Trying To Exit

Andrew Sullivan, 15 years after the fact, kinda sorta apologizes for Betsy McCaughey but not really, calling it not his finest hour but saying that he was somehow roped into publishing it:

I do not think it's professional to air the specifics of internal battles after the fact, and I take full responsibility for being the editor of the magazine that published the piece. I accepted an award for it. I stood behind it. In my view, it had many interesting points and as an intellectual exercize in contemplating the full possible consequences of Hillary Clinton's proposal, it was provocative and well worth running. But its premise that these potential consequences were indisputably in the bill in that kind of detail was simply wrong; and I failed to correct that, although all I can say is that I tried. One key paragraph - critical to framing the piece so it was not a declaration of fact but an assertion of what might happen if worst came to worst - became a battlefield with her for days; and all I can say is, I lost. I guess I could have quit. Maybe I should have. I decided I would run the piece but follow it with as much dissent and criticism as possible. I did discover that she was completely resistant to rational give-and-take. It was her way or the highway [...]

Again, I take responsibility.

This is taking responsibility? Who else but the editor of the magazine should be responsible for its content? Who was Sullivan fighting with, as the editor of the magazine, that forced him to label the piece as fact instead of as one woman's opinion? Martin Peretz? Betsy McCaughey herself, as he seems to intimate here? Who was in charge? As Kevin Drum says, he surely owes us the rest of this story. As much as Sullivan tries to discount it, the piece was crucial to killing health reform:

But look: it was one piece in a magazine. It's being treated as if it were a turning point in history. Please. There's one reason the Clinton healthcare bill failed and it isn't Betsy McCaughey. It's Hillary Clinton.

Sullivan is offering the "innocent bystander" theory of journalism, where journalists have no effect on public opinion. In this case, it's mixed in with his visceral hatred of Hillary Clinton, which is nonsense. But the original "No Exit" had huge implications for the health care debate in 1994, not least of which because of its impact on OTHER JOURNALISTS. They figured that McCaughey had some kind of authority and took her claims as important ones, which they subsequently disseminated across the media. That's how opinion leaders get their information, and that dribbles down into the public at large. There is no question that the article hurt health care reform, and Sullivan doesn't want the responsibility, so he tries to wriggle off the hook. In fact, he was defending the article a couple years ago before McCaughey resurfaced. Sullivan's mistake actually has affected the health care debate TODAY, 15 years later, by making McCaughey's claims viable, at least to conservatives who knew how to use them. And he doesn't come out of this exchange looking good.

When an editor publishes something that he admits that he knew at the time to be false--"[McCaughey's] premise that these potential consequences were indisputably in the bill in that kind of detail was simply wrong; and I failed to correct that, although all I can say is that I tried"--there should be consequences.

And I think there should be consequences for the Atlantic Monthly, and for other publications that continue to employ Andrew Sullivan.

As Ezra Klein says, that Sullivan won't defend McCaughey anymore shows how toxic she is, though she still manages to get on the teevee at will. But this is a very weak effort to bury the past.

Original Sin

The staff of The New Republic has begun to flagellate themselves with birch twigs over the reappearance of professional liar Betsy McCaughey as a nemesis to health care reform. Michelle Cottle wrote a long vivisection of McCaughey under the familiar title "No Exit," the same as McCaughey's 1994 article in TNR that managed to set conventional wisdom in the Beltway against the Clinton health care plan. You cannot read the reams of charges without concluding that McCaughey is a horrible woman, which I'm sure was Cottle's directive (though in McCaughey's case, it's not hard). Franklin Foer, the current editor, also threw himself upon the mercy of the court of public opinion:

As Betsy McCaughey returns to the scene for another fight against health care reform, New Republic editor Frank Foer is still thinking about the piece she wrote for the magazine 15 years ago.

“To me, it’s an original sin that I hope we can expunge,” Foer told POLITICO [...]

Indeed, the McCaughey piece has been a sticking point for TNR staffers for some time. And when Foer took over as editor in March 2006, the magazine recanted McCaughey’s article and formally apologized for it. But still, Foer said he “wanted to make it our mission to be on the right side this time” and pointed out that he’s “made health care reform a pretty important issue for the magazine.”

Of course, Marty Peretz still likes her:

“I do not think Betsy is an intellectual fraud. Not at all,” Peretz wrote in an email.

“I have not read the Cottle piece and I do look forward to doing that,” he continued. "But the issue that McCaughey went after was one of the most intricate and economically challenging ones that America has faced, as we can see from the present debate.”

