Things as They Are Are Changed Upon the Blue Guitar
Maybe it’s just me, but I found Marc Ambinder’s reply to my post on the press and perceptions of John McCain to be tellingly defensive. Nowhere did I write that the press should be blamed for McCain getting a bounce from his convention and nowhere did I attempt to start a “Greenwaldian debate about the duties, obligations and frustrations of the press.”
All I was observing is that it’s perverse for members of the press to make claims about how dishonest campaign tactics are likely to play that treats themselves as non-participants in the process. Creating false beliefs in the public about yourself and your opponent is politically helpful. But acquiring a reputation as a liar is politically damaging. And the public gets a lot of information through the press. Thus, the political impact of telling a lie will have a lot to do with how the media chooses to cover it. If John McCain’s decision to release an ad that contains a thoroughly debunked lie about his running mate’s record was greeted with lead stories on network news about John McCain has a reputation as a straight-talker but really he’s a big fat liar, that would be bad for McCain. But they haven’t covered it that way. They have, however, actually drawn some attention to the fact that McCain is lying, which is good. But what they really haven’t done is created a narrative about how lying — in particular, lying about Barack Obama’s tax plan and lying about Sarah Palin’s record — has moved to a central place in John McCain’s campaign. Perhaps the press has good reason for doing this. But Marc shouldn’t treat himself as a passive observer of the fact that McCain can get away with lying, he’s one of a countable number of people who are in a position to substantially influence the narrative around McCain and his campaign.
As for the duties and obligations of the press, unlike Glenn Greenwald I don’t talk about that stuff because I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside a lot of journalists over the years and know that, self-righteousness aside, working journalists don’t in practice operate as if they have any particular duties or obligations beyond the basic self-interest that drives people in all lines of work.
82 Responses to “Things as They Are Are Changed Upon the Blue Guitar”
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September 8th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
a central place in Barack Obama’s campaign
er, you mean John McCain’s campaign. you better fix this or you will find that Drudge will think you’ve just admitted Obama’s a Muslim.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Wait — so suddenly the philosopher finds distasteful Glenn Greenwald’s asking of basic questions about the relationship between actually existing news media and its impact upon our political lives? This is all made uninteresting because Matt has known journalists???
September 8th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
hmmm… interesting stuff
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/
September 8th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
All I was observing is that it’s perverse for members of the press to make claims about how dishonest campaign tactics are likely to play that treats themselves as non-participants in the process.
That sentence is out of bounds. Matt, I’m going to be blunt and recommend that you join Dependent Clausers Anonymous. Don’t make your readers stage an intervention.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Have you ever had an idea in its earliest soup-like form made clear by someone else’s articulation? Or, learned a new word then began seeing it everywhere?
That’s how I feel about this post.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Ambinder’s response was a bit of the pissy-defensive variety, and his pick at Glennzilla was unnecessary and even more telling.
No wonder Ambinder doesn’t have a comments section.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Does anyone else find Greenwald’s never-ending jeremiads on the press to be rather sanctimonious, redundant, and often sophomoric?
September 8th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
They have, however, actually drawn some attention to the fact that McCain is lying, which is good. But what they really haven’t done is created a narrative about how lying — in particular, lying about Barack Obama’s tax plan and lying about Sarah Palin’s record — has moved to a central place in Barack Obama’s campaign.
Might want to fix this.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
John McCain invented the internet.
No, really.
.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Marc seems to pride himself on his high-minded, journalistic neutrality.
Now imagine Marc does what you say and points out the obvious fact that the McCain campaign is lying.
He’ll then get a phone call from the McCain campaign accusing him of liberal/pro-Obama/etc. bias. It’s not true, of course.
But now Marc feels the weight of being perceived as biased. And for the type of reporting Marc wants to do (or the type of reporter he wants to be known as), that is damaging.
Self-interest indeed.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
in John McCain’s campaign, you mean?
