Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Hey Hey Hey Goodbye
Dave Weigel has resigned from his job at the Washington Post, which seems a bit much — but that’s Weigel’s call to make, and his editors at WaPo apparently agreed.
I’d read Weigel starting with his stint at Reason about three years back. He was always caustic, often funny, and typically cranky — an angry left-libertarian. Now, left-libertarian isn’t the most tenable position, but it isn’t exactly unusual, either. And at a time when the GOP is in charge, a voice like Dave’s wasn’t just good for Reason, it was downright necessary.
Man, was I fooled.
From the moment Weigel started at the Post, it became pretty obvious that he wasn’t a libertarian of any sort, left or otherwise. And if you followed his Twitter feed, his “progressive” tilt, and open hostility towards most anyone to the right of, say, Dave Weigel, weren’t even debatable.
Still and all, I kept on reading him. Why? Because Weigel was caustic, often funny, and typically cranky. Time was, these were traits we looked for in a good journalist — or at least traits we expected to find. Weigel had a great nose for hypocrisy, and took cruel delight in pointing it out wherever he found it.
Well, provided that he found it at a Tea Party. Or in the Republican Caucus. Or at a Ron Paul event. By Weigel’s lights, “conservatism” was little more than a nice word for racist, moronic, bullying, violent, angry liarheads. For everyone left of center, however, Weigel took a decidedly Sergeant Schultz approach to what’s news: “I know nothink! I see nothink!”
But that was OK, because covering the Right was his beat. You don’t expect a sports writer to cover a county commissioners meeting, and you don’t expect Dave Weigel to look for the ugliness on the Left.
You do, however, expect a reporter to feel something more than disdain (or at least something in addition to) for the people he covers. If you hate hockey — and football and baseball and basketball and soccer — maybe you shouldn’t take the sports beat. And judging by Dave’s Journ-O!-List™ rants, “hate” might be too weak a word. “Ratfucker” was one of his favorite adjectives for righties, and he seems to have dropped the R-bomb as about as often as I drop a martini down my gullet.
Now by all accounts, Weigel’s a personable, likable guy. I’d probably enjoy sharing a few cocktails with him. Well, right up until the part where I casually let it slip that there are some things I respect about Ron Paul. At which point Weigel would let me know that the bar might be a much nicer place if I were on the outside of it. And set myself on fire.
At Reason, Weigel always did a fair job of keeping the magazine honest, covering conservatives. At the Washington Post, Weigel was just another sneering lefty — and WaPo already has plenty of those.
And apparently, Weigel’s editors agree.
I do think you’re being just a bit hard on Dave here. I’ve not really seen that he’s drifted all that much from his Reason days but, obviously, many on the right didn’t like the fact that he would right the occasional blog post pointing out the latest downright weird statement by, say, Michelle Bachmann.
I didn’t always agree with what he wrote, but he gave exposure in a major newspaper to parts of the conservative movement that are otherwise largely ignored.
And, in 2008 he voted for Ron Paul
Voted for Ron Paul on ’08? Then explain this:
And I’m not sure where Weigel would have had the chance to vote for Ron Paul.
Well this quote proves he is no judge of character or intelligence as well as an awful prognosticator of future actions!
Pretty sure I was much nicer to Dave than he usually was at WaPo, and far nicer than he ever was on Journ-O!-List™.
Wherever he ends up — and he’ll land on his feet — I’m sure I’ll read him there, too.
“wherever he ends up”? working for the Obama administration would be my guess. maybe Gibbsy needs an assistant or something; they can always find room for a loyal fellow traveler.
Dont worry Weig-hole-Im sure any of the Islamic or communist propaganda papers will find a place for you. Maybe the daily KOOKS needs another kook-youd fit “right” in. Or maybe you can send your hate america “resume” to AL JAZEERA. Ive also heard BIN LADEN needs a new Hienrich Himmler, since Adam Gadon isnt cutting it. Again, youd fit “right” in.
Help me out with what a “left-libertarian” is. I’ve been a libertarian (classical liberal) for several decades and studied political philosophy and economics at U of C. I didn’t think we had left or right in the libertarian tent. How can one be left or right without ceasing to qualify as a libertarian?
Wil Wilkinson is still working on that one, with his whole “liberaltarian” thing.
If he ever figures it out (it’s been a while now), I”ll let you know.
Okay, thanks. Keep us posted. Liked your article, by the way.
