May 23, 2005

5/23: Internecine Blogfare

Say, where did the judge/filibuster talk go? While blogs devoted to the subject comment on the developments from the Sunday shows, the hot debates lie elsewhere.

Many are still occupied by Newsweek's "Korangate" and subsequent developments. By now the initial conservative anger at Newsweek has been eclipsed by related developments, hardening suspicions that reporters who came of age during Vietnam are permanently hostile to the U.S. military. But they disagree over whether or not reporting on military abuse cases are "anti-military" or not.

Meanwhile, a number of liberal bloggers heatedly debate the wisdom of NARAL's endorsing Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) for re-election, as reported by the Providence Journal. Some are angry that a traditionally Dem group is supporting a GOPer, others argue this is a smart move, prioritizing ideas over the party's immediate fortunes. In this instance, abortion becomes a proxy for the overall debate over the future of the Dems.

The surprise hit of the weekend is an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle column by Bay Area writer Keith Thompson, who announces in the headline that he is "Leaving the Left." Many on the right cite it approvingly; some on the lift dismiss it out of hand, while others challenge Thompson's assumptions.

Also kicking around the blogs: Howard Dean seems to have escaped "Meet the Press" without sustaining much damage, liberals criticize of the media's take on Sen. Rick Santorum's (R-PA) "Hitler" comment, Sen. George Allen's (R-VA) pro-life credentials are questioned, and a stringer for the New York Times and CNN admits she participated in the protest she covered. Plus: Biglongwordsthatcontinueforeverwithnoendinsight!

TRACKBACKS: Hunting Thompson

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

• Newsweek's announcement that they will change their standards is widely quoted by the left and right, but the link is all they -- Scared Monkeys; The Sundries Shack; Rex Hammock; PressThink; Colby Cosh; Morning Sedition Blog; Andunie; Irregular Expression; RatherGate -- agree on.
  
  

  >> From the right: Captain's Quarters: "Did it make sense to anyone at Newsweek that interrogators would get better response from Islamists by desecrating their holy book? It didn't pass the smell test for me when I first heard it, and it still doesn't to this day." Michelle Malkin quotes Newsweek as now reporting that mishandling of the Koran occurred in "fewer than a dozen log entries from the 31,000 documents reviewed so far," and comments: "The truth seeps out. Too little. Too late."
  

  >> From the left: Political Animal: "Newsweek and the rest of the media need to get up off their knees and start fighting back. They've done enough apologizing." Democracy Arsenal writes, the fallout is "just beginning," and offers several reasons: "That similar stories that have been corroborated by credible sources"; "The underlying level of anti-American sentiment that allowed a single news report to trigger deadly riots throughout the Muslim world"; "The White House's apparent imperviousness the what these revelations mean for top U.S. foreign policy priorities"; etc.

• Bloggers linking to Thompson's essay: Roger L. Simon; Instapundit; Travelling Shoes; Barcepundit; Ed Driscoll; Brainster; USS Neverdock; Half-Bakered; Michael J. Totten; A man in the arena; Brothers Judd; Michelle Malkin. More on Thompson follows further into this Blogometer.
  

  >> Right-leaning Secular Blasphemy: "The article describes to some extent the development of my own thought ... Now the left seems reduced to preserving social welfare on the home front (which in itself can be good) and on the international stage, all that is left is hatred of Israel and the US."
  

  >> Liberal TBogg: "Oh my goodness, our ranks have been thinned once again by another 'I didn't leave the party, the party left me' Former-Liberal-Looking-For-A-Book-Deal."

• More than a few bloggers are moved to point up an AP story about sex offenders receiving Viagra: This Modern World; TalkLeft; Eschaton; Julian Sanchez.
  

  >> Moderate Joe Gandelman: "File this one in the Amazing But True Story department."

NEWSWEEK -- And Everything After

Riding Sun, an American expat in Tokyo notes the Japanese cover of Newsweek featuring a U.S. flag in a trash can and the title "The day America died." The blogger, "Gaijinbiker," notes several aspects of how the Japanese version portrays America in a more negative light than the U.S. version, and adds: "It's one thing for Newsweek to actively promote the notion that America is a 'dead', 'rotting' country overseas. But it's quite another thing indeed to hide those efforts from its American readers. If Newsweek really thinks America is dead, and our flag belongs in the trash, why won't it tell us?"