September 8th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Don’t you think its kind of strange for you to decry media narratives by asking they create a different narrative, coincidentally one you agree with? I’m not saying you’re wrong just that you sound a bit opportunistic yourself. This article from Ezra over the weekend shows how the media is incapable of judging itself. Maybe we all need a little Greenwald…
September 8th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
lay off — mccain is a pow.
and palin is a woman. sexist pigs.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I agree that Ambinder’s non-response to the Yglesias post was a joke. Rather than actually respond, he just took the opportunity to call you a whiner and gloat about the current polls. In other words, be a dick. But what probably pissed him off is the reference to “narratives,” as if reporters make a conscious decision to construct a story and fit pieces of news into it. That type of talk is so second nature to liberal bloggers that Yglesias probably doesn’t realize how insulting it is (even if it is true in many cases) and how loaded it is with meta baggage from “Greenwaldian” critiques. Once you start talking about the press’s role in structuring how people understand the world, you are having a meta debate about the duties and obligations of the press. That’s a debate worth having, even if Ambinder is too cowardly to participate. But Ambinder is right to note that the original post was part of that debate.
The less loaded argument is that the fact that a candidate is repeating a debunked claim is newsworthy. Not because it’s part of a “narrative” but because it’s an interesting story on its own. I don’t understand why a reporter would prefer to slavishly repeat the campaign’s talking points or navel gaze about the horserace implications when he or she could go with the lede: Candidate X Continues To Mislead With False Claim. In terms of both self-interest (juiciness) and self-regard, that would seem to be the more attractive story. The possible explanations I can come with are (a) reporters want access and don’t want to piss off campaigns, (b) reporters are constrained by their editors, and (c) reporters are lazy and don’t like to do even minimal research.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
To anyone who doesn’t believe that the press has a rotten influence on this whole process, read Howard Fineman of Newsweek after the 2000 election in this self-incriminating quote:
FINEMAN (9/21/00): I don’t think the media was going to allow, just by its nature, the next seven weeks, the last seven or eight weeks of the campaign, to be all about Al Gore’s relentless, triumphant march to the presidency. We want a race, I suppose. If we have a bias of any kind, it’s that we like to see a contest and we like to see it down to the end if we can.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
The world is ugly and the people are sad.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Does anyone else find Greenwald’s never-ending jeremiads on the press to be rather sanctimonious, redundant, and often sophomoric?
Sanctimonious? Yes. Redundant? Kind of, but he’s got nothing on Sommerby on that tip. Often sophomoric? Not really.
Glenn may be humorless and excessively wordy, but generally when he’s on the case, there is a solid case to be made. He’s doing good work.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Matt rocks.
I used to be a “serious centrist” myself, but the last eight years have driven me f****g crazy. Tell it like it is, folks, or I’m going to turn off the damn TV, cancel my subscription, and send all my money to dKos, TPM, and Obama-Biden.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Sarah Palin’s wearing Ambinder’s balls as earrings. Ambinder is cross that you pointed this out.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
September 8th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Ambinder is a complete hack. I stopped reading his drivel long ago. He is always pissy and defensive because deep down inside he knows he’s a hack.
I applaud your efforts to honestly describe the behavior and effects of “the media”.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a freaking Wallace Stevens reference on a liberal blog this campaign. Now that’s change we can believe in!
September 8th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Shuster is hitting the point of whether its true and whether it matters or not if Palin was for or against the Bridge to Nowhere.
Slowly maybe they’ll start calling them on the lies. Although, the word “lie” was never used.
Oh now he’s asking about the Fannie/Freddie gaffe!!
Whooohoooooo
September 8th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
“Over the years”? Matt, you’re twenty-seven. You graduated from college five years ago. And you have never worked for a major news organization that is owned by a company that cares a fig for its stock price or the activities of government regulators. Perhaps you do have the kind of experience that would justify you having an opinion on the sorts of pressures and rewards that act on the self-interest of real big media figures, but if so your resume doesn’t show it.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I think what he’s saying is that the whole mindset that there are just competing narratives is why politics and political reporting are so incredibly awful right now. If you give equal time to both narratives regardless of what they are, then you’re not pointing out that one of them is simply not true. You’re just giving equal time for one side to spew complete bullshit. Presumably actually reporting the truth should have more relevance than being completely “fair”.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Matt – perhaps journalists SHOULD be motivated by something other than self-interest. The public hails soldiers, doctors, and (yes) community organizers for doing something valuable for the public. We need journalists to act as watchdogs on government corruption and abuse of power, and complacent reporters working for their paycheck is letting society down. I think you should give your friends a lecture…
September 8th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a freaking Wallace Stevens reference on a liberal blog this campaign. Now that’s change we can believe in!