I’ve always thought that it meant that you felt the social issues were more important and should be focused on first, rather than the economic issues.
Though for way too many “left-libertarian”, it’s become just another way of avoiding saying you are a liberal, now that “progressive” has been outed as nothing more than a code word itself.
A liberaltarian is someone who thinks that individual rights are important.
As long as those rights are THEIRS.
Everyone else can follow the rules, except THEM.
Basically, it’s the same Marxist/Leftist/Socialist garbage that they’re already spewing, but with a cutesy new name that makes outsiders THINK they care about freedom.
There may be self-proclaimed “libertarians” like you describe. But they are not libertarians. Read Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom for a good definition, though he prefers to use “Liberal” in its original meaning, which is the opposite of what it means today.
Just saw the “al” in there. Need a stronger prescription for my glasses. Never mind.
Please clarify this. I understand the first statement but am not sure what to make out of the last two:
“As long as those rights are THEIRS.
Everyone else can follow the rules, except THEM.”
Sorry for the confusion, TL, but those people who are using the “right” and “Left” connotations to refer to themselves as libertarians are just plain old liberals.
That’s why I used the term liberaltarian.
They think if they change their name, no one will notice.
Don’t be fooled!
Used to be that a ;eft-libertarian was someone who thought that in the absence of governmental coercion, people would choose to cooperate more than compete, which a right-libertarian would do the opposite.
Personally, I’ve never been sure what was wrong with the notion that in the absence of government coercion people would do exactly what they damn pleased.
“Personally, I’ve never been sure what was wrong with the notion that in the absence of government coercion people would do exactly what they damn pleased.”
Such as assault, rape, murder, fraud, lynching, commercial pollution, slander, keeping the “wrong people” from shopping at/living in a particular place, denial of basic civil rights by way of racial or ethnic origin, sweat shops, criminal prevention of collective bargaining, abuse of hourly workers who lack collective bargaining, or speeding in a school zone?
All of these are examples of “government coercion” who kept people from doing “what they damn well pleased.”
Casey, you have artfully expose Mr. Martin for the reprobate that he is. I am sure he curses those oppressive restrictions on his personal liberty to rape and pillage. Thanks to you we need no longer be in the dark as to his secret agenda.
Wow, Dick, you rilly cut me down, there. I don’t know if I can go on after that surgically masterful riposte.
It’s not my fault that so many people mindlessly equate “the government can’t tell me what to do” with Libertarian principles. It’s also not my fault that so many self-declared libertarians are incapable of exercising basic logic. The end result of “the government can’t tell me what to do” is anarchism.
The real question is -or should be- just which questions are valid issues for civil government to address? That, alas, requires original thought, as well as historical literacy.
The problem lies in that so many people still mindlessly rely on the left/right paradigm, when in fact this “spectrum” has no basis in reality. Hence we have liberals labeling Instapundit a “right” or “conservative” commentator due to his libertarian positions.
CRAP-DOODLE, I hate WordPress sometimes! I’ve lost count the number of times my keystrokes ended up posting an unfinished comment.
Anyway. I don’t see how anyone can equate Classic liberal with libertarian. Different kettle of fish, starting with the fact that Classic liberals were derived from English Whigs. To keep things short (it’s late here, now) Ronald Reagan is probably the best-known Classic liberal these days. As for libertarians, I like to quote Pournelle: “Libertarianism is a vector, not a goal.” That is to say, libertarians tend to express a preference for less government, whether or not that is a desirable political condition. Certainly there are areas of life where government more government is a good thing, but I shall leave examples to the industrious reader.
If nothing else, the libertarian doctrinaire preference for individual action tends to explain how publications such as Reason have trended anti-GWOT, despite their expressed ideology, since war is a classic example of government-organized action, as opposed to the preferred free-market action of individual choice.
@ Stephen Green: Did Reason magazine actually need someone to “keep them honest” in covering conservatives? Editor Matt Welch appears on Amy Goodman’s radio show (which has almost as big an audience as Reason magazine) discussing the problems of John McCain (about whom he wrote a critical book) and the GOP (not exactly conservatives but Republicans).
And Reason editor Damon Root is debating a Federalist Society lawyer on differences between libertarian and conservative views of judicial restraint in DC on June 30th.
