From Bob Owens, via email:
Another Beauchamp claim that TNR claimed to have fact checked, debunked in two emails.
Why should we still care? Because that is now three fictional claims made by Beauchamp in “Dead of Night,” prior to “Shock Troops.”
If TNR’s editors had done their jobs then, they probably wouldn’t have published “Shock Troops,” and wouldn’t be worried about their employment situations now.
Perhaps. But such a conclusion rests on the premise that TNR thought the job of journalists was to “report” — or at least, show fidelity to facts– in the first place, rather than to teach or persuade, or to advocate by way of publishing stories whose larger “significances” put subjective anecdotes into larger, more universalist contexts.
Funny how the reality-based crowd — many of whom sneer at traditional notions of spirituality — have learned to ape religion by pressing on the public secular morality tales that work in the service of their very own “God,” which, it turns out, is the ego of liberal elites, who would presume to pre-digest news for the proles so that the poor slobs don’t hurt themselves trying to chew and think at the same time…
That having been said, happyfeet and Agent W make an important point in the comments — namely, that the driver’s license bit reads a bit like gallows humor, and was never meant to be taken literally.
And having read the excerpt more closely now, I tend to agree: The set-up for the “joke” is the plausibility of taking the dead man’s driver license, while the punch line comes from the unexpected claim that the dead man was an organ donor. The fact that we suspect that there are no organ donor notations on Iraqi licenses — and that the “Scott Thomas” character woudn’t know it even if there was — is what gives the joke its (absurdist) force, and lets us know that he probably didn’t take the license after all.
For me, one of the most implausible things about Beauchamp’s pieces has always been that his supporting characters are consistently howling at his jokes.
In this case, the chuckling actually rings true in response to the prompt, but the follow-up — the moment of significance in which the two looked then looked out of the windows and “didn’t talk again until we were back at our base” — seems too pat and forced.
At least, that’s what I would have written in the margins had Beauchamp brought the piece into workshop for a good going over.
That’s kind of stupid I think. Beauchamp’s character was making a joke. I guess that’s debatable, but, um, c’mon. I would say it’s clear that “What else was there to do now but laugh?” signifies that what follows is black humor.
This will make it easier to discredit the valuable work CY has done.
But what this does underscore is how freaking weird it is that the previous two articles were not disseminated. What’s up with that? They aren’t really behind a “pay wall,” I got them by using some pretty lame trickery. Lame in the sense that if I could do it, then the peeps with the real skills weren’t even trying.
But also, TNR should be called on their keeping the disputed material behind the paywall, since an honest inquiry into the pieces would want to engage the blogosphere.
I should walk back the cat on the stupid thing, since when I first read that piece I thought the same thing at first.
I agree. I think that this latest piece against Beauchamp really does more harm than good. Everything else I’ve read, thus far (discrediting Beauchamp), has had solid backing and is pretty air tight.
This, on the other hand, is a very big reach. The story plays, in that part, plays like a joke, not like a description of actual events that took place (i.e., he was joking that he took his license, to set up the joke about him being an organ donor).
As happyfeet said, attempts like this can do serious harm to the justifiable efforts already made to discredit “Shock Troops” and show TNR for what they really are.
the baby giraffe, him is smiling
The whole thing has been a joke. A joke on anyone that expects the media to tell the truth about anything, or police its own.
I’ll give STB the benefit of the doubt here–black humor, probably. Given the egregiously stupid claims in “Shock Troops,” though, it does make you wonder.
What’s especially ridiculous is that TNR defended itself by saying “many of these questions have been formulated by people with ideological agendas.” Not even a full 360 degree eye roll that detached the optic nerve and caused my eyeballs to flop out of my face and land, squishily, on the keyboard before me could capture the awesome irony of that statement.
There’s no intellectually honesty left here; it’s all been sacrificed on the altar of “tactical, not ideological.” Even the barest pretension of adherence to the facts has been abandoned in the face of Kosification.
2008 is going to be incredibly ugly; the full force of leftist fantabulism will be unleashed this time around. Remember, a few minutes on eBay to find an old typewriter and Bill Burkett might have swung the 2004 election with fake TANG memos. RatherGate, Decapigate, JamilGate, Beauchampgate… these were just the falsehoods so easily disproven they could not stand the slightest scrutiny, and therefore are probably just the tip of the iceberg. How many more competently executed frauds have gone undetected?
Gramscian damage did not end with the Cold War. The machine birthed by the Communists still carries on its mindless mission, still ignorant of its intended purpose, too strong in self-reinforcement to stop and question itself. It bought an iMac, got tenure, and resumed spinning out vast, labyrinthine fictions to destroy Western Civ from within, ever unknowing, like a colony of termites incapable of grasping that their incessant gnawing away at structural members could eventually crush them along with their host.