Aside from Peretz acknowledging he doesn't read his own magazine, there's a bias he displays here toward giving wide latitude to anyone who offers the conservative counter in favor of the status quo against something new and different. Peretz has studiously ignored 15 years' worth of discrediting McCaughey, including the recent charge that she coordinated her piece in TNR with the tobacco industry, who wanted to stop the Clinton plan because cigarette taxes partially financed it. The problem is that other media outlets have done the same. They have not only failed to rebut McCaughey, they have bothered to amplify her claims in the first place, as Jamison Foser points out.

There are plenty of liars in the world who nobody gets worked up about -- because their lies don't drive major media coverage about an important issue. That's what's infuriating about Betsy McCaughey: major news organizations give her a platform. They run her op-eds, they host her on television, they quote her, they allow her falsehoods to shape the public debate about health care. They do this despite knowing that she's a liar.

That's what's infuriating: that someone whose defining quality for the past 15 years has been her dishonesty about health care reform should be granted a role shaping the debate over health care reform by major media outlets. And, unfortunately, Cottle doesn't address that issue at all. How did TNR come to publish McCaughey in the first place? Don't they employ fact-checkers? Shouldn't they? How do her false claims continue to make it into print? Why do television news shows book her? What does it say about the news media that they grant McCaughey a platform? That's the important part. If McCaughey was just another crackpot spouting off lies and conspiracy theories while nursing a cup of coffee at the local diner, nobody would care.

Cottle isn't responsible for McCaughey's 1994 TNR piece - people should direct those inquiries to Peretz and Andrew Sullivan, who as of a couple years ago was still mighty touchy about it. But there's enough in the public domain - Cottle has now pulled all the strands together into one package - for news producers to never put her on the air again, given the history of dishonesty.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Just yesterday, in fact, McCaughey printed an op-ed where she favorably quoted David McKalip, the neurosurgeon who earlier this year sent out a picture of Barack Obama dressed as a witch doctor with the word "Obamacare" below him. She must be building a new generation of liars.

...and as if on cue...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Even The Not-Liberal New Republic...

With Ellen Tauscher's departure from Congress, Patrick Murphy is taking up the cause of repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Murphy, a second-term Democrat, will be lead sponsor of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would repeal "Don't ask, don't tell" — a policy first passed by Congress and signed into law under President Bill Clinton.

"It's our job," Murphy said of a repeal. "This was an act of Congress in 1993 and it will take an act of Congress" to reverse it.

The measure got a subcommittee hearing last year, but Murphy says Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has promised him a full committee hearing on the bill this session.

And The New Republic editorializes for its repeal as well this week.

This magazine has made no secret of its high regard for Barack Obama. Which makes it all the more distressing for us to observe the approach that his administration is taking on gay rights. During the campaign, Obama said all the right things (well, almost all--like most national politicians, he wouldn't endorse same-sex marriage). He invoked the importance of winning "equality" and "dignity" and "respect" for gays and lesbians. Now he is president. And one of the perks of being president is that you get to lead. But, when it comes to gay issues, leading does not seem to interest this White House [...]

In all of this, nothing is more infuriating than Obama's refusal to act on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It is true that the issue affects a relatively small number of gays and lesbians. But discrimination in our armed forces carries a potent symbolism: It tells an entire class of people that the country is not interested in their service. And it would be an easy problem to fix. As Nathaniel Frank argued at tnr Online last month, Obama may need Congress's approval to officially repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but he has the legal authority to tell the Pentagon to stop enforcing the policy via executive order. He could do it tomorrow. As for the political risks: Obama should look at some polls. Unlike same-sex marriage, the question of whether gays should serve openly in the military is no longer a particularly controversial issue. According to Gallup, 69 percent of Americans believe gays should be able to serve openly. To put that number in perspective, it is 25 points higher than the percentage of Americans who endorse Obama's handling of health care, 19 points higher than the percentage who currently support the war in Afghanistan, and 18 points higher than the percentage who approve of the administration's economic policies. Obama is not afraid to push health care reform, send more troops to Afghanistan, or stand by his stimulus program--nor should he be. But why, when it comes to the far less controversial cause of gays serving in the military, is he apparently willing to punt?

So, take a look at the coalition here. Patrick Murphy, a Blue Dog Democrat, replaces New Democrat Ellen Tauscher as the lead sponsor on the repeal bill. The New Republic, easily the most centrist of major Democratic publications, which still has Charles Krauthammer on the frickin' masthead, calls the President's refusal to act "infuriating." We're not talking about Barbara Lee and The Nation teaming up on a bill. This is the consensus opinion of virtually everyone in the Democratic Party.