@ Casey et al: It really matters not what any non-libertarian, left-libertarian, liberaltarian, “liberal,” Reaganite, etc says when discussing libertarianism. Libertarians view libertarianism as a deductive system that codifies and applies the natural rights/natural law tradition by exploring for each situation how one protects each individual’s right to self-ownership (including ownership of her or his time, products, creations, and homesteads). It’s not unlike rabbinical Judaism and its disputations. The non-aggression axiom means not committing aggression against someone’s self-ownership. Which governmental or other powers, agencies or institutions are justified/iable derives from that.
…Get that out of a sophomore-level textbook, did you?
All you did was recast the “no one can tell me what to do” mantra as “I can decide for myself (via the mysterious deductive system which “codifies and applies the natural rights/natural law tradition by exploring for each situation how one protects each individual’s right to self-ownership) what I should do, so the government shouldn’t tell me what do to.
More words, same line of BS. And I would love to hear how you define “natural rights/natural law tradition.” Besides “just because,” that is.
Libertarianism is a useful mechanism for determining optimum economic decision strategies by way of widespread commonly-held decisions within the context of self-interest. In other words, a large number of educated citizens can make better/more efficient economic decisions than a centrally-located command & control platform.
The practice fails in the real world when one relies excessively on widespread commonly-held decisions which aren’t economically-based. I cite current 2nd Amendment strife in evidence. If popular opinion held swat, very large parts of the United States would outlaw guns.
Anarchism and minarchism are not valid social structures. In this case I cite the Mayflower Compact in evidence.
“I can do whatever I want to, as long as it doesn’t hurt other people” begs many questions. It contains the same naivety that many of President Obama’s do, in that both prefer theory over real-world experience.
It’s actually pretty simple when young people start focusing on labels and especially when they break out the hyphens…
Find out who their favorite professor (or fellow student they deem smarter than themselves) to chat with in college was and that’s who they are. Typically, you’d be surprised what you find.
Their attempt to reconcile how awesomely smart that professor was and their own self-identification usually is where the hyphens come from.
I always assumed a left libertarian was a lefty who smoked pot.
Maybe so. But then what is a right-libertarian?
Me. For one.
A consservative who doesn’t worry about gay people.
Maybe a conservative gay person who favors decriminalizing drugs and making Japan and Germany pay for their own defense.
A righty who smoked pot but doesn’t talk about it?
A gay former Republican who does inhale.
Maybe so. But then what does a right-libertarian smoke?
Camel Filters, before I quit.
Well I smoked both before I quit after college. I think I’ll just stick with plain old libertarian as my label for now. My views are consistent with the 2010 version of the July 4th Declaration at USDISSIDENCE.COM so you can be the judge.
Fools.
And yet again, Jim Treacher wins the Internet.
Its Jim’s internet, he just lets us visit it sometimes.
FTW!
There is no such thing as a “left libertarian,” especially for one who use to work at Reason Magazine (which I consider to be grossly misnamed). From an outsider viewpoint, he just seems more an old school conservative getting pretty fed up with how fringey the GOP has become thanks to the rise of influential right wing nutcases of like Limbaugh and Beck, as well as hickish, badly confused movements like the Tea Party.
In any case, the leaking of basically what were “off the record” remarks was pretty underhanded.
Leaking? He sent that email to his list.
Anyone who thinks that their email list is “private” is a complete moron.
Oh, wait.
Weigel WAS a moron.
I’m sure Gen McChrystal’s staff agrees with you as to what is underhanded but we are talking about the MSM here, you know. The rules don’t pertain to them, so they say.
Congratulations, BC, you’ve just won the June 2010 Award for Bigoted Jackass with the following moronic comment: “hickish, badly confused movements like the Tea Party.”
Thanks for playing, and enjoy your free, all-expenses-paid weekend at the Barry Obama Resort For Dogmatic Tools.
Spot. On.
Hell. The classic BC cartoons are more entertaining than this fool.
Oh, wait. I think we just found the dip in the road!
To Casey: Sorry, but calling a spade a spade, a red tomato a red tomato, or a badly confused hick a badly confused hick is merely being accurate. I have yet to see any direct evidence whatsoever that doesn’t show Tea Party people to be anything other than ill-informed morons.
BC, your problem, like most liberals, is that you actually believe that your worthless opinions are in fact reality.
That you think that people who disagree with you are stupid, doesn’t automatically make them stupid. It just makes you an ignorant bigot.
Which by the way, you prove every time you post.
BTW, you declaring that someone else is incapable of reason, is perhaps the funniest thing you have ever written.
