While Jeff is remembering his Grandma, and I’m following my spouse’s orders, you might be interested to know, if you didn’t, that the lid has blown off the Scott Thomas controversy. Malkin’s is as good a place as any to begin inspecting the curious mind of another puffed up lefty. It’s a little nauseating, I know, but for kerfuffle afficionados this really is good stuff.
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July 26, 2007
Kerfuffle Alert [Dan Collins]
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Comment by Rob Crawford on 7/26 @ 12:13 pm #
Another case of the story being to good to check and the narrative more important than the facts.
Comment by Pablo on 7/26 @ 12:23 pm #
What is the “diarist” construct referring to the piece and not the writer?
Comment by slackjawedyokel on 7/26 @ 12:24 pm #
Pvt Beauchamp is just a pissant who knows what a certain segment of the public likes loves to read/think about the American military, and who found an eager editor to sell his sea stories to.
Can I say “pissant” on the innertubes?
Would “shitbird” be better?
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 12:27 pm #
“stirred more controversy than I could have anticipated”
Did he think that bald-faced lies published at TNR would go unanswered. Whether these events happened or not, I suspect this young man is going to quickly learn about the JAG corps.
Comment by slackjawedyokel on 7/26 @ 12:27 pm #
“Likes”, “loves” — take your pick. I shouldn’t type with my mouth full.
TW: government harm
This thing is spooky.
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 12:37 pm #
“getting through this army experience first, which will add a legitimacy to EVERYTHING i do afterwards, and totally bolster my opinions on defense, etc, ”
That sounds remarkably similar to the positions taken by Marcos “Screw ‘em” Kos and Sen. “Christmas in Cambodia” Kerry.
The whole scenario worked out alright for those 2, so this Pvt. thought he would try it out.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 7/26 @ 12:42 pm #
Well, it TNR.
Besides, it’s his truth.
Comment by B Moe on 7/26 @ 12:42 pm #
Looks like that dude you linked to pretty much nailed this guy, Pablo.
Comment by happyfeet on 7/26 @ 12:47 pm #
I SPECIFICALLY ORDERED THOSE MEN NOT TO TOUCH SANTIAGO!
Comment by Pablo on 7/26 @ 12:47 pm #
B Moe, aside from that he actually is over there, yep.
tw: catchword measures
Comment by timb on 7/26 @ 12:59 pm #
You mean he exists? After all the panting, the guy is real? What is that o for 15 since Rather? You guys keep it up, because that evil, lying left-wing media (a tool of the terrorists you know) needs watchdogs like you.
Shorter American Right: “Hey, we don’t like that story…it must be a lie.”
Anyway, we know sarcasm must be screamed down, so I’ll return later to read the incisive commentary.
Comment by Kirk on 7/26 @ 1:06 pm #
It appears the guy does in fact exist. It also appears his story is false.
By God, that is totally different than a non-existing person telling falsehoods.
tw (I kid you not) books cooks
Comment by Education Guy on 7/26 @ 1:06 pm #
Shorter Tim: Because he exists his stories must be true!
Does that mean that since their is no Santa that I never got any presents on Christmas Day?
Comment by Education Guy on 7/26 @ 1:07 pm #
their or there, I still say the presents were real!
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 1:08 pm #
timmah - I do not think that anybody was questioning whether or not he existed. The question was whether or not the things he claimed to have been witness to happened. Practically all of the evidence to date suggests that it was embellished, fabricated, or just pulled out of his ass.
Comment by mojo on 7/26 @ 1:10 pm #
Nihilists?
GIVE US THE MONEY, LEBOWSKI!
Comment by happyfeet on 7/26 @ 1:11 pm #
It was also offered in a mean-spirited fashion, I thought.
Comment by Karl on 7/26 @ 1:12 pm #
Timmah,
Before you go making a bigger jackass of yourself than usual, the main people questioning the veracity of these stories — including Hot Air and Mudville Gazette — already anticipated your idiocy and have not claimed that there was no such person.
The fact — contra to Pvt. Beachamp’s latest whine — is that his stories were questioned by people who have served in Iraq and have more military experience than he does. Beauchamp appears to have opposed the war before he got there and had the ambition to write a book about it. And his story may get much worse from there.
But if you want to risk chaining yourself to an anvil before jumping overboard, I would not be shocked in the slightest.
