It’s been a banner week over at the Washington Post. On Monday they run a rotten op-ed piece pooh-poohing the Armenian genocide (more on that later this week). And today’s Post brings a truly execrable editorial on the Libby verdict. The editorialist (presumed to be Fred Hiatt, head of the Post‘s editorial board) says the Libby affair was “a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance.” He says Joseph Wilson “will be remembered as a blowhard.” And what did government officials do wrong? Well, nothing, really. “Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were overbearing in their zeal to rebut Mr. Wilson and careless in their handling of classified information.” Zealous (perfectly acceptable). Careless (certainly excusable). What’s the fuss?
The Washington Post still doesn’t get it.
I dropped in at the Post to comment (among hundreds of others). I’ll reproduce the comment here because, with all the technical talent available to washingtonpost.com, they don’t seem to have anyone on staff who knows how to apply measures to block malicious code in form submissions. Previously it had seemed they strip only single quotation marks, so I used the odd “reverse single quote” that lives at the extreme upper left edge of my keyboard. Well, it turns out they strip just about all punctuation, including double quotes and—get this—parentheses. Ridiculous. So, here is what I said, replete with quotation marks and parentheses:
“Mr. Wilson’s case has besmirched nearly everyone it touched.” What on earth is Fred Hiatt (or whoever wrote this bizarre, fact-challenged editorial) talking about? Still attacking Joe Wilson, are we? “Wilson claimed,” “Wilson suggested” … The fact is, Joe Wilson was basically right about Iraq. The Washington Post, as an institution, was basically wrong. And yet it weeps big tears for its friend and Leaker Extraordinaire “Scooter” Libby, and for his boss and Unnamed Source Supreme Dick Cheney, and for his putative boss and erstwhile War President George Bush. “Most people (not us at the Post, of course, or Newsweek, or MSNBC) think they were not just spectacularly wrong, they lied themselves silly in the process. But boy, they’re nice guys. Couldn’t ask for nicer lunch companions, so pleasant to run into at Nags Head or the Vineyard. What a shame so many people are mad at them.” Every once in a while, the Washington Post still manages to report an unvarnished fact. The rest of the time it’s just insider gossip and the government line.
Enjoy your special access, boys and girls. When you get that close to power (so close as to actually be in it—we won’t mention the likely mode of ingress), you can’t see clearly or think straight anymore. It’s actually kind of dark in there, isn’t it? But it’s a good living, eh? A comfortable life at the imperial court, where Cheney is merely “overbearing” rather than cynically manipulative; where Libby is a martyr alongside his fourth-estate pals who were willing to take a hit (which he was counting on when he lied to the grand jury) for the sake of “protecting” a source who is in no need of protection—a government employee, as it turns out, who wanted to be able to plant disinformation in the press so that the government could quote it back as if the press had found it and verified it all on its very own. In the good old days, a reporter protected a source because that person was in a weak position and could suffer retaliation as a result of talking to the press. In “protecting” a powerful government source like Libby, the press is actually protecting itself—protecting its easy working conditions and its more-than-comfortable lifestyle. That’s what this story is all about, Fred: collusion unmasked. [link added]
I remember when Fred Hiatt was the Post‘s Moscow bureau chief. I think he actually did some reporting back then. I wonder if, after reading all the comments, he wishes he were back in the USSR.