Indeed, and more like it:
September 8th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I think of “Greenwaldian” as meaning extensively documented and fastidiously researched. Alterman-esque, even.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Mr Ambinder is clearly a journalistic “professional” who will not be dragged into a pointless debate about media influence and responsibility. That is another fool’s game to play. He’s going to focus on what’s hot right now, providing sage commentary to erstwhile Atlantic dot com readers.
Matthew rightly points out the “professional” credo: rat race ethics in a crowded field render skill less important than talent, understanding than knowledge, fact than reporting. Unfortunately, Matt also does so for the wrong reasons with this lovely hedge: “…working journalists don’t in practice operate as if they have any particular duties or obligations beyond the basic self-interest that drives people in all lines of work.” Yeah, okay buddy…
And to think commenter Brendan called Greenwald “sanctimonious”…a tune that might change after reading Ambinder more regularly.
b4d
September 8th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Ambinder doesn’t even get the facts right.
Palin didn’t oppose the bridge to nowhere until after it had been effectively defeated in congress. All she did was say that the state of Alaska wasn’t going to pay for it.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
>>Glenn may be humorless
Understatement of the day. If you ever read his comments on his posts, you’ll find that Greenwald is generally a combative jerk who shows nothing but contempt for even the slightest disagreement with his views. I don’t want to use the loaded term “shrill” — let’s say he often comes off bitter and hostile. (And if you said that to him, he would write you a five page rant explaining that everyone should be bitter and hostile, you bloodthirsty warmongering asshole, you!)
September 8th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
What jumps out at me is this line: “They understand that John McCain’s summer attacks against Barack Obama were negative, and yet they believed the attacks.” There’s a willful ignorance of the difference between “negative” and “false” that began among the punditry as part of the ideology of centrism and that has spread out to the news media as a whole and thence to the public. There’s nothing wrong with saying something negative about one’s opponent, if the statement is true. There’s nothing laudable about making positive comments, about oneself or anyone else, if those positive comments are false. Using “negative” and “false” almost interchangeably does harm to the discourse.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Ambinder is a shitty commentator and a shitty reporter. He operates from this position of neutrality, which is just kind of funny if not absurd. I’m really trying to figure out how he made it among the several dozen or so people who do political reporting for high profile outlets.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I wrote this below, but I think it bears repeating:
Ambinder’s a fantastic reporter and he clearly has high-level McCain campaign sources and RNC operatives who trust him.
Unfortunately, it’s tainted his reporting. It’s the classic reporter’s conundrum: openly calling McCain a liar, though its truthful, will kill his access. And so he can’t call a spade a spade.
Ambinder could argue that he provides a valuable service, funneling information from insiders, and that the role of telling the truth is best left to others with less to lose than he has. But the reality is that each of us, each individual citizen, has an obligation to tell the truth as we see it; what Ambinder doesn’t see is that the inability of the press to be truthful is a collective action problem, with every holdout from the truth supporting every other, and each undermining American political journalism in a dreadful way.
He’s part of the problem.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
All this leads to the overwhelming question. Will Matt answer or even ask?
