Newsweek Blames the Victim
Katie Connolly at Newsweek says it’s bad that folks on the “anti-czar” crusade are giant lying hypocrites—almost as bad as the fact that other people keep pointing this fact out to her!
Anyone who watches cable news surely knows that conservatives are getting themselves all hot and bothered over the Obama administration’s appointment of so-called czars. Today, the Democratic National Committee is going nuts in response. I’ve got more e-mails from them about this today than I care to count. This whole debate is descending into complete partisan hackery: GOP operatives are fanning ridiculous fears while Democrats are proffering inflated claims to counter them. That said, a lot of people do appear concerned by the existence of “czars,” so I think the issue merits a quick discussion. Of course, the points I’m about to list come with the caveat that a lack of accountability for public officials should always be of concern in a democracy. But these czars aren’t beyond the bounds of reproach, nor are they entirely apart from the democratic process—they’re accountable to the White House, which of course is elected. Some of them even needed Senate confirmation. And don’t forget, Congress can still impeach the president if he has done something truly bad.
Silly Democratic National Committee, boring reporters by tediously pointing out that the central political argument being made by their opponents is totally dishonest! What partisan hackery! How sad that the debate is “descending” to this level! But who’s to say who’s to blame for this situation? Maybe the DNC should have just turned the other cheek and not annoyed Newsweek with its pesky emails.
That said, this is better than what the Kaplan Test Prep Company’s daily newspaper subsidiary has been doing. Over at the Post they think it’s smart to run multiple deliberately misleading op-eds on the subject. It’s the difference, I suppose, between indifference to the truth and active hostility to it.
25 Responses to “Newsweek Blames the Victim”
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September 17th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Major digression…
I’m always amused by your recognition of the WAPO’s owner. As a current user of said company’s test prep materials, I can say with some authority that it sucks too. In a single 350 page volume there are 30 pages with significant errors acknowledged by their own errata sheets. I can vouch for many other errors that have yet to make it into their errata sheet for whatever reason. Even better, their errata sheets have at least one error.
People have little recourse in my field of study to use other test prep materials – they simply don’t exist. That seems to provide Kaplan with license to offer incredibly shoddy work and get away with it. Sounds awfully familiar.
It’s worth noting that most of the errors are the painfully obvious editing kind, things that require no technical knowledge to notice and fix.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Katie Connolly seems to be missing some phrases in her somewhat whiny piece. (Hey, really sorry you have to do your job, Katie. At least you have one to do). “Ridiculous fears” should be followed with “based on lies” (my quote) and “inflated claims” should be followed with “based on facts” (my quote). Should the philosophical fallacy inherent be called amoral equivalency and is she really a journalist?
September 17th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
The Kaplan Post is now printing multiple-choice editorials. Interesting concept.
That’s about what economists tell me. Even though economists from the various schools tell you widely different things, economics is a science because you know that the truth is somewhere in there. It’s just up to you to find it.
I love liberal pluralism.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
What “inflated claims” can you even make against the “evil czar” argument? It’s just pure craziness, and evidence of the right looking for anything they can possibly think of to discredit the Administration.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
None of this would be happening if these folks were called “honchos” instead of “czars”
September 17th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Er.. when your Healthcare Reform Czar is Nancy Ann DeParle, complaints about “inflated claims” looks like Lord Rothschild
denouncing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_DeParle#Corporate_connections
September 17th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Well it’s not the height of political savviness to call someone with the title of “administrator” a “czar” and then complain when other people get the wrong idea.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I have had friends teach their ridiculously overpriced classes. They do not look for experience in their instructors; they just pull in college kids and have them read a script.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Well it’s not the height of political savviness to call someone with the title of “administrator” a “czar” and then complain when other people get the wrong idea.
Since when? It worked for FDR, RWR, GWHB, WJC and GWB (and others too, but those are the big ones). Did the rules change when BHO started on the job? Why? According to whom?
September 17th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Right, well “Czar” is just a metaphor and I find it telling how conservatives overuse it. I think they’re projecting.
You see, Conservatives secretly admire the Russian aristocrats almost as much as they admire the Confederate aristocrats. However, If the South had been allowed to secede from the Union, it would’ve been probably been violently overthrown from within by Marxists. Just like Russia and China. Left to its own devices, Dixie would be a communist country today.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
This fits so neatly into the “both sides do it equally” meme that conservatives have honed to perfection in order to mainstream their lunatic fringe-ism. In this game, conservatives win all ties because extremists always need extremists on the other side to justify their own extremism. What is disheartening is that the media and public seem to have lazily bought completely into this “plague on both your houses” theme, which can only benefit the fringe Right Wing by making their outrageous nonsense seem like nothing more than “politics as usual.” When we lose the standards by which we are able to separate the idiots from the normal folks it is the idiots who win.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Since when? It worked for FDR, RWR, GWHB, WJC and GWB (and others too, but those are the big ones). Did the rules change when BHO started on the job? Why? According to whom?
