice. It is also a potentially self-serving and corrupt act.
This characteristic is, plainly, what sets this commutation and entire imbroglio apart from shoulder-shrugging "Washington business as usual" of past pardons and commutations. The point must never be lost; in every respect, this entire affair had as beginning, middle, and full-circle end the White House's crass eagerness to abuse the power entrusted to our government.
-
jtp118
But just as a rhetorical method, might it not be more effective to introduce a little wit or humor? Or at least the appearance of even-handedness? I can imagine a Republican or centrist reading your posts and just (incorrectly) dismissing them as extremist liberal hackery ... you might get a wider readership with a little less vitriol!
Every now and then I get emails and comments along these lines, but not often. I actually received an e-mail from someone today saying he reads my blogs, but wishes I would be more like his favorite writer, Lars-Erik Nelson, by omitting phrases such as "drooling press corps," because with Nelson, he "does not see much in the way of verbal attacks." This was my reply -
Thanks for the email. I believe I use eptithets less than most political writers, but daily political blogging is a much different style of writing than writing a twice-a-week column. Blogging is much more raw, unedited, spontaneous, and passion-driven. It is not mediated by any editor nor
permitted to sit for a few days in order to take off edges. That is one of its virtues, though -- like all virtues -- it has a cost.
I write with passion and I'd prefer that I err on the side of having that passion sometimes produce impetuous or gratuitiously insulting phrases than err on the side of lacking vibrancy and life (as, in my view, much of Lars-Erik Nelson's writing does/did).
Some people have a misconception about blogging. I don't sit down every day and try to figure out what methods I can devise to persuade fence-sitters to change their minds. Blogging isn't calculating like that.
Instead, I make the points that I think ought to be made about important events and make them the way I believe are valid and well-reasoned. Whatever else might be true, I think it's fair to say that I always try to ensure that any conclusions I am asserting are supported by evidence and logical reasoning. I try hard to keep ad hominem attacks and personal insults to a minimum, mostly because they are not really worth much.
But the issues I write about inspire passion -- often intense passion -- in both me and in readers of this blog, so it's inevitable (and desirable) that the language employed will sometimes be aggressive. The last thing I would spend my energy on is trying to drain what I write of its passion and aggression.
Ultimately, no one writer is going to please everyone. It's extremely unlikely that someone is going to change their style in response to comments like that. The only real viable options are to read the person despite the attributes you dislike or to read someone else who more closely follows the style you like.