September 8th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Matthew, you not only hit a nerve you struck gold. Its fascinating how the media will go out of their way to avoid calling McCain’s lies just what they are. Keep hitting him, he’s obviously on the run.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Keep making this point, Matt, and never back down. Ambinder and his (great big) ilk may preen themselves for shunning advocacy journalism in favor of objectivity, but that objectivity a myth and an artifact, too. For a journalist to write in a measured way about confounded and confounding lies, as if those lies were merely information deserving of being reported on, with readers well able to track the quality of the information for themselves, is to write over the heads of low-information voters. Nothing except his own bias, knowledge base and time constraints stops a journalist from introducing into his story facts which shed light on the truthfulness of his subject’s words — there need be no editorializing.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I really don’t like Marc Ambinder. He’s always hedging his bets. You know how whenever journalists cover voter fraud and malfesance they always use one of the three or four democrat voter fraud stories and then relate one of the hundreds of much more serious republican voter fraud cases. So anyone who watched the news would come away thinking “those corrupt politicians” instead of “those corrupt republicans”. That’s the way he handles every story. Not like he’s alone but since you get to hear his thoughts once in a while it becomes extra maddening.
Now this sort of “on the other hand” journalism always helps the worse candidate. Always. Because if there wasn’t a benefit to doing the bad thing you wouldn’t do it and if the media is going to try and be fair and stick your opponant with something for everything you do then theirs no down side either. What’s the natural consequence of this? Well the least honest most predatory politicians will usually win this will reinforce the idea that politicians are scum and people will more easily believe that politicians are all scum.
Being a lying scumbag is how you win in the game with the rules as they are being actually better is at best a tie breaker.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I wonder how many independent sorts are voting McCain because they feel, right now, he is a liar; that is, he is only saying what he doesn’t really believe in order to appease his base. Similarly, how many Obama voters are secretly hoping he’s more liberal than his campaign? It’s a strangely asymmetrical dynamic.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
The very simple rule should be that if a media outlet is going to report a politicians lies it should only do so in the context of calling them lies. To avoid the time and trouble of doing that it would be easier to just leave all political falsehoods out of the coverage. Unfortunatley “I will insure every American has affordable health care” would also have to be left out because the speaker didn’t say “I have a plan that I believe would assure every American affordable healthcare”, at which point the media could no longer cover anything any politician said.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I stand by my comment from an Ambinder-related discussion of a McCain ad a couple of weeks ago:
September 8th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Crap! Sorry. Any way to fix?
September 8th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I might not have a problem with traditional journalism avoiding the idea of “narrative” (aside: perhaps Marc should talk to Bob Woodward about this) if it weren’t for the fact that traditional journalism has been more than happy to push narratives about Democrats that Republicans have pushed for years.
But what journalists understand, at least those that are successful, is that narrative is what makes a news story interesting. If there was no narrative in the story then it would just be a boring recitation of facts and a boring news story inevitably leads to low-paying or no-paying jobs for said journalists.
Journalists may be offended at the idea of narrative, but you can’t get ahead in journalism if you DON’T push a narrative.
The brilliance of Republicans in the last 30 years is that they understand this and spend millions developing off-the-shelf narratives for up-n-coming journalists to use. And they’ve gotten very good at passing them off to journalists in a way that allows them to still act offended at the idea that they are reporting narratives.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
I’m very glad that this has been pointed out here and in other blogs/op ed pieces; the above thread is good too. I’ve really had it with this faux neutrality of the MSM. I normally like Ambinder, but I don’t think he saw the point (because he can’t?) made by Mr. Yglesias. Maybe this is over the top, but consider being a journalist in Germany during the 30s: do you really report Hitler’s tirades as truthful? If you do, you are effectively a collaborator. But this is exactly what the MSM considers “responsible” journalism. Jettisoning morality in the practice of journalism necessarily makes it immoral.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
I think this is exactly the point of the new Obama add that directly calls McCain and Palin liars. I first thought the commerical was unexciting besides the word “lie,”, but I realized it’s forcing that word into the press, if only to discuss his ad. Abminder has already posted it and will probably discuss it.
It will be very interesting to see how this develops.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Ambinder is hardly unbiased.
He rides the McCain tire swing as much as anyone in the media (except maybe the AP). When someone LIES, the media is obliged to call them on it and call it a LIE.
He is, unfortunately for us, a coward.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I’m pretty sure the idea represented by this post has something to do with why Matt left the Atlantic. (And I don’t mean a petty personality issue between two fat guys).
