Jeffrey T. Kuhner, whose Web site published the first anonymous smear of the 2008 presidential race, is hardly the only editor who will not reveal his reporters’ sources. What sets him apart is that he will not even disclose the names of his reporters.
But their anonymity has not stopped them from making an impact. In the last two weeks, Mr. Kuhner’s Web site, Insight, the last remnant of a defunct conservative print magazine owned by the Unification Church led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, was able to set off a wave of television commentary, talk-radio chatter, official denials, investigations by journalists around the globe and news media self-analysis that has lasted 11 days and counting.
The controversy started with a quickly discredited Jan. 17 article on the Insight Web site asserting that the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was preparing an accusation that her rival, Senator Barack Obama, had covered up a brief period he had spent in an Islamic religious school in Indonesia when he was 6.
(Other news organizations have confirmed Mr. Obama’s descriptions of the school as a secular public school. Both senators have denounced the report, and there is no evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign planned to spread those accusations.)
As Malkin would say, well, boo-fuckin’-hoo! Well, actually, she wouldn’t say it that way.
I’m all for accuracy in blogging. I think that blogs do a fairly good job of policing each other. But this is pretty pot-kettle, in my opinion.
Meanwhile, check out Strategy Page’s explanation of why almost everything leftie trolls believe about the war in Iraq is wrong.
Also, Fareed Zakaria reports from Davos: Preview of a Post-U.S. World. Please read it all before you comment.
Moreover, Allah:
The most centrist person I know who’s been there is INDC Bill, and he told me yesterday that he’s sure the war is still winnable provided we change the rules of engagement. He’s got a good dozen posts in the pipe, but I suspect that’ll be the first one up.
Sounds painful.
I don’t think he had to go all the way back to the 1920s to find his example of “truly a world without political direction.” The middle to late 1990s are a much more relevant time period. Also, this hope for the decline of the American empire is self fulfilling twaddle since America does not seek “empire.” Read your high school history books again. It was France and England and Spain and Russia and Communist China, those same guys who are now complaining about America, who sought empire. Projection, it seems, is not just a ski slope in Davos.
I think that the possibility Niall Ferguson raises of a fragmentation into anarchy with small cells of sanity may well be correct.
Zakaria sort of seems to agree. But why does he say this, earlier on:
I have seen no evidence whatever of Middle Easterners and Europeans ceasing to rant at Bush. Maybe in Davos, but Davos is supposed to be a centre for rational thought. In this context anyway.
So why does Zakaria say it? And does it actually fit in with anything else he writes here? I would say not.
But then my admiration for Newsweek has never been high. If you want to see an encapsulation of bien-pensant drivel, the letters pages of Time and Newsweek are as good a place as any to start and finish.
I read the whole thing, Dan. Two thoughts:
1. No America bashing? Wasn’t this the same conference where John Kerry called us an international pariah?
2.The news of America’s demise has been greatly exaggerated.
3. (ok, three thoughts), Zakaria is an asshat.
Does Scott R write in to Newsweek?
Scott,
Glad to see you’re posting again at your site. You are, aren’t you?
Yes, but then he writes for Newsweek.
Fareed seems to be conceding that the UN has proved an abysmal failure, so irrelevant as to not merit discussion in the above context.
Scott R…Great point about projection. My God, every time I hear about concerns for America’s empire building from the Europeans, I laugh out loud. Literally, out loud. The Countries that ACTUALLY practiced unabashed and shameless empire building are now complaining about America’s empire building? It would be a great case of pot meet kettle, except that there is NO kettle in this scenario. Only a bunch of pots twisting in the wind.
Sorry Dan. I won’t bother you you again.
How do you say “Bollocks” in Tagalog?
What do you mean, Scott? I’m not bothered. I like your website. What did I say?
Well, crap. I can’t email him through his site. Does someone have Scott Rettig’s email address?
Zakaria moneyquote:
(emphasis mine)
I wonder if the Progressive Globalists Religious Clan has taken even 5 seconds to ponder a world without significant American leadership. If so who, if anybody, do they think will fill the gap and will they provide the sort of world leadership that represents a positive force? Are they counting on China, India, France, Germany? Should you?
Or are they kneeling at the altar of the UN/Baal, burning insence and chanting weighty tomes in the blind hope that the the besotted and pocket bulged blutocrats will actually step beyond their bureaucratese and take meaningful stands on the important geopolitical issues of the day while the US salaams to the diplomatic supreriority of the General Assembly (while voting Saudi Arabia onto the Human Rights board.)
Be very careful what you wish for…
You’re right about Zakaria. his first piece I recall was for the New Republic, “the Colonel’s
Coup”: his thesis was that because North and Poindexter and MacFarlane were Military officers;
they were circumventing civilian authorities (I
guess he believes the opposite now; re Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz,Perle et al) He also leaves the dangers
of a rushed departure of occupational authorities
in his native India/Pakistan. Which claimed a
million lives, not including the cost of the
three other wars, the Kargil incursion in ‘99,
and the Bangladeshi succession in ‘71.