Comment by Shawn on 7/26 @ 1:19 pm #
“They are nihlists. They are jihadists. Not to mention, other nasty words which I can take out of context, but I’ve got to go. There’s a republic to undermine, gentlemen…”
Comment by happyfeet on 7/26 @ 1:23 pm #
Wasn’t Beauchamp a Tales of the City character? I think he was the one that was played by Thomas Gibson before he committed Dharma and Greg career suicide with that icky Scientologist chick. If I remember right in the miniseries he died screaming in a flaming car wreck.
Comment by Karl on 7/26 @ 1:25 pm #
And here’s your “it’s getting worse.”
Comment by TomB on 7/26 @ 1:31 pm #
Timmy, once again showing that HIS version of the narrative is the only one that counts.
This might surprise you Sparky, but most commenters specifically pointed out that it didn’t matter if he was a real soldier or not, it was his stories that were questioned.
Are you saying that now that he has admitted to his identity, that PROVES his stories are true?
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 1:32 pm #
“While subsequent detailed fact-checking has revealed some minor inconsistencies, we remain committed to the validity of Private Beauchamp’s writings as an appropriate, insightful piece for our audience. They represent the journey into one soldier’s soul. They reveal the human toll extracted from his subconscious by an inhuman war. That is a truth that cannot be undone by any amount of inquisition of minutia. We stand by Private Beauchamp and our editorial decision to print his writings.”
I have no doubt that this guess-timate of how this will be spun is forthcoming.
Comment by Karl on 7/26 @ 1:37 pm #
Gonna be hard to maintain that spin with the undisclosed nepotism. Gonna be doubly hard to do it with an official Army investigation ongoing.
Comment by happyfeet on 7/26 @ 1:56 pm #
Scott is just gonna hang out in Gethsemane for a bit, then I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from him.
TW: which blasphemy.
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 1:59 pm #
If he is engaged/married to a TNR writer, this will not end well for anyone. Apparently they have already fired one person who leaked the information about the relationship.
Comment by BJTexs on 7/26 @ 2:25 pm #
JD: you’re right. Ace had that as well at Karl’s link.
timmy; always a good idea to check and see if the pool is filled before diving.
It’s still early in the process but when you consider TNR’s editor’s relative lack of experience, Beauchamp’s background and stated aspirations both literary and political, mix that with being engaged and/or married to a TNR staffer and shake with the summary firing of another staffer for leaking info to Ace…
Well, I wouldn’t want to be Foer right now.
Comment by Pablo on 7/26 @ 2:30 pm #
And that someone is longtime LGF’er and Discarded Lies denizen Throbert McGee. Just, wow.
Man, TNR actually did some homework. Which is to say they can figure things out when they want to, and those things are right under their noses.
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 2:32 pm #
I would not want to be Mr. Beauchamp right about now. He either lied about what his fellow soldiers did, or failed to report crimes that he was a personal witness to to the appropriate members of the chain of command, choosing instead, to write about them for TNR.
Comment by BJTexs on 7/26 @ 2:41 pm #
Uh Oh.
LGF is down right now. Things are getting wacky.
Comment by Rick Ballard on 7/26 @ 2:41 pm #
Pvt Beauchamp is undergoing a learning experience right now. I wonder if he ever heard the phrase “the truth will out”?
Comment by TomB on 7/26 @ 2:42 pm #
I would not want to be Mr. Beauchamp right about now. He either lied about what his fellow soldiers did, or failed to report crimes that he was a personal witness to to the appropriate members of the chain of command, choosing instead, to write about them for TNR.
Question for the timbots out there (or anyone, for that matter). Is there any scenario you can see in which Beauchamp/TNR does NOT come out looking very, very bad?
Even if everything happened as he said it did, he is guilty of not reporting these incidents to his command.
I can’t see how this could possibly end well for him. (other than a seven-figure book deal, that is)
Comment by Pablo on 7/26 @ 2:45 pm #
JD, those do seem to be the only available options, don’t they?
Tom B,
Why, yes. Right wingers are evil and they just hate Muslims. What else do you need to know?
Isn’t that right, Timmah!?
Comment by Lurking Observer on 7/26 @ 2:47 pm #
timmyb, perhaps if you think of it as a evidence in a court case.
If the police simply produce a suspect, and he does not have an alibi, does that mean he is guilty? Conversely, if a person produces an alibi, does that mean he is innocent?