It’s always been a dumb name. I have cringed every time I’ve ever heard it used the last 25 years.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
You know “a lot of people seem concerned” about the vicious evil Liberal media in as emodied by Newsweek, the WaPo etc. They seem to feel people just like Katie Connolly are enemies of America.
So when does she do her journalistic duty and explore these doubts about herself? Really she’s being biased every time she doesn’t mention the accusations made against her.
Sigh. I’d do better sarcasm if I weren’t so fucking sick of journalists saying “but people are genuinely upset by these falsehoods, so we have to take them seriously.”
September 17th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Of course, the points I’m about to list come with the caveat that a lack of accountability for public officials should always be of concern in a democracy.
The entire idea behind czars was to have someone accountable for a single issue. If you’re the czar of gerbiling, you need to make sure that there are enough gerbils of the right size and that sufficient lube is available. If that doesn’t happen, it’s your fault and you’re fired and another czar is appointed.
The sentence above is is a very weird one because the rest of the paragraph is all about how czars are accountable. And why does she need a caveat? The only sense I can make of it is that she is preemptively responding to wingnut paranoia, but by doing so she undercuts the entire point of the paragraph.
September 17th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
As Atrios would say: Thinking, thinking…
September 17th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
And don’t forget, Congress can still impeach the president if he has done something truly bad.
Yeah, something truly bad like lie to the American people to in order to invade another country and commit countless war crimes, or run a massive illegal spying operation on all Americans, or hold American citizens in jail to be tortured without access to the courts, or set up a secret international gulag where prisoners are beaten to death. If the American president ever did something truly bad like that, I’m sure Congress would impeach him in no time.
September 17th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Some context please:
remember back in the days of GWB that the Bushies embraced the idea of the unitary executive and the need to defend the executive branch against the other branches – to the point of refusing to co-operate with Congress on a whole host of matters so as to preserve executive perogative/executive privilege, etc. Nary a peep out of the Republicans on the Hill.
But suddenly, the executive branch is controlled by the Dems and all of that goes out the window.
The usual Republican hypocrisy
September 17th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
And the usual abject refusal of the media to report on it.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 17th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
The usual Republican hypocrisy
And the usual abject refusal of the media to report on it.
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Yeah – and those Republican toadies Russ Finegold, Diane Feinstein and Robert Byrd have jumped on board. Oh, wait…..
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27265.html
Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin joined the anti-czar chorus Wednesday, asking Obama to detail the roles and responsibilities of all of the czars in his administration and to explain why he believes the use of czars is consistent with the Senate’s constitutional power to offer advice and consent on top-level executive branch officials.
“To the extent that this undercuts that role and people are put in the place of Cabinet people and really are the key authorities and you can’t question them, that’s something worth talking about,” Feingold said. “I think it’s a fair point.”
Feingold says he doesn’t know if there are any constitutional violations, but he suggested that he may hold an oversight hearing on the matter.
Although the czar charge has come mostly from the right, Feingold isn’t the only Democrat to voice concerns about the issue.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in an interview Wednesday that there needs to be better Senate oversight, although she was quick to add that some czar critics have incorrectly labeled a number of Senate-confirmed administration officials as White House czars.
“If you look over certain people [who] have real titles and real authority, I don’t think it’s quite fair to call, for example, David Hayes at the Department of Interior a czar,” the California Democrat said. “He’s the deputy secretary of the Department of Interior, and he’s got real authority.”
Feinstein said she thinks it’s a “problem” when the White House appoints someone to a czar position that is not clearly defined. “I don’t know what a car czar does, for example,” she said.
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) — a fierce defender of congressional authority — argued in a letter last February that the czars may upset checks and balances in the federal government.
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VERY bad timing for this post
September 17th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Silly Democratic National Committee, boring reporters by tediously pointing out that the central political argument being made by their opponents is totally dishonest! What partisan hackery! How sad that the debate is “descending” to this level! But who’s to say who’s to blame for this situation? Maybe the DNC should have just turned the other cheek and not annoyed Newsweek with its pesky emails.
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I blame Russ Feingold
September 17th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
“The DNC is making totally inflated claims”
“How are they inflated?”
“They claim there is no truth to Republican charges”
“But there actually isn’t.”
“NO. You’re not being even-handed. Both sides always have a point.”
“But the Republican’s don’t have a point.”
“That’s inflated.”
September 17th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias on Connolly [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Hey, where is everybody? I thought you wanted to discuss Feingold and Feinstein’s “totally dishonest” arguments
September 18th, 2009 at 12:55 am
I used to love being sarcastic. It’s getting to be too much work. I’m just too likely to be more reasonable in my sarcasm than the right is in all its insane pseudo earnestness. If Swift were writing in this climate, he’d be condemned for his tepid response to the Irish problem.
September 18th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I suggest we call them “Boxes of Chocolates” instead. “Honchos”,”Czars” (or “Tsars”, “Csars”, or “Tzars”) is too male dominionish.
Life is like a box of chocolates, after all.