Will you indulge me while I defend left-wing bloggers? Joe Klein, of Primary Colors and Time magazine fame, defames them en masse in a recent column linked by DrudgeReport. "Beware the Bloggers' Bile," the headline warns. But evidence therein supporting the headline's claim is scant. Klein had reported that Rep. Jane Harman had voted for the bill to fund the Iraq war, printing a quote she had canned prior to her vote explaining why she had casted a "yea." The problem for Klein is that Harman, as is the prerogative of women, changed her mind. She actually voted against the measure.
"The next day," Klein notes, "I was blasted by a number of left-wing bloggers: Klein screwed up!" (He did.) He terms their response "free-range lunacy." But there is nothing insane about correcting a mistake. It's easy to believe that some of the responses to Klein were crazy (Welcome to the Internet, where anonymity brings the id out). But he doesn't offer examples that suggest this, leaving readers to wonder if it's Klein, rather than his critics, who has issues. "A reasonable reader might ask," Klein contends, "Why are the left-wing bloggers attacking you? Aren't you pretty tough on the Bush Administration? Didn't you write a few months ago that George W. Bush would be remembered as one of the worst Presidents in history?" What relevance does this have with his lazy reporting of an event before it occurred? Should the ideological good will accrued provide him a mulligan when he stumbles? This suggestion that Klein makes should be abhorrent to anyone who values truth, which is supposed to be his business. An error is no less an error no matter how many times you praise Barack Obama or damn George Bush.
If Klein's persecution complex weren't enough, he projects his critics' faults upon a group seemingly distant from this controversy: the right wing. I know. I know. The right wing, and not a lone Communist, killed President Kennedy. And a vast right-wing conspiracy, and not President Clinton's libido, was responsible for the Monica Lewinsky affair. But, in this case, blaming the Right for the Left's sins (which weren't really sins anyhow), is as bizarre as blaming right-wingers for Kennedy's death or Clinton's amours. Klein writes, "the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered.... Fury begets fury." Please.
Beware of the Bloggers' Bile? A better headline might have read, "Beware of Joe Klein's Thin Skin."
Oh come on. You know Karl Rove is behind the left-wing bloggers. That's the mastery of this guy. He's there in every shadow!
Has anybody checked the guy for horns--or at least nubs? Has anybody checked if Bush isn't exactly a re-constituted Hitler, you know freeze-dried and powedered, just-add-water variety?
Of course it doesn't surprise me that much. It kind of reminds me when the anti-religious accuse Marxism of being a "secular" religion.
Vast conspiracies.
It's interesting how the libs/dems love to refer to ANYTHING "Bush" as evil, Devil, Hitler, whatevaugh.... Yet, when a third world despot commits genocide on his own people or some little guy with a funky mustache over in Iraq runs people through paper shredders, not a peep or a comparison.
Suffice it to say that Bush sucks, but he's not evil. Just a dangerous dope.