Except Barack Obama, who could stop implementation of the policy immediately through a stop-loss order.

If it's true that senior military leadership is to blame for the holdup of this basic, and modest, civil rights gain, someone needs to start naming names.

Taking His Ball Blog And Going Home

I actually ran across the NPR report about Jeffrey Rosen's gossip piece and the impact of it on the debate over Sonia Sotomayor on Sunday morning, and when I heard this I nearly broke my radio:

But its author, the noted legal writer Jeffrey Rosen, says he's been burned by the episode, too — enough that he's swearing off blogging for good.

"It was a short Web piece," Rosen says now, sounding a little shell-shocked. "I basically thought of it as a blog entry". . . .

Above all, Rosen says he's drawn a lesson from how his initial essay was treated by people of both ideological stripes. He won't be blogging any more. He wants to spend more time with the material before hitting "send."

Yes, the medium of blogging made him use anonymous sources to smear a qualified Supreme Court nominee. The darn macros in the publishing tool just cross out all of the named sources, at least on Blogger and Wordpress. It's just like my friend Steve an associate of mine once said: "Jeffrey Rosen wants to slander people after thoughtful consideration, but the publishing tools he uses just force him into rash decision-making!"

Everyone knows the difference between Jeffrey Rosen the lowly blogger and Jeffrey Rosen the self-evidently esteemed writer on legal issues. The former engages in character assassination; the latter, in very deliberate and keen-eyed character assassination. Good to be rid of the former.

As Glenn points out, Rosen actually published the hit piece on Sotomayor not as a blog, but as a stand-alone article, much like writers do on the websites of major publications every single day. Maybe if we're lucky, Rosen will vow not to write on the Internet ever again! Or write, period!

...Meanwhile, Jon Chait's defense of his colleague Rosen is pathetic.

Even The Liberal...

Jeffrey Rosen expressed shock today that conservatives have glommed on to his gossip piece calling into question the intelligence of Judge Sotomayor. Surely he was blindsided by such a turn of events. Why, Rosen was just allowing anonymous clerks to smear the nominee for the benefit of his friends in Washington. He could never have anticipated in a million years that anyone would use such materail against her.

Conservatives are already citing my initial piece on Sotomayor as a basis for opposing her. This willfully misreads both my piece and the follow-up response. My concern was that she might not make the most effective liberal voice on the Court--not that she didn't have the potential to be a fine justice. Questions of temperament are often overlooked, but history suggests that they are the most relevant in predicting judicial success.

See, Rosen was making a narrow point, as exemplified by referring to Sotomayor as "not that smart," "domineering during oral arguments," and "her questions aren't penetrating." How anyone could have characterized from such a collection of quotes that she wasn't qualified for the Court is just beyond him.

Indeed, every single conservative I've seen talking about this pick today, all of them, not only cited Rosen's article, but when challenged on it as composed of a collection of unsourced quotes, screamed "But Jeff Rosen is a liberal and he's writing for The New Republic and he said all this!" Which is how this ALWAYS works. Rosen is playing dumb here; surely he knew this would be the outcome. To his credit, the President ignored this character assassination. But it's patently ridiculous for Rosen to suggest that everyone else would.

More here.

Character Assassination, Village-Style

The Swift-Boating of Sonia Sotomayor has really been an object lesson for how the Village treats people it decides not to like for whatever reason. Jeffrey Rosen at The New Republic decided to write a gossipy hit piece based on anonymous sources that was immediately taken up by conservatives looking to torpedo a top Obama Supreme Court possibility, and set impressions among official Washington. Though other news outlets were able to find named sources to praise Sotomayor, the characterization made by Rosen's article clearly provided those inclined to oppose Obama with a rationale. After lots of criticism from the blogosphere, which Rosen wouldn't have dealt with in past years, when he would just be able to inject a hit piece into the DC bloodstream, he had to offer an apologia, where he blames the headline writer for creating a misimpression.

Many people have mischaracterized my argument, and I can understand why. The headline--"The Case Against Sotomayor"--promised something much stronger than I intended to deliver. As soon as the piece was published, I regretted the headline, which I hadn't seen in advance. The piece was not meant to be a definitive "case against" Judge Sotomayor's candidacy. It was intended to convey questions about her judicial temperament that sources had expressed to me in the preceding weeks. That's why I concluded the piece not by suggesting that Sotomayor was unqualified for the Supreme Court, but by suggesting that "given the stakes, the president should obviously satisfy himself that he has a complete picture before taking a gamble."