Besides, I think the point Bob’s making here is that it would have been real simple for TNR to present this as a joke wiht a simple editorial comment. JUst as it would have been simple for TNR to ditch this whole mess becuase it was obvious fiction.
I don’t think it necessarily harms any of Owen’s other work, but I do agree with you guys that what Bob is doing here is fact-checking a bit of intentionally absurb gallows humor.
I’ve added a few paragraphs to the post to note as much.
You mean Foer is still on the job? I cannot believe it.
I updated, guys.
You’re right: This is probably an attempt at black humor, though considering two already false statements in the same story and knowing he claims to have abused a burn vitim, stealing from the dead seemed in line with what we already know of Scott Thomas the character.
Now, see, if blogs enjoyed the layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors, then Confederate Yankee would’ve known that this was merely humor, and there was nothing behind it.
Instead, blogs allow this sort of misconception to stand for hours and hours, and then “correct” it, rather than simply deleting it, so that posterity won’t be fooled.
So much for the new media.
I think TallDave at #8 is exceptionally eloquent for a Monday morning.
I mean, not to say that TallDave isn’t always eloquent on Monday mornings, but, um, he put that very well, and it IS Monday. Morningish. I think I’ll go get a Diet Coke now.
You’re very right, Jeff. I probably should have made my point a little more clear when I said it hurts the case.
In the eyes of reasonable and unbiased readers — those of us who are able to look at the individual instances and judge them separately based upon their merits — this will probably not have any effect on the cases that were made and continue to be made.
However, where I think this does have an effect, is that it gives TNR, and other TNR defenders, ammunition. It gives them a chance at a solitary victory — that the instance being cited is clearly a joke and that Bob is attacking TNR and Scott Beauchamp for political purposes, even though that fails to be accurate — in an otherwise barren wasteland of defensive and mind numbing arguments.
I’ve always believed that, when putting someone on the defensive, it’s best to keep them on the defensive, and not to allow them a single foothold. In some ways, I think this type of argument could do that (NOTE: I haven’t read the update that has been made since, so this may all be moot).
Why should we believe anyone on the Left making a claim that this is intended as a joke, but all of the rest was assumed to be true, even after it was proven otherwise? The Left would have us believe that this is a joke, and at the same time, is still desperately holding onto the idea that Beauchamp’s truthiness was accurate? See, for example, Matt Sanchez stalker extraordinaire, Charles Wilson.
This is all well and good, and had beauchap’s tales been presented by TNR as a dramatization of combat life in Iraq, there’d be absolutely noting to quibble about as they would have been taken with the appropriate helping of salt.
Thing is, they weren’t. They were presented as reportage and, when challenged, as “rigorously fact checked”, which they also weren’t.
TNR could have mopped this up without damage right at the beginning with a mea culpa based on their failure to properly qualify the pieces as “based on a true story”. Instead, they climbed a mountain of righteousness and began hurling epithets at their “ideological attackers” and stood by the truth of Beauchamp’s work. While they were firing the guy who leaked the fact that Scott and Elspeth had been sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
Very poorly played, Franklin.
re: JD
Why should we believe the claim that it’s a joke? Because it plays like one. Furthermore, if you follow the story and how it’s written, how do you fact check the license part? In detailing the story, Beauchamp simply details what he said to Hernandez, by quoting their conversation. He does not step outside of quoting the conversation to state to the reader that he DID, indeed, pick up the guys license and see something on the back saying he’s an organ donor.
Beauchamp doesn’t have to have actually taken the guys license for the story to be true and, quite frankly, from my very first read of it, knowing everything I know about the lack of credibility of “Shock Troops”, it played to me as a joke, not as if he was stating that he actually picked up a driver’s license and saw an organ donor sticker on the back.
Therefore, the fact checking done to see whether or not Iraqi’s could be organ donors is rather useless, as all that is necessary for this portion of the story to be true is for the conversation to have taken place. Now, whether or not it actually did is a whole other story and, quite frankly, not worth the time of day to research.
I see your point.
Well, we in the “Absurdist” writer’s camp just wish he was better at it.
Handsomer, too. Direct quote from his wife.
Hey, I kid!
SB: blissful Baer
Wake up, Max
There are still people here who doubt Jamil Hussein is real? Does the guy have to eat dinner at your house?