In the case of TNR, they had a requirement to produce several things:
At a minimum, they need to show that their correspondent exists. But really, timmyb, don’t you think that’s a rather basic requirement? (Notice, too, that Jayson Blair and Mitch Albom shows that the MSM itself does not always require this.
Once they’ve shown that their correspondent exists, they also need to show that he witnessed what he claims to have witnessed.
Now, in the case of Scott Thomas, this becomes an interesting dual-edged sword, b/c the soldier’s claims would indicate that he himself may well have violated the UCMJ. Which would mean that he was guilty of a crime, which in the case of the military, in some cases would include failing to report a crime.
What Ace and others have also burgeoning proof of is that the TNR correspondent may well have been selected for his politics and ideology. While this, in and of itself, does not discredit the author, it raises questions and warning flags about his reliability.
It’s not that hard, timmy, and it doesn’t involve politics or ideology much.
Unless, of course, you see everything through that prism, which sez more about you than the commenters at this blog or its host.
Comment by eLarson on 7/26 @ 3:36 pm #
Looks like his TNR staffer wife interviewed him for an article about an abortion rally in DC back in 2004. (h/t: Rantburg)
Comment by timb on 7/26 @ 6:12 pm #
Since, Lurking, this was expressed by smarter and better people here http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/07/scott_thomas_revealed.php
I’ll leave to “support the troops” by calling them liars when they don’t agree with you. This is the best paragraph:
“That’s just crazy. All these people need to stop. They need to take a deep breath. They need to apologize to the people at TNR who’ve wasted huge amounts of time dealing with their nonsense. And they need to think a bit about the epistemic situation they’re creating where information about Iraq that they don’t want to hear — even when published in a pro-war publication — can just be immediately dismissed as fraudulent even though the misconduct it described was far, far less severe than all sorts of other well-document misconduct in Iraq.”
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 6:21 pm #
timb - So, it is alright to just make shit up, so long as it does not appear to be as bad as some other things that may have been done?
You and Matthew can attempt to obfuscate the issue as much as you want, but in the end, all that matters is whether he told the truth or not. All of the evidence available at this time, is that he either just made shit up, embellished on a grand scale, or inserted just enough personal information to make it sound real.
The fact that TNR has spent almost a week attempting to determine if the stories were, in fact, true, shows that they absolutely did not do the fact checking they claim to have done prior to publishing the piece.
Quite a moral compass you have there.
I would bet dimes to dollars that you could not lay out the reasonable critiques of Beauchamp’s claims, many of which are done by people still on the ground in Iraq. Matthew does not even begin to address the extensive nature of the problems with Beauchamp’s stories, and is flat out dishonest in his characterization of same.
Comment by timb on 7/26 @ 6:26 pm #
Two more observations: First, if only you guys subjected Yon to the critical analysis you save for those you disagree with.
Secondly, Karl, he “opposed the war BEFORE going to fight it?” What a crime. there are a hundred posters on PW who support the war, but refuse to fight it! Damn him for serving his country in the manner dictate by PW’s collective conscious.
I leave you to your circle jerk. Enjoy.
P.S. Why does being married to someone make a person a liar. “Hey, does anyone know anyone who can write a diary?” My husband’s going overseas to Iraq. “No, dammit, he must be a liar if you suggested him!”
Comment by Pablo on 7/26 @ 6:35 pm #
And they are eminently reasonable. The fallacies are the problem, the connections that got them published in TNR are secondary, though instructive. Not surprisingly, Timmah! is flaying a strawman of his own construction.
Or make that a few of them:
No, Timmah! The problem is that he was constructing and publishing fictional accounts of atrocities in Iraq before he’d ever set foot there.
Reading is still fundamental.
Comment by TomB on 7/26 @ 7:21 pm #
Timmy, please link to some statements from bloggers that they should apologize to TNR for.
Or better yet, just tell us what the hell we’ve said that requires an apology.
Comment by Dan Collins on 7/26 @ 7:26 pm #
timb–There’s a circle jerk you might enjoy going on over at Obsidian Wings. Don’t say I never did anything for you.
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 7:39 pm #
So, timmah. Since you refuse to address the reasonable critiques of his claims, are we to assume that they are eminently reasonable. Have you seen any of the criticism from the active duty military people? I know, stupid questions. It is like trying to jam a square peg in a round hole, or a square casing in a round chamber.
