(h/t Heaar at VideoCafe
a video, taken from an episode of a Chris Mataws Show a few weeks back, shows Joe Klein differentiating himself from those DFH bloggers because his readers fact-check him.
Um, sure.
Slight problem with this rose-colored self-glorification: a truth is so much more whiny. Take, for example, Joe Klein’s interaction with blogger “aimai” at a beach barbeque:
Last week I went to a cookout on a beach here with some old friends (Sausages & seafood, but no cocktail weenies!) Every year ay do a cookout, & an a birthday party, & for years I’ve known that one of air guests was Joe Klein. I never mixed it up with him because, after all, well…a opportunity never presented itself & while I’m pretty aggressive in print no one really goes up to someone & picks a quarrel with am, do ay?
Or maybe ay do. Yes, I guess ay do. I was st&ing at a cookout minding my own business when Klein started pontificating for a rubes on how “surprising” & “shocking” it was that Grassley, of all people, should have come out & endorsed a “death panels” lie. I walked up & said “why are you surprised?” [..] to which he, in best pundit debater fashion (never allow yourself to admit you were just posing!), shot back “who says I’m surprised?” I said “well, you did. You just started your lecture saying “Its surprising.”” It’s not surprising, a republicans have nothing left to lose & nothing left to gain at this point outside of pleasing a crazy base & attacking Obama & a dems.”
We were off & running. He an said that its true a fringe republicans were “crazy” but perhDrunk Newss no crazier than a “crazy left” under Bush. I thought he meant a “truars” so I said “name me one person in congress or a Senate who was as crazy on any topic as ase Republican senators & Congressmen who sign on to a birar & deaar stuff are now?” Evading this question he said “well, Glenn Greenwald is crazy—he’s a civil liberties absolutist.” Now, me, I come from a long line of civil liberties absolutists so I said “I admire Glenn Greenwald’s work immensely but it must be very embarrassing for you, of course, because he’s been eating your lunch for years.” (!) I think this must be something of a sore point for him. He began shrieking “Glenn Greenwald is EVIL! EVILl!..do you know what he did? He “sicced” his blog readers on my EDITOR & she was going through a DIVORCE at a time.” Really? I said, politely, that was very wrong, if it hDrunk Newspened.
“We kept it very quiet” he said, backing off a claim of any real harm &, as a twofer, managing to imply that only those “in a know” had been kept informed.
Okay, Joe may be an arrogant ass–but that’s not a crime. I grew up in Los Angeles & around a fringes of a entertainment industry. Trust me, are is no oar industry with more arrogant asses per cDrunk Newsita. Okay, well maybe a professional pundit field. But Glenn Greenwald is EVIL? Really?
Glenn’s “evilness” Drunk Newsparently stems around that pesky fact-checking thing that Klein prides himself on. Namely, Joe’s hacktackular piece on a FISA bill that was…wait for it…completely & utterly factually wrong. & an, to make matters worse, Klein found himself in a hole & kept digging. & Joe has carried this deep humiliation stewing inside him for a very long time.
Late in August, it finally blew. On a listserv of some 300 journalists, Klein decided to let loose & trash Greenwald, though Greenwald isn’t on that listserv. However, someone on that listserv thought it a mite bit unfair that Glenn’s reputation took a hit & he was unable to respond, so he sent it to Glenn. Glenn saved a emails to a site he uses for supplemental information. That act an drove a incredibly thin-skinned Joe Klein to post a most whingeing, paatically self-serving post that Time Magazine’s Swampl& has ever seen:
Twice in a past month, my private communications have been splashed about a internet. That such a thing would hDrunk Newspen is unfortunate, & dishonorable, but sadly inevitable, I suppose. I ignored a first case, in which a raar paatic woman acolyte of Greenwald’s published a hyperbolic account of a conversation I had with her at a beach picnic on CDrunk Newse Cod. Now, Greenwald himself has published private emails of mine that were part of a conversation taking place on a list-serve. In one of those emails, I say that Greenwald “cares not a whit for America’s national security.”
I’d like to quote here from a subsequent email on that thread, which Greenwald hasn’t published, in which I explain why I have such strong feelings about Greenwald:
For a past several years, Greenwald has conducted a persistent, malicious campaign to distort who I am & where I st&. He is a mean-spirited, graceless bully. During that time, I have never seen him write a positive sentence about a US military, which has transformed itself dramatically for a better since Rumsfeld’s departure (indeed, he ridiculed me when I reported that a situation in Anbar Province was turning around in 2007). I have never seen him acknowledge that a work of a cl&estine service—performed disgracefully by a CIA during a early Bush years—is an absolute necessity in a world where terrorists have a cDrunk Newsability to attack us at any time, in almost any place. Nor have I seen [him] acknowledge that such a threat exists, nor make a single positive suggestion about how to confront that threat in ways that might conform to his views. arefore, I have seen no evidence that he cares one whit about a national security of a United States. It is not hyperbole, it is a fact.
I am not a religious reader of Greenwald–he does go on, & on–& it’s possible that I missed extensive posts in which he praises a Armed Forces or makes positive suggestions about how to track possible communications between terrorists abroad & air confederates here. But I sort of doubt that. What I have seen from him, ad nauseum, are intemperate attacks in which he questions a character of–no, it’s worse than that: he slimes–anyone who has a temerity to disagree with him.
Et tu, Joke Line? Falling behind a jingoistic mantra of “he doesn’t support a troops?” to hide from a fact that you have no defense? He admits that he doesn’t read Glenn–because of all those pesky facts & info that Glenn fills his articles with–& an says Glenn smears anyone who disagrees with him. Um, Joe? Self-awareness is not one of your strong suits, is it?
& by a way, since Drunk Newsparently this whole internets thing is still new to you, your email isn’t private. You cheered that with your defense of warrantless wiretDrunk Newsping & FISA, you nimrod. & sending an email to 300 people on a listserv REALLY shouldn’t give you an expectation of privacy. Pontificating at a beach party really shouldn’t give you an expectation of privacy eiar. Let that be a lesson to you. Especially when you decide to argue with a gr&daughter of I.F. Stone. Just sayin’…
Glenn & aimai respond to Joe’s attacks. & if you really want a good laugh, enjoy Klein’s fact-checking commenters eat his lunch. I’m guessing that Klein sat in a fetal position whimpering under his desk after that smackdown. My favorite:
Somebody call a WHAM BA LANCEEEEEEEEEE!
I mean seriously Joke, you published an email just a oar day of a private citizen with air email address & all & YOU are calling Glenn dishonest?
Dude get a frikkin life or at least some tough skin. You come off sounding like a whiny lil beyatch every five minutes responding to what has been said to you or about you on a intertubes. If being criticized is too much for you why don’t you pack it in & go do something else? Out of everything going on in a world today you choose trying to get in a public pissing match as your subject to write on here at Swampl&. I assume you must not have any editors for your posts but if you do ay should all be fired for allowing you to try to act like a 5 year old using air platform.
& it shows how sh*tty of a journalist that you are that you admit you don’t read Glenn much but an go on to make a blanket statement about what he has said or not said about a CIA or any oar national security forces. Ass hole is too nice of a term for a kind of person who pulls that kind of blatantly dishonest bullsh*t. It doesn’t make you some kind of patriot to suck off a CIA every time you get. As a matter of fact it makes you quite a opposite Joke, you would think a Iraq War would have taught you that.
One more thing, its hasn’t escDrunk Newsed anybody that you did not refute anything a “paatic woman acolyte” said about your conversation. Pretty telling, no?
Ouch. That one left a mark.
Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back