The AP is a fine source when it says something we all like (like attacks are down in July), but not when it reports something that we don’t like? It’s one thing to claim the burning mosque story was bogus (it mostly was) and that there were worshipers immolated (certainly doesn’t appear to be true), but several people were able to locate our pseudonymous friend and I think we do a terrible dis-service to real debunking (like this Beauchamp guy, the Rather memos, or the Reuters photo) if we don’t even acknowledge there was a real liar, instead of a made-up liar.
They’re not aping religion, Jeff. They are exercising it – it’s just not the same religion as most previous cultural movements. Make no mistake, leftist secularism IS their religion.
That really is one of my major criticisms of Jane Eyre, as well: all the other hired help are forever in stitches over the little minx’s salacious double entendres.
The AP is a collective of mean-spirited propagandistic agenda whores. Maybe they do good sports.
CBS sitcoms employ this same technique, D. It’s good to know it has such a pedigree.
Poorly telegraphed humor. Unfunny, poorly telegraphed humor no less. But STB wasn’t going for a belly laugh anyway.
Amazing that his defenders are materializing to push back on this one minor point.
Strangely silent on the whole square backed ammo/cop murder bit though. Or am I somehow missing the joke in that one?
He wasn’t who they claimed he was, he was never in a position to know the things they claimed he told them, and at least some of the things they claim he told them were false, so even if he is real, the reports sourced to him are still in doubt.
Funny how the reality-based crowd  many of whom sneer at traditional notions of spirituality  have learned to ape religion by pressing on the public secular morality tales that work in the service of their very own “God,” which, it turns out, is the ego of liberal elites,
Well, you know what they say: Satan is God’s ape.
Wait. Did I say that out loud?
“Strangely silent on the whole square backed ammo/cop murder bit though. Or am I somehow missing the joke in that one?” I missed it too, its not like there are not enough Glocks underfoot in the world. I bet the Baqhdad Tupperware sales lady has a few score available with a free ice cube tray if you buy 6 or more.
“but the follow-up  the moment of significance in which the two looked then looked out of the windows and “didn’t talk again until we were back at our base† seems too pat and forced.”
Good point, Jeff. I may–may–have laughed at the swiped drivers license and the improbability of the “organ donor” as the punchline but the whole peering-into-the-darkness-with-thoughts-only-to-oneself blows the whole thing.
But, let’s face: this whole sorry episode from the TNR blows bit time.
And he, whose name is not Jamil Hussein, claims he is not the source of the stories attributed to him.
But aside from all that, he’s as real as you and I.
And if the AP is quoting their official source, US Interim Emperor Happy McSlapperson, we should ridicule them mercilessly and not stop until they commit to basic journalistic standards. Like either naming their source or explaining that they’re not naming their source.
When the story isn’t true and the source isn’t what you present them as, what’s the point of reporting it at all?
What I find remarkable is that they even have drivers licenses in Iraq. Who knew? They cant get ’em to stop at stop signs.. They pile whole families onto Honda motorbikes..They park their cars in “No Parking” zones all full of explosives… So what rules do you have to learn to follow to get an Iraqi DL?
tw: schooling so-called … that would be the drivers ed portion.
Pablo,
And the answer is, to advance one’s politcal goals, damn the consequences and the truth.
Pablo,
2 words – The Narrative
“Bob is doing here is fact-checking a bit of intentionally absurb gallows humor.”
What had Boochie done at that point that entitled him to any gallows-humor cred?
#30: as dicentra says:
They have the name of one police comander, so they make him the spokesman for every other story they write. It matters not whether he was there for those stories or knew anything about them – plug in ‘police spokesman Jamil Hussein’ and the story has confirmation. That is how the lazy man does it, adding in the regular, usual, ‘police spokesman’ report without caring whether he said that as this town isn’t your regular beat.
To follow up:
“I mean, really! Who is going to come out here to Baghdad and follow up to see if Jamil Hussein said this, that, or the other thing? I as a reporter have his name and will just make up anything I need him to say in the official-style way. Plenty of time to follow up if the story goes anywhere, and if it is a one-shot story? Who cares?
Now, make that a double, bartender, ’cause then it’ll be a single where I’m from; and have the tab placed on my laundry bill, dammit.”
Man, the left is just fucking hilarious – making jokes all the time! Everytime they say something that sounds stupid or disingenuous, turns out it was just a joke. They sure must have a lot of fun – right Jon Cary?! I’m practically pissing myself waiting for the punchline to Murtha’s “verdict” on the Haditha Marines. I’l wager it’s gonna be such a real knee-slapper, we’ll rename him John “Mirtha”!
Thanks for putting this up online. Your blog rocks and mine sucks by comparison but its still cool.