More likely, MY probably tired of the limitations imposed by working at a journalistic institution versus an advocacy organization.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Maybe it’s just these partisan lenses I can’t seem to take off, but I, too, found Ambinder’s response tellingly defensive. Either he’s smart enough to know better, or he is impossibly naive.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Ambinder is a little bitch. And his hissy-slap at Greenwald, who does the work of 100,000 yeoman, is pathetic.
And excuse me for calling him a sissy. I’ve known many sissies who were great people. Ambinder is just a fucking pansy.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Thanks Matt, for the best thing I’ve read from you out of many good things over the years. Brutal, and all the more so for being simply honest about the media and its self-interest in the political status quo. They don’t just merely report, they do decide and it’s time they were called to account for what they choose to report.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I think of “Greenwaldian” as meaning extensively documented and fastidiously researched, with a quirky, edgy ensemble cast, and amusingly scored. Altman-esque, even.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Yglesias, you’re the liar. Go to Alaska and take a picture of the bridge under construction, and then I’ll believe she didn’t stop it. In fact, the Alaska Democrat party, in an attack on Ted Stevens, claimed on its web site that Gov. Palin had stopped the bridge. Mysteriously, they took that statement down today!
Are the polls getting you rattled? The solution for the Dems is to never let the Messiah speak without his teleprompter. His stammering and his gaffes are making people see that he’s nothing special. If his sperm-donor dad had been a Hungarian instead of a Kenyan, we would never have heard of him because he’s never accomplished anything.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I’m old so it’s probably a scandal to not know this, but how did Sarah Palin get to keep the money earmarked for the bridge? Isn’t that, like, theft?
September 8th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Another thing. The little wuss is begging Hillary to fight Sarah for him, while blustering that he “won’t be bullied”. He tried to match McCain’s war record on Steffie’s show yesterday by claiming that he once briefly considered joining the military!
Are you ‘rats having buyer’s remorse? Outside the twenty percent of voters that are liberals, the twelve percent that are African-Americans, and the immature who can somehow remember to vote, your guy is box-office poison. Next time pick someone who has more achievements than autobiographies. Community organizer?
September 8th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
@54: the lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Next time, try picking someone other than ‘none of the above’ and Tracy Flick, you pack of knuckle-dragging dickwads. Oh, and paid trolls like ‘E’ really deserve a paycut: $2.15/hr is just making them sloppy.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:26 am
“If you ever read his comments on his posts, you’ll find that Greenwald is generally a combative jerk who shows nothing but contempt for even the slightest disagreement with his views.”
Yeah, he’s, like, against torture and stuff. Humourless jerk.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Since Ambinder dragged his name into your exchange, Greenwald decided to jump in with a point that since journalists claim to be profession with all sorts of special privileges from society (1st Amendment, shield laws to protect sources, subsidized postal rates, free use of the public airways, to name a few), they might try to operate at something above the “hack” level (doing only what is required to advance their percieved self-interest). Greenwald’s temperment and personality (and his sometimes wordiness in his blog is proof that editors are a necessary evil) is humorless, but that does not negate the fact that unlike our friendly troll E. O’Neil he does not celebrate incompetence, torture, placing our country in hock to China and Saudi Arabia, trashing the environment, and the random bombing of disagreeable foreigners just to prove “we can kick ass.” For folks who are such great patriots, I keep wondering why he and is like continue to support policies that have been so destructive of to the United States, both in absolute and relative to other powers.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:30 am
In response to E. O’Neill, No 52:
Palin said the following words:
“I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that bridge to nowhere.”
That statement is a lie. Congress had removed the earmark for the bridge 13 months before Palin became governor. It then appropriated the exact same amount of money to Alaska for general transportation purposes. Palin did not try to return the money. She put to other purposes.
She told Congress nothing. The bridge earmark was removed before she became governor. She did not say ‘no thanks.’ The state took the money.