Before you got experienced in politics, the political structure or even how to organize a group…how do you think you were viewed?
Awaken
Educate
Activate
You might not want to go into lecturing on how to organize, polish, and let loose experienced, educated, and excited allies.
You are such a silly person BC. Surveys show that Limbaugh’s audience and the Tea Party activists are better informed than the average American.
I suspect if I quizzed them and you on the meaning of a variety of economic terms and historical references like opportunity cost, time preference, the heterogeneity of capital, marginal productivity, the Articles of Confederation, Jim Crowe laws, etc., they would probably outperform you.
It really appears that Weigel, whether always a so called “liberal” pro-regressive statist, or a libertarian, was hired by mainstream statist media outlets to use his acquaintances with libertarians and others not in the Demwit hive to find any dirt or weirdness he could in the Tea Party or Ron Paul movements and make things seem crazy when they aren’t (e.g. asking Obama to release his records) or pretend that some marginal person within those groups “represents” the whole.
That is, the usual thing the media does while covering up Edward’s love child, Gore’s massage therapists, Barney’s pot farm and call boy enterprises, Obama’s friend Vera Baker being shipped off to the Caribbean, etc etc etc.
As a libertarian, I do believe all non-violent lines of employment, including the oldest ones, should be legal.
leftism is collectivism. Libertarianism is pure freedom, best as it can be articulated. They are opposites and cannot be reconciled save in one narrow area– dislike/disapproval of ‘the religious right’.
Having read Mr. Weigel a bit now, I am going to nurse a guess that he has a chip on his shoulder, an irrational motive that drives him to hate, and to conceal his hate in ‘analysis’.
What is the chip? First guess is that he’s gay. It is apparently a common commentary of his, this disgust with opponents of gay marriage. I don’t know anything at all about him except what I can google, but this kind of slippery emotional crankiness disguised as commentary is often driven by some less-than-obvious stake in the matter.
Just a guess. And of course, NTTAWWT, bla bla. But it would explain some things.
Oh. My. God. Define, please, “pure freedom.” Excepting anarchism.
Dave,
I thought the same thing. I have a gay uncle and another who died of AIDS and have off and on read, discussed, and asked questions over the years.
Weigel’s behavior is what you would expect from someone who is looking in a way for justification for his sins.
We don’t make the rules. Women do the same thing with abortion. Instead of looking at it as a terrible sin, asking for forgiveness, and working their way up to redemption, many American women take the self-destructive path of rationalization.
We could be crass and put it up on In-Trade I suppose. But, I think a better thing to do is simply pray for those who are caught up in sin or vice to give them strength to deny the appetite and focus on the needs of others.
Weigel is the product of a culture and upbringing that focuses aggressively on self and not others. Listen to Palin’s speech at CSU, Stanislaus. She nails it. We are where we are at, and DW is where he is at because of culture and eduction so poor we really cannot expect any other result.
A good friend of mine mentioned to me that one of the reporters I talked to at I believe the Tea Party Convention in Nashville was Weigel. I couldn’t remember the names and don’t normally write the reporters names down. Seems like a nice guy, but when I talk to reporters at these events, I ASSUME they are Leftists and Statists. Why? Because frankly, the odds are about 99% they are. That does not mean I argue with them, but I give them as clear and concise my opinion and what conservatism and libertarianism is. Weigel is also guilty of laziness because he doesn’t study much the philosophy of those he studies.
And lazy means ‘unprofessional’.
In any given academic year, gather all the CR/YAF/YCT/etc leaders in one big convention hall and throw a ball in the air randomly.
You’ll have a 36% chance of hitting a gay person. The percentage changes after college in the wider conservative movement solely because some of them split off and become apolitical or end up like Andrew Sullivan.
Unexpected … By whom?
It is the WaPo after all, did you expect anything but pretend even handed treatment?
You did, I got some swamp land in the everglades, cheap. Me, I don’t even know who the even handed person is.
Surprise anyone? That a leftist/communist would infiltrate and undermine from within.
That IS their M.O.
Obommunism anyone.. a softer , gentler version of millions die.
Maybe Steven Green the editors at REASON did a more professional job of keeping DER [SP]Weigel on a leash. It reminds me of James Woolcott @ Vanity Fair – I disagree with just about everything he’s every spouted – but love to read his work anyway. The writing is THAT GOOD.
And so it goes with Graydon Carter for me as well. Haven’t liked much of what has come out of his mouth since SPY -but – still believe he is one of the Great American Editors – EVER.