I would definitely blame the headline writer for the parts of the piece where Rosen calls Sotomayor "not that smart" and "not the brainiest." How could that headline have steered us wrong?

Then Rosen defends his anonymous sources by pointing to the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary item on Sotomayor, again picking out a few negative comments despite the line "most of lawyers interviewed said Sotomayor has good legal ability." He defends the line in the original piece where he says that he hasn't read enough of Sotomayor's opinions to make an informed judgment (really) by claiming no, he had read enough, and found them "good but not great."

Quite a bit of the other "evidence" for Sotomayor's opinion in the piece comes out just wrong. Rosen's assertion that a footnote from a "senior judge on the Second Circuit" was misleading, but a law professor pretty conclusively argues that the footnote says just the opposite. Rosen had little to say in his defense - "there's more than one way to read that footnote," he claims. That's just not true. Rosen cropped the comment of one of the few named sources in the article to make Judge Jose Cabranes, who called Sotomayor "tough and tenacious and also smart" in the original quote, seem like a critic.

Glennzilla sums this all up:

What really happened here is now manifest -- and typical. A couple of Rosen's secret friends don't like Sonia Sotomayor and called him to encourage him to smear her in the pages of The New Republic. Rather than do the work to determine if these "questions" about her abilities had merit -- by, say, conducting a thorough survey of her key judicial opinions the way a conscientious law professor might -- he instead set out dutifully to undertake the mission assigned to him by these "eminent legal scholars" by calling the people they handpicked for him, who then eagerly attacked Sotomayor. Rosen then mindlessly wrote it all down -- including facts that were either false (the footnote) or highly distorted (Judge Cabranes' New York Times statement about Sotomayor, which was clearly a compliment, not a criticism), and then sent it to TNR, which slapped a provocative and (by Rosen's account) misleading headline on it and then happily published it. That Rosen himself was a chief champion of John Roberts, and had already expressed concerns that Obama might take diversity into account when appointing someone to the Supreme Court, undoubtedly made Rosen more than happy to be chosen to carry out this dirty task against someone who is most assuredly not part of his circle.

In other words, Rosen did what the modern journalist of the Respectable Intellectual Center does by definition: he wrote down what Serious People told him to say, agreed to protect their identity, and then published their very purposeful chatter without doing any real work to verify, investigate or scrutinize it. As a result, a woman who spent the last four decades of her life using her talents and intellect and working extremely hard to reach amazing heights in the face of great obstacles is now widely viewed as an intellectually deficient, stunted, egotistical affirmative-action beneficiary who has no business being on the Supreme Court -- all thanks to the slimy work of Jeffrey Rosen, his cowardly friends of the Respectable Intellectual Center, and The New Republic.

John Cole has some more thoughts, noting that Rosen irreparably harmed Sotomayor's reputation and changed her life, all because his friends wanted to stop her career rise. The "white man's burden" argument picked up by the more subtle parts of the Village media complex is just an recapitulation of Rosen's story, making the snap judgment that Sotomayor isn't "deserving" of the appointment, in the way, oh, a white man would be. I'd gather this happens far more than we all think - the Gladys Kravitz gossips in the Village whisper to one another about such-and-such, whether because of jealousy or backstabbing or whatever, then find enough anonymous sources to confirm the storyline and enough facts they can twist to back it up. And the target gets smeared in enough high places to set that storyline in concrete, and wherever he or she walks in Washington, they are subjected to disapproving stares and the shaking of heads. Somewhere in the Village, there's a list of those on the inside and those on the outside, and the insiders guard their turf in the most zealous, vindictive way possible.

I didn't know much of Sotomayor before this week, but I really WANT her to get the appointment now. She has the right enemies.

...The NYT Ed Board hit back at this pretty hard today.

Never mind that President Obama has not even tipped his hand about his choice to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. It’s never too early, it appears, to start the character assassination, especially against one possible candidate, Judge Sonia Sotomayor [...]

Supreme Court vacancies have long been political fights, sometimes intense ones, but generally, they begin when a candidate is picked. This time, the attacks have already begun, many aimed at Judge Sotomayor and beyond the pale of reasonable debate. She is being called insufficiently intellectual despite her stellar academic credentials. Her temperament is being assailed, generally by anonymous detractors. Online critics have even groused about her weight [...]

The White House has no doubt been reviewing a long list of nominees. When President Obama makes his decision, he should ignore the uninformed and mean-spirited chattering and select the best person for the job.

As Glenn says, the Times could have mentioned Rosen by name, but this remains fitting.