She’s a lying liar who tells lies. What more do we need to know about her? Oh, yes – she takes a per diem from the state when she sleeps in her own bed at home.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:34 am
And actually, Greenwald is very even-tempered. He’s never sarcastic. He engages his adversaries on the merits. He doesn’t sneer. He avoids game-playing and point-scoring. He’s about as un-jerky as they come. Ambinder’s use of the word “games” in reference to what Greenwald does is projection.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Greenwald seems to think that “profession” means standards, obligations, that sort of thing. Yglesias and Ambinder seem to agree that “profession” means a career, and the career that they have chosen is journalism. And they also seem to agree that the only significant impulse driving them in their careers is self-interest. Greenwald seems to think that people in the “profession” of informing people about what is going on in the world that affects their lives, and their country, and their world, should be motivated by a few other things in addition to self-interest, like, you know, finding out the truth and publishing it. So there is your choice, my friends, careerism or truth. You tell me, as consumers of “journalism,” which of these philosophies is in our best self-interest.
September 9th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Greenwald is gold. Period. Essential daily reading/checking on his blog. Facts, questions and hypocrisies with passion.
So Comment #7 above, Brendan — No. Not in the least.
I recall being floored when Keith O. made a comment on DailyKos about not being familiar with Greenwald. My jaw hit the floor. For all of his passion in his “Special Comments” and his love for John Dean, a constitutional lawyer (as is GG) and to not be familiar with Greenwald?! Shame on him!
If he wants a good rec, ask buddy Rachel Maddow as he (GG) is on her radio show.
MATT Y. – your “Unlike Glenn Greenwald…” defense leaves something to be desired. I would rather have truth, facts, research and supported stands that are in the best interest of the American people. Not for a publisher, editor or PerezHilton.
September 9th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
What avoidswork said. Greenwald is an essential breath of fresh air. He’s often mischaracterized as a partisan leftist, despite the fact that he’s published multiple times in The American Conservative magazine. He calls out hypocrisy and stupidity where he sees it. And he has this funny notion that the press has a public obligation and responsibility, and that the Founders envisioned an oppositional press as a check on state power (instead of press-as-narrative-maker; press-as-entertainer; press-as-govt-mouthpiece).
@avoidswork: I almost think Olbermann knew who he was and was making an intentional snub — I, too, had a hard time believing he hadn’t heard of Greenwald.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:05 am
By Matt’s logic a cop who only enforces traffic laws against people he thinks “looks suspicious” or a waiter who refuses to serve a customer because they don’t look cool is okay.
This is what we call bias. It may not be planned or serve some lager agenda, but it is still bias and lack of personal integrity.
Journalists are supposed to do their job. If they are choosing to give enormous play to such things as the Obama bitter story (with stories about how such things are getting big media play), while not doing the same about Palin’s brazen, complete lies about the bridge, then no the job is not being done equally with all people.
Media people have openly admitted they “like” John McCain and forgive his gaffes, as well as they have openly admitted they liked Gore, Clinton, etc. less and gave them harsher treatment. It’s ludicrous to claim that’s it’s a-okay for people to display their preferences so openly while pretending they don’t and that’s doing their job well. It’s vile to pretend they should be forgiven or allowed to do their job without criticism when the bias is so open.
Matt what your quote should really say is “as someone with a warped work ethic I think people shouldn’t be expected to do their jobs as if they have any particular duties or obligations beyond the basic self-interest that drives people in all lines of work.” Which means getting paid no matter how good or bad a job they do, I guess.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
We live in a country where Glen Greenwald is considered “sophmoric” because he believes the press –for goodness sakes –should be interested in whether people are lying.
We live in a country where Marc Ambinder, like David Brooks, is insulted that someone would expect him to BE honest and impartial just because his living is based upon IMPERSONATING such a man.
We live in a country where John McCain can claim he wants to bring people together, and puts his country first, but runs a filthy campaign based upon reigniting the culture wars of the 1960s.
We live in a world where no one of importance has even been tried for Abou Gharaib.
I have grandchildren. There will be a reckoning. Unfortunately, this depraved decadence will exact a huge toll upon the innocent.
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