Hugh Hewitt: "It is almost inevitable that more anti-military stories will surface, powered by more leaks, all designed to discredit a war effort that is all too obviously succeeding in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon and hopefully elsewhere in the Middle East."

Conservative John Cole, an Army vet, responds in a very, very long post: "Reporting on abuses that have been committed by our troops, in our name, is not anti-military. While I am not arrogant enough to attempt to divine the motives of every journalist who reports on such abuses, Hugh appears to be up to the challenge. I find his attack on the reporting of the outrageous abuses ... to be both disturbing and disingenuous." Libertarian Radley Balko agrees: "The myopic filter through which parts of the pro-war blogosphere view what's going on overseas gets depressing. ... That's why I like John Cole. I don't agree with him on foreign policy. But with posts like this one, you can at least take his position knowing that he's given it careful thought and consideration, and is willing to call out his own when necessary."

Moderate Andrew Sullivan, in a post titled "The Spin on Torture": "It has gone chronologically something like this: "It's not true. It's not true. It may be true but it's not torture. Okay, it's torture, but isn't official policy. It may be true and official policy, but we changed the policy and we uncovered the abuses ourselves. It may be true, it may have been widespread, but we've punished the culprits. It may be true, it may have been widespread, it may still be happening, but all these reports are old news." Well, give these guys points for effort."

T. Bevan from Real Clear Politics notes the similarities between Newsweek's "debacle" and the pre-election revelations about al-Qaqaa: "Unfortunately, it's the same mentality that allows Newsweek to get lazy with its sourcing and fall under the assumption that the worst rumors and allegations circulating about U.S. forces are true."

Lefty David Corn writes, "today the White House was quick to denounce the unauthorized release of photos of Saddam Hussein in his underwear. It did not move fast and apologize for the death -- that is, murder -- of Dilawar and the other abuses disclosed by the Times."

Tim Blair posts a picture of a Baghdad family laughing at an image of Saddam in his skivvies from the Sun, and captions it: "The Arab Street responds to Saddam's underpants humiliation: They're laughing at Saggy Hussein."

Righty Dean Esmay: "One of the more tiresome canards I hear when I say the press is intentionally destructive in its war reporting is the lie -- and it's an outright lie, I won't grace it with the notion that it's a simple misunderstanding anymore -- that this means the press is supposed to cover up evidence of misdeeds or failures or casualties. Or that this means the press is not allowed to criticize those in power."

TalkLeft: "It really is inexcusable that the military knew almost immediately what happened but waited until after his very public memorial service three weeks later to tell the family. Was the military using Pat Tillman to keep its image afloat, in the wake of the newly announced Abu Ghraib scandal?"

DEMOCRATS: NARAL Asserts Its Right To Choose

Ezra Klein, on NARAL's decision: "Stupid stupid stupid. ... A Democratic majority is going to protect the right to choose even if one or two of its members are uncomfortable with the concept. A Republican majority is going to work feverishly to abrogate it even if one or two of its members, like Lincoln, support choice."

Daily Kos' Moulitsas: "One of the key problems with the Democratic Party is that single issue groups have hijacked it for their pet causes. So suddenly, Democrats are the party of abortion, of gun control, of spotted owls, of labor, of trial lawyers, etc, etc., et-frickin'-cetera. We don't stand for any ideals, we stand for specific causes. We don't have a core philosophy, we have a list with boxes to check off.

Dem Left in the West: "Democrats don't get to expect 100% loyalty from issue groups. The DSCC and many in DC have been actively moving to the center on abortion issues, thinking that will save them. NARAL is understandably responding, defending the beliefs of their members. If some folks at Daily Kos or Ezra Klein have donated to NARAL thinking that their contribution was aimed at electing Democrats rather than protecting reproductive freedom and women's health care, they misunderstood. NARAL is an independent group. It gets to do as it damn well pleases."

David Sirota writes, if those bloggers "have a problem with NARAL endorsing Chafee simply because he is a Republican ... it means folks still just don't understand how important an ideological (as opposed to partisan) infrastructure really is." More: "Conservatives inherently understand this -- its why conservative organizations sometimes go after Republicans from the right ... And make no mistake about it -- this ends up benefiting the Republican Party far more than if these groups only acted as non-ideological partisan operations. These groups create conviction activists and political leaders who are unified around an ideology/issue, instead of what we have on our side too often: people who are ideologically fluid and don't know exactly what they stand for other than having a 'D' after their name."

