Letters to the Editor
-
The Commentariat At Work
Once again, Glenn, you strip the hypocrisy bare, and it's not a pretty sight.
What I find so revealing is the continued use of the labels, journalist and reporter, to describe commentary and opining.
Until there is some regulation and regular distinction between the accurate contextual reporting of fact and supporting evidence from that of musing, opinion and commentary, I believe this will continue unabated in the extant corporate model of accountability to investors and ratings ruling advertising revenue. News, fact and evidence are not ingredients in this model.
Thank goodness for the aggregate filters of the blogosphere. Untamable, unregulated, sort of self-policing and able to find, expose and analyze collectively.
No wonder the corporatocracy is so hostile to bloggers - we must be doing it right!
-
I'd bet that Joe was at Woodstock, too.
Just ask him.
-
Wanker Of The Day
Someone alert Atrios.
Jeebus, what a tool Joke Line is.
-
I know your thorough
But I know enough about both you and Joe Klein, to know he was lying even before you wrote your post. I was thus able to skip past all the prose you were able to dig up. Ironically, I had a similar reaction when the Starr report came out (posted on that newfangled internet thingy). I read about a third of the way through it and just had to stop because I didn't care. I know what sex is like. If I wanted it to be described repeatedly, I'd buy a porn mag.
I also know that Joe Klein is a liar.
(Note that I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't document it when it comes up. I'm just asking your forgiveness for skipping over all the sordid details!)
-
You're thorough...
my kingdom for an edit button!
-
Of course the rest of Joe's post is FOS as well
Considerring that he's giving Bill a hard time for the crime of being written aboout.
-
Why does Klein think he can get away with this?
He must think no one will check the facts. I suppose that's what happens at crumbling institutions like Time Magazine.
Fortunately, sites like this one will do the job Time editors (or TNR, New York Times, Washington Post) editors refuse to do.
Thanks Glenn.
-
Paul Dirks:
Note that I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't document it when it comes up. I'm just asking your forgiveness for skipping over all the sordid details!)
I don't blame you. It makes for a depressing, boring read. But the reason I quoted so much of it isn't because of the need to prove Joe Klein is lying (as you say, there's hardly a need to prove that ever), but rather, because I'm just endlessly fascinated by how grotesque the 1990s discourse was.
I was paying only mild attention at the time -- I didn't even have a TV back then, and I especially tuned out all matters Lewinsky -- and so I never really appreciated just how extreme and ugly it all was. When I go back now and read transcripts from virtually every "news" show at the time, I am endlessly amazed.
-
Isn't there somebody else?
Let me preface this by saying that I think you do great work, Glenn, and I can't wait to read your daily column as soon as I get to work, but isn't there someone else we could start focusing on?
Don't get me wrong, obviously Joe Klein is a complete idiot, and he deserves all the crap in the world, but I have to worry that you're obsessing a little bit over one guy who is not necessarily the whole problem (he's becoming your Draco Malfoy). He's just one asshole in a sea of assholes, and given all of the other half-assed sleazy journalists out there, it might be more productive to start hammering other people who deserve it at least as much as Joe Klein.
Obviously I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but this column seems a bit petty when compared with a lot of the other great work that you're doing.
-
I doubt that Klein is deliberately lying...
... I think he merely convinces himself after the fact that he was right all along.
This doesn't make it a-OK, or even necessarily any better at all. And it's a product of punditry being a zero accountability profession. Imagine if Klein, and Broder, and Brooks, et al, actually read stuff that they'd written in the past. I bet they'd be shocked!
-
Hey Glenn
You didn't consult him first and ask him what "occasionally critical" means.
Thought I would say that before someone else does. You didn't have to query either King or Klein or any other journalist. What they write stands on their own.
Apparently some commenters don't understand the difference between researching a story when no one else is aware of the story and a released story or remarks that should have been carefully thought out and expressed before being made public.
-
Sex lives are not important now...
When you have Rudy as still being the favorite of the pundit class. Fred Thompson's background might be interesting, too. Interesting being a subjective thing, personally, I want NO details. Really, no details...
Sex will be an issue only if it's Hillary vs. Mike or Mitt. If that happens, then all of Bill's failings have to be brought back up with hints to the reasons for them being Hillary's fault. She's weak, she's cold, she's gay, she's so calculating she doesn't give a damn, etc.
Thanks for calling Klein out again and trying to keep these guys honest.
-
Not quite as damning as it could be
This passage:
"Mr. KLEIN: Yeah. In the end, it's not--well, not so much about sex. I--let me take that back. It's about judgment. It's about maturity. You gotta figure that there's something desperately wrong with this guy. I mean, I don't know whether it's a removable offense. I think that for us to kind of speculate on what should happen is part of the problem. But you've got to say that anybody who would do this, knowing--knowing as he knew that there was this prosecutor up against him and knowing that the media--the s--the state of the game as--the state it played in the media is what it was, that--that he would do this, there's something desperately wrong with someone like that."
There were lots of us appalled at the Starr investigation and the impeachment insanity who took a similar position. Clinton had, after all, lied to us and allowed us to initially defend him as if we was actually innocent of the underlying charges. Most of us ended up forgiving him for that, but the real charge that Klein is leveling against him in the quote above is stupidity. And the kind of horndog blindness to the risks involved, that Clinton exhibited in spades, was anything but praiseworthy.
I agree that Klein is currently polishing up a credential that he doesn't have, but compared to the level of media insanity that accompanied that era (MSNBC exists because it was All Lewinsky, All the Time), the Klein quotes are positively mild. Likewise, his initial article was also comparatively mild, and it seems to me you're blaming him for others' use of it as justification. Did he intend that it be so used? If he was speaking authoritatively in one fashion or another (e.g., if he was the Attorney General or occupying some similar position of inherent trust), he might well be taken to task for others' use of his words, but all he was doing was expressing a media opinion, and a damned lightweight one at that.
The fact that he piled on with his criticisms at an inconvenient time for Clinton and for the nation, when the media would have strongly served the country by talking about something else, only shows that he's an egotistical blowhole like the rest of them. And once he dove, desperately, in front of that spotlight, he couldn't very well just say "Hi, Mom!".
I think Chris Matthews makes a much better candidate for decimation due to shameful harping on the Lewinsky scandal. That guy's 15 minutes were up years ago, and someone keeps giving him more time.