Somebody Told Me So

With the upcoming Supreme Court nomination fight looming, expect to see lots and lots of fact-free assertions masquerading as information. Stuart Taylor gives it a start by deciding that Sonia Sotomayor, a federal appeals court judge on the 2nd Circuit, would be "an exceptionally controversial" selection. Based on... I really don't know, except that conservative activists told Taylor to dismiss the evidence and see the real liberal behind all her moderate opinions.

There is a widespread perception on the right and among some moderates who have seen her close up that she is far more liberal than anyone now on the Court. (Some conservatives claim she masquerades as a moderate because she is running for the Court.)

Shorter Taylor: I see secret liberal people. They're everywhere!

But Taylor's meaningless claim of a hidden agenda underneath Sotomayor's decisions pales in comparison to Jeffrey Rosen from eventheliberalNewRepublic's claim that Sotomayor is stupid - at least that's what "some people say."

The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench," as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue." [...] Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. It's customary, for example, for Second Circuit judges to circulate their draft opinions to invite a robust exchange of views. Sotomayor, several former clerks complained, rankled her colleagues by sending long memos that didn't distinguish between substantive and trivial points, with petty editing suggestions--fixing typos and the like--rather than focusing on the core analytical issues.

I find it hard to believe that a woman who grew up in the South Bronx and made it to Princeton, Yale Law School and the federal bench is an unredeemable idiot. Not to mention the fact that you can't find a single solitary named source in this entire article, and that Rosen ends with:

I haven't read enough of Sotomayor's opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor's detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths.

It would be quite a burden to ask Rosen to, you know, read up on the subject he profiles. But then, he's only a journalist attempting to inform his readers, so I shouldn't be asking too much of him attempting to inform himself.

I'm curious about this multi-pronged attack on Sotomayor, based mostly on whisper campaigns and conjecture. I can only conclude that, with these enemies, she must have a lot going for her.

BP: Beyond Public Relations

This takes what my grandmother would call some chutzpah. Seems that The New Republic(an)'s latest environmental blog is being sponsored by... oil giant BP.

They promise that the actual content of the blog won't be affected by BP's sponsorship. But this doesn't change the fact that putting BP's name and logo all over an environmental blog makes it appear that BP cares about the environment -- which it pretty much doesn't.

They can write all the posts denouncing BP that they want, but those posts will eventually move down the page while that BP star will shine on at the top for as long as the sponsorship lasts. "We're not in the tank for BP" isn't sufficient. BP will have an easier time lobbying against climate change legislation if it is perceived as supporting environmental causes -- a perception that will only be increased by sponsorships like this.

Not that BP is the only polluter engaged in this kind of "greenwashing" - after all, nearly every CNN debate this primary season has been sponsored by the coal industry in support of "clean coal." When the corporate polluters have to go to these lengths to present a facsimile of environmental concern, you know that they're particularly vulnerable to a backlash.

Fiddling With Themselves While Rome Burns

The insaneosphere is consumed by a fire - no, not the one that could cause a major blackout in San Diego. No, this fire concerns Scott Thomas Beauchamp, whose writings for The New Republic about life in Iraq have been "discredited" even though nobody discredited them. Drudge (no link) claims to have new information proving that Beauchamp's stories were false. Except they don't prove anything.

I would tell you what I thought of the leaked documents if the links at Drudge worked. From Kevin’s snippet, it appears that the latest transcript show that Beauchamp basically told everyone to piss off, that he just wanted everything to go away. Or, precisely what anyone with a brain would have predicted he would do (note the date I wrote that- 10 September) once the nutters had the brass jumping down his throat.

And then Drudge pulled everything back. And the "confession" isn't a confession, even according to The Cornerites.

Baghdad Diarist [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

We're hearing from The New Republic that the Drudge story isn't the damning evidence it suggests to be ... stay tuned.

UPDATE: An editor there e-mails: "Go to the story and click on the link that he claims is to Beauchamp’s confession. It’s not there. The only Beauchamp document is one were he acknowledged receiving some other memo. Nothing even close to a confession there." At the moment I can't access any of the documents that are flagged in that "Developing" story....

Hey guys, a substantial portion of the West Coast is on fire. Want to keep it together? Do a little prioritizing, maybe? Or do you want to have to clean the umpteenth egg from your face?

QOTD

From Political Wire:

"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."

Ronald Reagan from his diaries, May 1986.

Brilliant on so many levels. Who knows, one different move by Reagan and Bush could have been the guy calling us "blogofascists."

UPDATE: This is not true. It was a joke written by Michael Kinsley in a recent New Republic article. Damn you Taegan Goddard!