Oliver Willis responds to Sirota: "The conservative movement ... certainly didn't get to their level of prominence by shooting themselves in the foot and putting their pet issues up and above what Ford referred to as 'Job One': Getting Republicans elected. In this decision, NARAL is following the playbook that has left Democrats, and the left in general, marginalized."

DEAN: Without A Scratch

Most discussing the Dean's "Meet the Press" appearance quote the MSNBC.com transcript. Several conservative blogs, including Wizbang, note the following Dean quote: "But the thing that really bothered me the most, which the 9-11 Commission said also wasn't true, is the insinuation that the president continues to make to this day that Osama bin Laden had something to do with supporting terrorists that attacked the United States. That is false. The 9-11 Commission, chaired by a Republican, said it was false."

A Wizbang commenter brushes it aside: "Much as I think Howard Dean is the ne plus ultra of moonbats, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. I think he just mis-spoke. As for Russert's not catching it, well, kaka occurs."

Among the others who note the error: DalyThoughts; Orrin Judd; Jackson's Junction provides the actual video.

WHITE HOUSE '08: Will Allen Have Trouble On His Right Flank?

A writer at RedState comments on Sunday show appearances by Sen. Allen and Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA): "[W]e saw two of the brightest Republican stars for the 2008 Presidential stakes embrace the same position in favor the use of 'surplus' (their word, not mine) embryos for medical research. Apparently they haven't yet learned that opposing cloning and Partial-Birth Abortion does not earn you a pass on pro-life issues. RS readers are surely familiar with ... Romney's attempt to chuck a few bones to the pro-life community on the issue -- which have thankfully met with almost zero success among any of the pro-life leadership. But you may not be familiar with the need of Virginia Senator George Allen to do the same. ... it's time for pro-lifers to consider him in the same category as Gov. Romney: no matter their positions on other matters, these two Presidential aspirants are only as pro-life as smart politics dictates."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Correction Insurrection

Right-leaning blogger Steve Bartin notices an interesting New York Times correction: "A NYT article written on May 6th concerning the Bill Frist demonstrations failed to mention: 'The writer, a freelance contributor who is a Princeton student, did not disclose to The Times that before she was assigned the article, she had participated in the demonstration.' Since virtually all NYT writers are registered Democrats these things can happen."

Conservative Polipundit: "I found an article about the Princeton demonstrations at CNN.com by the same 'reporter.' Note how the article includes all the subtle tactics that the lying liberal media uses every day ... Only people who support the liberal agenda are quoted. Conservatives are entirely ignored," "The liberal agenda is portrayed as bipartisan," "Negative words are used when Republicans are mentioned," "The last word goes to a supporter of the liberal agenda." Comments "Polipundit": "This 'freelance' reporter is well on her way to becoming another drone in the lying liberal media's legions."

Princeton student Joel Thompson appears in the comments: "Knowing the author personally, I have to add my own comments. She's a nice person. We disagree politically, but I don't think there was any malice or intention of bias on her part for this article. ... She should have known better. However, knowing her, I can attest that it's more likely she just never thought about it that way." Another commenter responds: "Sorry, Joel, but this is exactly the problem with the MSM ...they don't seem to think about it that way."

More commentary on the New York Times' upcoming TimesSelect program charging $49.95 per year to read the opinion columnists from Man Without Qualities' "R. Musil" who quotes from outgoing New York Times Public Editor Dan Okrent's final column: "Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. ... William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess." "Musil": "Pay $49.95 for that?"

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: Left Behind

RedState and Power Line are 2 more blogs to give the Thompson column mentioned above a positive mention.

But "Armando" at DailyKos disagrees, and quotes Thompson as such: "Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom. ... I began my activist career championing the 1968 presidential candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, because both promised to end America's misadventure in Vietnam." "Armando" writes: "There is more pseudointellectual drivel there, but I have just 2 questions for this pale imitation of [left-to-right convert David] Horowitz: (1) Did (and do) the people of Vietnam love freedom when he was cheering on Ho Chi Minh? (2) What do the Swifties think when he tells them that their service was a 'misadventure'? The intellectual bankruptcy of the Right is manifest."

Thompson writes his own blog at Sane Nation, where he comments on reactions: "Because the piece got picked up by several right-of-center online publications, it's not surprising that my musings got a decided thumbs-up. Here's what surprised me, and what I find heartening: A large number of self-described SF Bay Area readers (more than 200 at last count) said I had given voice to their largely unexpressed doubts about what the left has become."