For all the talk of a ‘new dawn’ in the blogospher and the death of print – maybe its the more things change the more they stay the same.
I read PJ Media daily. Because of the editorial choices handed to me – and – I’m too broke to keep up my VF (or any other) subscription.
And I have ventured into REASON. And did like Der Weigel. Ok but just ok for me.
addendum to my slightly educated guess about Weigel’s motivation– He also had a criticism of Drudge in three parts, “gay-baiting, lying, and flubbing facts to this degree”..
aside from the ORDER of Weigel’s Drudge criticisms, I don’t believe Drudge writes much of anything other than headlines that link to other people’s stories.
But the order is the key. Nobody in America links the word “gay” with the word “Drudge”, positively or negatively, unless that person has the word “gay” at the top of almost every list of agenda items.
I still think Weigel is gay and has a gigantic chip on his shoulder about the social side of the right. He seems to lose his ability to think clearly when he relaxes and just hates on his targets. It’s nice, I think, to have the opportunity in this digital age to ‘out’ people– not as gay, but as having private opinions slightly different from his public ones. Let the writer beware.
Democrats and leftists are not gay just because you don’t like them. I am gay and I’ve met David Weigel many times and seen him flirting with women at the various libertarian happy hours in DC. I am fairly certain that he is heterosexual.
Amazingly Reason magazine has had only heterosexual staff or interns the whole time it has been in DC (…not that there is anything wrong with that…). If they worked at Reason, they may be gay friendly, they may have gay friends, but they aren’t gay.
HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
DEEP BREATH
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I don’t know why he would have to be gay to adequately explain his hostility to the religious right. He COULD just be an atheist.
You might say the left is libertarian like islam is a religion of peace.
What’s the big deal? So we have a liberal, that’s what the gangsters call themselves, suggesting immolation.
Surprised? If a group of people can abandon every thing they supposedly believed in for eight years, in fact reverse themselves, do you have the right to think they’re normal? We’ll see worse soon enough.
Actually I think what motivated Weigel was the zits on his face. It’s tough picking up even a liberal woman in a bar when you’re overweight and have zits on your face.
He was probably frustrated there wasn’t a Federal/Obama anti-zits campaign, coming in at, oh say, $150 billion for starters. Maybe there will be.
Mr. Green:
“At Reason, Weigel always did a fair job of keeping the magazine honest, covering conservatives. At the Washington Post, Weigel was just another sneering lefty — and WaPo already has plenty of those.
And apparently, Weigel’s editors agree.”
Would that that were so, but alas, I doubt it very much.
Now I never read Weigel’s copy, so I have no idea what flavor of spin,(if any), he put in his articles, but once his private opinions of the people he was supposed to be writing about became public knowledge, I don’t see any way that he could have continued to do the job that the WaPo had hired him to do.
Conservative and Libertarian bloggers would be as willing to talk to the guy as much as future Rolling Stone reporters will be welcome in CentCom, (or anywhere else in the Armed Services).
Now I was just recently banned from The Slum Line, (another WaPo Moonbat Sweat-Lodge blaaaahhhg), for being a “right-wing troll” and “bringing the nasty” (I plead guilty on the nasty, but not guilty on the trollery), so I follow those clowns some still; and those snivelling moonbat livestock are already buying the hive-mind meme that Weigel’s resignation was accepted for ideological reasons.
And not a few of those happy little Federal slaves are already acting like the WaPo has martyred the guy. Funny that they don;t feel that way about General McChrystal’s accepted resignation…
Leave it to a Leftard to wave the bloody shirt, (as long as it doesn;t belong to him).
‘Help me out with what a “left-libertarian” is.’
A left-libertarian is someone who believes that all people should be free to live under a totalitarian communist dictatorship.
“Now, left-libertarian isn’t the most tenable position…”
Yeah, about as tenable as a pro-jewish Nazi.
You do, however, expect a reporter to feel something more than disdain (or at least something in addition to) for the people he covers.
I actually don’t care what reporters feel about the people they cover. I do, however, want them to actually back up their opinions with fact-based arguments. Whatever you think about Weigel, he certainly supports his rants. What you just wrote would get an F in any Freshman composition class. Pure, unsubstantiated opinion, with no redeeming value. Pure garbage.
Yes.
Exactly, Levine.
