Patterico's Pontifications

2/27/2007

Glenn Greenwald, Thomas Ellers, and Rick Ellensburg: The Three Most Hypocritical Men on the Planet

Filed under: General,Scum — Patterico @ 11:12 pm



A suicide bomber apparently tried to kill Dick Cheney, and many commenters at the Huffington Post lamented his lack of success. The offending comments have been removed from the post in question, but you can read some of them here. Some examples include:

If at first you don’t succeed . . .

and:

Better luck next time!

and:

Dr. Evil escapes again . . . damn.

Glenn Greenwald is irate that conservative bloggers dared to take notice. Greenwald (also known as Thomas Ellers and Rick Ellensburg, among others) complains bitterly that conservative bloggers

went digging deep into the comment sections of various liberal blogs, found inappropriate and hateful comments, and then began insisting that these isolated comments proved something.

To the contrary, Greenwald insists, anonymous comments by hateful leftists prove nothing about the left generally. Nothing!

[T]he ideas and comments expressed by anonymous commenters at blogs prove nothing other than what those individuals think — particularly in the absence of an attempt to show that the commenters are representative of the blog itself. Is that really that difficult a concept to comprehend? To know what the views are of a particular blogger or “bloggers” generally, one can read those bloggers’ words.

But stray, anonymous comments prove nothing. And those who rely on them to make an argument — especially without bothering to make any effort to prove that they are reflective of anything — should be presumed to have no argument at all. That is why they are relying upon such transparently flimsy and misleading methods to make a point.

If your mouth is agape at the shameless hypocrisy of this, then you must be familiar with Greenwald.

These comments are staggeringly hypocritical, viewed in the light of Greenwald’s extensive history of spotlighting anonymous comments at conservative blogs to reach broad-brush conclusions about the entire conservative movement. Greenwald is a prime practitioner of this “transparently flimsy and misleading method” of tarring the other side. And, in marked contrast to Greenwald’s tender concern today for whether ugly leftist comments “are representative of the blog itself,” Greenwald is famous in conservative circles for highlighting extreme comments on conservative blogs — comments that in no way represent the views of the posts to which they are responding, or of the bloggers generally.

(more…)

Jan Crawford Greenburg Q&A at Confirm Them

Filed under: Books,General,Judiciary — Patterico @ 6:45 am



Confirm Them is doing a three-part Q&A with Jan Crawford Greenburg about her new book Supreme Conflict, which I reviewed here. The first part of the interview is up, and can be read here. Here’s a taste:

1. Given the current political climate, who do you think President Bush will nominate to the Court if a third SCOTUS retirement occurs during his presidency?

Answer: Janice Rogers Brown or Maureen Mahoney. Now I know you’re asking how in the world I could possibly mention those two very different contenders in one breath, right? Ok, here’s why: It all depends on which justice leaves and when. President Bush will tap a solid judicial conservative (i.e., Brown) if he gets a nomination this year. He wants to change the subject, and this is about the only issue he’s got left to rally the base. (If you guys can think of another issue that will keep conservatives together with Bush, let me know.) Judge Brown would be an exciting nominee: She’s getting very high marks from colleagues on the D.C. Circuit, and her experience, compelling life story and demeanor (she’s fast on her feet and would be a terrific witness) would present those moderate southern Democrats (there are still a few of them) with a very difficult choice.

There’s much more to the answer, so be sure to read it all.

My interest was also piqued by her discussion of the blogs. In my review I noted that, according to Greenburg, Miers had recognized that the blogs would be important. Confirm Them picked up on that as well, and asked Greenburg about it:

As I reported in the book, Harriet Miers herself recognized what a key role blogs would play in a Supreme Court fight. (When Miers said the blogs would be important, Confirm Them and Bench Memos were two of the key ones she had in mind.) And of course those blogs—and other conservative legal blogs like Patterico—didn’t exactly embrace her nomination.

A commenter recently accused Miers opponents like me of helping us to lose the war — no hyperbole there! — because of the hit Bush took over the Miers nomination. I argued in response that we Miers opponents had merely stanched the bleeding of an unnecessary self-inflicted wound. Greenburg makes it clear that she agrees with that view:

Democrats ultimately would have opposed Miers in her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In that hearing, Miers would have been a proxy for Bush. The worse she looked, the worse Bush would look. The more she seemed like a crony and a hack, the more Bush would look like an incompetent. Her confirmation hearing would have been brutal. Democrats would have eviscerated her. And Bush knew that. But the opposition to her was so entrenched, I’m not so sure conservatives would have come around, as Bush believed.

I also think it’s a mistake [to] underestimate how the conservative opposition to Miers affected the course of events—even if Bush insists that’s not why he concluded she needed to pack it in. By laying bare her lack of qualifications and detailing how Bush had gotten it so wrong, the blogs helped marshal conservative outrage, which was evident among staffers and senators on the Hill.

Good stuff. Keep your eye on Confirm Them for future installments.


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