BLOGGERS VS. THE WORLD: Come Together, Right Now, Over Me

Lefty blog DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas: "A little over a week ago, I received a full briefing on the progress of the Yearly Kos convention planning, leading up to the big even in the summer of 2006. While sympathetic to the goals of the project, I watched from afar, afraid to jumpt the gun lest initial enthusiasm fade. Planning a convention is serious business, requiring serious time commitments. But what I was shown was impressive, to say the least. So I'm aboard."

SANTORUM: Palpatine = Hitler

Lefty Judd Legum at CAP's ThinkProgress, on the Washington Post's equivalence by Santorum's "Hitler" comments and Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-NJ) "Palpatine" comments: "Never mind that Santorum compared his opponents to a reviled historical figure who murdered millions and Lautenberg's comments involved a fictional character in a summer movie. Treating Lautenberg's and Santorum's comments as equivalents created the balance the media wanted."

Conservative Patterico's Pontifications quotes from a New York Times editorial: "The judicial nominations debate reached a new low this week when a Republican senator compared his Democratic colleagues to Hitler."

"Patterico" objects: "A 'new low'?? Evidently the editors haven't been reading their own paper again. The paper ran an AP story on March 3 which reported that Democratic Senator Robert Byrd had compared his Republican colleagues to Hitler. ... Conservative bloggers have almost unanimously condemned Santorum's ridiculous Nazi comparison. But for New York Times editors, it's only a 'new low' when a Republican does it."

Tapped's Jeffrey Dubner asks, "who's not on the cloture petition? How about Rick Santorum, he of the competing '08 campaign?"

SOCIAL SECURITY: E.J. The Egregious

Libertarian Will Wilkinson takes on E.J. Dionne's 5/19 Washington Post column. Writes Dionne: "For the first time in a long while, core liberal principles are actually winning in a public debate. The idea that Social Security is an insurance program and not an investment plan is gaining traction." Wilkinson responds: "Why E.J. Dionne thinks deception is a "core liberal principle" totally eludes me. Here are two options about Social Security as insurance. (1) It is not insurance. (2) It is "insurance," in some loose sense. But then so is (a) means-tested welfare or (b) mandatory personal retirement accounts plus a safety net. If (1) is true, then Dionne's claim is a lie. If (2) is true, then saying that Social Security is insurance does nothing to tell us why we ought to prefer the status quo over (a) or (b). As it happens, there is NO "core liberal principle" that I can think of that supports the fevered defense of America's badly structured historic welfare programs."

STEM CELLS: SoKo Helps?

Lefty Chris Mooney: "It's very simple for research proponents in Congress to explain that their bill would not license federal funding for this kind of research (even though I personally wish it did). Yet at the same time, they can clearly cite the South Korean breakthroughs to play the scientific nationalism card -- why the hell are we so far behind the rest of the world? (I'm not endorsing scientific nationalism in general, just pointing out that it's politically potent.)"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: If You Thought Writing Doesn't Pay Now...

Centrist Jeff Jarvis: "I read Stephen Baker's post on the BusinessweekBlogspotting blog recounting lunch at a Korean restaurant (note outsourcing irony) with a media exec who argued that we will soon the rise of a new kind of newsperson. ... Baker and lunchmate think these people will be higher paid because of their multimedia skills. As editors, that may be true (though multimedia skills are today the birthright of the young: no big deal). As reporters, I think, however, that there will not be a scarcity of talent and eagerness out there -- witness the blogs -- and so payment for reporting could decline."

LEST WE FORGET: Sometimesitsjustfuntowritelikethisevenifit'sreallyreallyhardtoread

In a post titled "Marktwainsgermanwarning und Yoda," Donald Sensing runs a letter he never got printed in the Washington Post from '94 (relevant to a debate in the letters section at the time) about the Yoda-esque peculiarities of Deutsche: "In German biglongwordsthatcontinueforeverwithnoendinsight there are. Bigdeal. Two biggerproblems there are. First, in the Germanlanguage, verbs at the end of sentences or clauses go. In normalconversation, which is a question or which is a declarativestatement vocalinflection indicates. But in the writtentexts, only at the endofsentences with a period or a questionmark when you the difference can tell isn't it? Second, negatives the noun not verb modify. What the ruleimpact of this in English try to imagine would be. ... Richard Nixon would have said, 'I a notcrook am.' Connie Chung to the Newtmother would have said, 'Why not you to me girltogirl it whisper?'"

Posted by at May 23, 2005 01:42 PM