Timmah, o grand wise one. If TNR fact checked this prior to publishing, why has it taken them over a week to fact check it again, and as such, why have they yet to show that his claims were true. Had it been fact checked in advance, proving this should be relatively easy. So far, his claims don’t even seem plausible, much less possible.
Comment by Karl on 7/26 @ 7:57 pm #
Timmah,
Not that you’ll come back, as you rarely have anything to say beyond a second snark, but allow me to retort:
That STB opposed the war before going over there is directly relevant to The Narrative that TNR and The Nation are trying to establish, i.e., that the war is turning these otherwise fine men into desensitized killbots. It also goes to his credibility when he writes for the TNR that he finds himself a part of an ideological battle he wanted no part of.
As for the Yglesisas “supporting the troops” trope, that’s a phrase people like he and Timmah roll out because they don’t support the mission. I support the mission. I also support the troops, but not without limit. For example, I do not support troops when they engage in misconduct, which STB has certainly done whether his stories are true or not. If his stories are true, he and his “buddies” have engaged in misconduct and not reported it up the chain of command. If his stories are embellished/false, he has smeared the very troops you claim I don’t support. And either way, he has almost certainly violated the rules about publishing without proper registration/permissio from the chain of command and, imho, likely conduct unbecoming as well.
As for Michael Yon, he never wrote under a pseudonym and he provides photographs, audio and video of the vents he has covered. And if Timmah actually read Yon regularly, he would know that Yon has been critical of aspects of the prosecution of the war and was calling Iraq a civil war long before most everyone else. But that would require Timmah to temporarily remove his head from his rectum, which is likely a Herculean task.
Comment by McGehee on 7/26 @ 8:33 pm #
Or to put it more bluntly, Timbot: Read what STB had to say about his desire to go, before he ever went.
When someone’s motivations are suspicious, his story therefore becomes suspect.
It’s so simple even you should be able to grasp it.
Comment by Karl on 7/26 @ 8:36 pm #
McGehee, ever the optimist.
Comment by JD on 7/26 @ 9:05 pm #
I will give Beauchamp credit. He was right up front with his positions. He laid it right out there that he was someone unworthy of respect, and did not appear to care in the least. I like it when people are simply up-front about their motives, like he was in his writings.
Comment by JD on 7/27 @ 1:06 am #
Why do all of these come back to truthiness, fake but accurate, types of memes ?
Comment by TomB on 7/27 @ 5:08 am #
Gee, timmy never came back to answer questions.
Color me shocked.
Comment by Karl on 7/27 @ 9:51 am #
Quoting myself:
Color me Claude rains-shocked along with TomB.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 7/27 @ 10:52 am #
This, in the grand scheme of things, will wind up being a fart in a windstorm, pretty much like most other things on this scale.
I disagree with hilzoy, BTW, but for some reason I can’t comment over at OW these days. I can post stuff, but I rarely have time or inclination to. As I’ve said elsewhere, we’ve passed the looks, smells, and feels stage, and if those aren’t compelling, I have an idea that for a large swath of those continuing to maintain that this guy was straight-up and/or that he was just using some artistic license, for Christ’s sake, taste buds will predictably malfunction. It’s just one of those things that people who are predisposed to believe that sort of thing find compelling in spirit, even after the facts begin to slough off.
And then there are the people who find it overly kerflufflish; those people are simply contributing to the kerfluffle.
SEK’s comment elsewhere, though, rang oddly:
That’d be more compelling if Thomas had levelled charges. Instead, he levelled gossip, and horribly inaccurate gossip at that. But it’s happened before, mind you, or something similar has, so doesn’t he have a point?
My answer to that is: no, he doesn’t. His articles are fiction, presented as eyewitness accounts. It’s a lie of order two.
Comment by JHoward on 7/27 @ 12:18 pm #
Any time timmah drops in and throws dust in the air, something bad’s up on antimatter leftist planet. Count on it.
But I do get a chuckle out of timmah’s moral hierarchy: Thinking STB himself might be made-up = very bad. STB’s made-up shit = very good.
For a clue of how such hierarchies really fall out here in real existence, timmah, try #31 again. It links to one paragraph. Struggle through it and unless you’re willing to call the entire Army in on the game, I suggest you sort a few things out before returning.
As Slartibartfast ID’s it, a military lie of the second order pretty much trumps the right blogosphere’s questionable powers of clairvoyance about moonbat fiction.
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