“Ratfuck,” “racist,” “moron,” and all the rest. These are words I just conjured out of thin air, and not at all taken from Weigel’s own emails and WaPa blog postings.
And the stuff I said about enjoying his writing, and respecting his fairness at Reason — totally imaginary.
Dumbass.
More seriously though, is this: Weigel’s job was to look exclusively at one side of the political spectrum, to find weirdos and freaks.
Weirdos and freaks? In politics?
Excuse me, please, if I fail to find in that the Story of the Century.
But Politico’s Ben Smith really summed it up best in the closing graf in his story today — but I’ll leave it up to you, dear Principal Levine, to read the story for yourself.
Or maybe it was just something I conjectured.
Dumbass.
Omygod. I can hear that annoyed twang, just like in Hair of the Dog.
“Whatever you think about Weigel…”
Why, I think he’s the sort of left wing propagandist who tries to suppress information by urging other left wing propagandists not to follow up on stories originating in the not-so-left-wing Washington Examiner.
“I’d politely encourage everyone to think twice about rewarding the Examiner with any traffic or links for a while. I know the temptation is high to follow up hot hot Byron York scoops, but please resist it.”–Weigel
So apparantly you buy into the myth of the impartial observer. In that case I have a spherical cow to sell you. Do you have a permit for that weapons-grade stupid you’re packing? If you’re not careful you could hurt someone.
Secondly you totally miss the point. This wasn’t a persuasive piece, it was a descriptive one. Mr. Green was providing more information about the person at the center of a news story. It’s called context, if you haven’t gotten that far on your Word-A-Day toilet paper.
Finally your screen name is either a condemnation of education in this country or evidence that we need to wipe out the entire tribe of Levines in order to bump the planetary IQ by a dozen points or so.
Hey The Principal Liar sleazits, loosen up some.
72. Principal Levine
“Collar too Tight.”
May 20, 2010 – 1:35 pm
Did Mr. President give you the treasured Modern Liberal kick in the ass? The Kick Me sign nailed to your ass is showing traces of golf club luv. Four! Rip! Boom. Hole in one! Had to use the club. Even Mr. President knows raw sewage when he sees it. His foot is real important.
Where the hell are sleazits and Little Jenny? You know, Little Jenny has Marxist Methane experience too. You could all join hands and gurgle out We Won’t Get Fooled Again.
That would make so called news reporters feel more like they were in Modern Liberal Collar Submission College again. You know, like the days when you still had a glimmer of promise.
Neat!
Bark bark!
You made your cesspool. Levine it or leave it.
Whatever.
The problem is that few liberals can tell the difference between emotional rants and fact based opinion. Fewer still know that there is a difference.
15 JohnT
“tough.. picking up even a liberal woman in a bar..”
see my post #11. I seriously doubt his inability to pick up a woman is what’s bothering him.
Dave in Dallas #20, I was having a little fun with this savage, you can’t take this crap seriously all the time.
In line of which; is it true I wonder that an excess of masturbation can cause pimples, zits, and other facial blemishes? I mean Weigel’s face, really!
Dave, if you’re right on your #11 I would say Weigel has the same problem with men{?} as possibly with fat, homely, excessively hostile, and not to bright liberal women. Think Janet Napolitano sitting at the bar in a short skirt with her legs crossed.
Janet in a short skirt? My eyes, they burn!
I need a virtual brillo pad to scrub the image from my brain, thankyouverymuch.
To be fair, the difference between liberal women and liberal men isn’t that big.
Never heard of this Weigel guy. Was he one of those mainstream conservatives like Peggy Noonan, Katherine Parker or David Brooks?
My bad, I meant “Kathleen Parker”, the self-proclaimed Jane Goodal of all things pertaining to conservative anthropology.
Never having read Weigel’s stuff, I can’t make judgments on anything but the data that’s come out since he (a) sent everybody his “I wish these people would push off” list and (b) got canned for being dumb enough to basically unzip his philosophical fly in public. But what I see here tracks with the normal behavior of the MSM;
1. Liberal reporters cover liberal politics from a “progressive” viewpoint.
2. Liberal reporters cover conservative and/or moderate politics from a “progressive” viewpoint.
3. Not only do their bosses not see the disconnect here, they deny that it even is possible for it to exist.
That is, until they get caught red-handed, as it were.
