Questioning The Questioning Of Motives

“Hannah Arendt had it right”, Patrick Moynihan once told an interviewer. “She said one of the great advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

Glenn Reynolds writes:

I’LL BE ON “RELIABLE SOURCES” ON CNN at about 10:30 (Eastern) today, talking about Abramoff, Murtha, etc.

UPDATE: Ian Schwartz has the video. Most striking to me is the bit at the end, where Jill Zuckman of the Chicago Tribune says that Murtha’s war record is a fair story, but one that should have been reported by a legitimate news organization, not Cybercast News Service, which she calls a “right wing part of the blogosphere.” I’m guessing if the Chicago Tribune had been on the story first, CNS would have foregone its own investigation . . . .

Looks like Zuckman can also do a pretty good job of questioning motives as well. (Not to mention not understanding where the Blogosphere ends and the rest of the Web begins. Or is it a case of any Website we find to be scary is “a right wing part of the blogosphere”?)