I would see nothing wrong with liberal reporters aggressively covering conservatives. As long as conservative reporters were employed to do likewise to liberals. That would be the Fourth Estate doing its job in the scheme of things. Instead, what we have for the most part is a narrow spectrum of political orthodoxy in the reportage business covering a broad spectrum of political philosophy- and feeling free to fawn over their “like-minded, enlightened” fellow “true believers”, and vilify everybody else.
Which brings to mind something once said by an old editor; “I don’t mind if a reporter has an opinion, but if he’s fucking the elephants, he ain’t covering the circus.”
In this case, the reporter was screwing around with the donkeys and trying to castrate the elephants on the donkeys’ behalf. Which has, unfortunately, become “business as usual” in modern-day “journalism”.
clear ether
eon
eon,
That is it exactly. The whole point of the email list to begin with was to set the “agenda” of the news. Weigel’s statements were just the natural outcome of that meme. His mistake was in getting caught (well, more like he got outed). The fact that he held these beliefs while also being the WP anthropologist for all things right wing just adds the element of hypocrisy to the deal.
Actually, thought some more on this can came up with the following taxonomy:
Conservative: Wants a small government that lets you make your own decisions and spend your own money, so long as it isn’t on drugs or gay weddings.
Right-Libertarian: Wants a small government that lets you make your own decisions and spend your own money, even if it is on drugs and gay weddings.
Left-Libertarian: Wants a government large enought to ensure that when you do make your own decisions and spend your own money, it’s on drugs and gay weddings.
Liberal: Wants a massive government that lets him prove how enlightened and tolerant he is by making your decisions and spending your money for you – on drugs and gay weddings of course, if there’s anything left over after his personal bailout.
Knowing your great love for cocktails, Steverino, you’d probably enjoy sharing a few cocktails with Kim Jong-Il. Or Joren Van der Sloot.
I talked with Dave by phone Friday afternoon. He obviously regrets getting caught. We’ll see if he starts rethinking his loyalties. But the Dave Weigel Republican Internet Beatdown Club certainly isn’t going to persuade him to move rightward, unless he’s got a masochism streak a mile wide.
Stacy, after reading Dave’s stuff for as long as I have, I see precious little danger in him moving rightward under any circumstance. That said, I do hope he lands on his feet (HuffPo, yes?), and I will keep reading his stuff.
Reading Weigel’s propaganda always reminded me of an Andy Sullivan wannabee – at WaPO he read like a conniving worm and shill bucking for promotion in Leftist circles.
I heard rumor he was on his way to PuffHO – good fit for venality.
Have you ever scrolled through the comments sections at Reason’s Hit and Run blog? If so, you would have seen numerous instances of Dave Weigel displaying his maturity and thoughtfulness and keen insight in a less structured format than his articles and WaPo blog posts. Any time I notice someone being that big of a jerk on that consistent a basis, I tend to discount the apparently useful and interesting things they have to say on occasion. I can’t get upset about things he has said, nor can I get upset about the sad fates that befell him this week. People often determine their own outcomes based on their own choices and behaviors.
It’s all inside baseball of the most boring kind. Someone who has worked for Reason or who has read it much should have a pretty skeptical attitude anyway about the various power centers (media as well as government and big business).
Dave Weigel has always been exactly what he stands exposed as now. In fact, I never realised that anyone thought him anything other than a rabid leftist.
When WaPo put him in as their correspondent on the Tea Party I thought it was just SOP for a left-leaning paper.
He’s one of the reasons I stopped reading Reason–a pointed reminder of the leftist infection of the libertarian party and movement.
I never understood how leftists managed to gnaw their way into a party founded on individual rights–but a good place to look is at the subverting of the word ‘liberal’. How many libertarians will hold to their party or ideology despite its leftward shift? Apparently quite a few.
We need to be aware and vigilant–right now Weigel’s on one of the Breitbart sites–Big Journalism maybe– attempting to spin himself free of this exposure–trying to come off a a RINO at worst and a fiscal(as opposed to social) conservative at best.
He’s counting on the idea that conservatives are stupid–something that’s part and parcel of his personal philosophy–to get him through this.
Let’s not wish him luck, shall we? Let’s avoid his insincere scribbling. Let’s hope he winds up regurgitating his leftist boilerplate from some diseased lefty fever swamp, forever cut off from real reporting.
Let’s send him to the DU!
Weigel was a good reporter. He just got a little carried away and made a mistake. The emails were supposed to be private anyways.
Since journalists seem to think no one is entitled to privacy except them, that kind of hypocritical spin does not impress, Chris.