Weigel Smears Allahpundit on the Discovery Channel Gunman
Dave Weigel is being unfair to Allahpundit here:
The people whose ideology most matches the perp cry loudly that he is crazy and has nothing to do with them. The people whose ideology is antithetical to the perp’s — in this case, conservative skeptics of environmentalism — subtly hint that the perp is too representative of the other team. Oh, sure, they’re not saying that. But every time someone goes crazy on the other side, they get blamed, so it’s only fair.
The words “so it’s only fair” are hyperlinked to this post by Allahpundit, referring to the following language:
It was, apparently, an Asian man who wrote the manifesto, and a cop on the scene says the suspect has “concerns” about the Discovery Channel, but that’s the closest thing to “confirmation” that anyone has that it’s the same guy. I actually don’t care if it is; I’m not going to blame the actions of a nut on all lefties and environmentalists. I will, however, be sure to remind them of this the next time they pull that on the right. Which they do, merrily, at every conceivable opportunity.
How on God’s green earth could this be any clearer? “I’m not going to blame the actions of a nut on all lefties and environmentalists” gets turned into “I am subtly hinting that the gunman was representative of the other team.” This is an appallingly uncharitable reading by Weigel — and that’s being charitable to Weigel.
If Allahpundit was somehow unclear, he later wrote an update (I believe published after Weigel’s post) making it crystal crystal crystal clear:
I’m frankly amazed that anyone might have misunderstood [my point] — what I’m saying is that liberals and environmentalists shouldn’t be blamed for this. Don’t politicize the incident by hanging the actions of a lunatic around their neck. What I meant up top about reminding them of this the next time they politicize something done by a right-wing nut was merely how this proves that there are crazies of all stripes and that I didn’t try to score a cheap political point against them today when the opportunity presented itself. Is this really that complicated?
No, it’s not — to anyone willing to see it.
Look, Dave Weigel: you’re apparently so enamored of covering the fringe right that you’re unaware that there is a fringe left. And there is a not insignificant branch of that fringe left devoted to asserting that seemingly every violent act out there is the product of “right wing eliminationist rhetoric” or some such nonsense. See, for example, everything Dave Neiwert has ever written. It’s a cynical politicizing of the actions of criminals, and segments of the left engage in it routinely. Have you ever called them on it?
And where do you get off suggesting someone like Allahpundit is engaging in the same sort of nonsense?
I think some kind of apology and clarification is in order.
UPDATE: It appears no such apology and clarification will be forthcoming. Instead, Weigel has chosen to engage my posts about this on Twitter with a series of puerile responses. I have been patient in my responses, which I will catalogue in a new post. (UPDATE: Here you go.)
P.S. If you’re not following me on Twitter, why not? I’m here.
UPDATE: Weigel has apologized to Allahpundit and myself.
“See, for example, everything Dave Neiwert has ever written.”
Heh. It is Neiwert’s very reason for existence. Immediately assign blame for political gain, investigate later.
daleyrocks (940075) — 9/2/2010 @ 8:52 pmI’m going to do my best to assume that not everyone who was a member of Journolist is an insufferable boor, though Weigel is making that difficult.
JVW (eccfd6) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:05 pmhttp://www.thinkprogress.org
Leftist fringe, or leftist mainstream?
http://www.mediamatters.org
Leftist fringe, or leftist mainstream?
JD (8ded14) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:05 pmKid pretending to be journalist. juice boxes. immaturity. doesn’t deserve attention. makes no sense.
Yet, he cannot be allowed to get away with this stuff even tho that is how he gets links and notoriety. just aggravates the heck out of me. that is all.
elissa (72cba6) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:08 pmJD: I think it depends on what you consider the mainstream. Mainstream on the Internet, or in America generally?
I sort of think that everyone who is active in commenting on the Internet on political blogs tends towards the fringey, just because we are all more opinionated.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:08 pmthe guy was a total Obama-voting homicidal nutcase
Obama would be all about dedicating Shark Week to him or something except he didn’t actually kill anybody.
happyfeet (19c1da) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:10 pmPatterico – Do you think the Left thinks that thinkregress and/or mediamatters is mainstream, in any formulation? I certainly hope so, as it would demonstrate how truly out of touch they are.
JD (8ded14) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:11 pmI just went and read those places, and they go to great lengths to either castigate people for insinuating or stating that Lee was of the Left, or arguing that algore’s book didn’t really awaken him, as there were things that Lee thought that gore didn’t and we all know the rightwingers promote violence and not the left with their nativist rhetoric. As Allah notes, the same that decry this now routinely try to pin any violence, real or imagined, to the right.
JD (8ded14) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:24 pmI routinely find links to think regress and media mutters from leftist nutjobs on conservative sites. And the leftist nutjobs definitely believe the only truth is the “truth” a leftist tells you.
And if you reject media mutters and think regress, then you’re a right-wing radical who lacks all intellect.
John Hitchcock (9e8ad9) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:39 pmWho cares what Weigel or anyone else who was a member of Journolist says?
They got caught redhanded advocating distorting the news for partisan purposes, wishing death on right wingers, and even advocating using the government to shut down news sources that didn’t toe the lefty party line a la their commie pals in places like Cuba.
Weigel and every single last one of his pals at Journolist are the scum of the earth. They either plotted to break every journalistic ethic in existence, or they sat there and let their pals do it, and then said nothing about it to the outside world. “Honor” among thieves I guess is the term.
Not one of them has a shred of credibility, nor do the “news” reporting agencies who employ them..
What they say means dick.
Sorry, if that’s antagonistic, but it happenns to be true.
Dave Surls (3f99da) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:45 pmABC reports …
Neo (7830e6) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:50 pmwith liberals the mainstream is whatever the media tells them it is.
ReaLClimate for the weather.
Huffpo for your politics.
FactcheckDotOrg as the ultimate arbiter.
Here’s a good representative example of what I mean.
The climate change blog of KQED.
Public funded television station running a completely partisan blog. A crew of fifteen bloggers to toe the line for CAGW.
Take a look at the blog roll.
Isn’t that cute?
The government’s official mouthpiece recommends their liberal readers to stroll over to Climate Progress, Desmog blog, Treehugger, Gristmill, to uh fully augment and round out the climate information they picked up after multiple viewings of AIT.
You see how they have them sectioned off under “environmentalists”?
That was a concession to me – an I do mean me personally.
After a year or so of pointing out how narrow minded and myopic they were, I finally nutted up and threatened them with lawsuit – well not in so many words.
I told them there has to be a law against a quasi governmental organization such as they be performing what amounts to electioneering for one party. And that I would dedicate myself to finding that legislation in some dusty law book, after which they’d be hearing from me again.
So to CTA now the PBS climate blog has one – exactly one and only link to a skeptic website (really only a neutral).
papertiger (58d50c) — 9/2/2010 @ 9:59 pm“James Lee, the bomb-laden gunman who was killed by police in the lobby of the Discovery Channel, was once convicted and imprisoned for smuggling illegal immigrants into the country from Mexico.”
Another do as I say, not as I do liberal hypocrite.
daleyrocks (940075) — 9/2/2010 @ 10:10 pmSee the update. Weigel has started a little ad hominem war against me on Twitter.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/2/2010 @ 10:10 pmYeah, um… every time I read twitter it looks like the opposite of a real discussion. Never got it.
But Weigel’s button has clearly been pushed.
He has always been obsessed with smearing the right, focusing on the fringe (note: fringe = marginal and extreme, not merely opinionated, in my view). He just loves it.
Weigel’s dishonest… we all figured that out from the Journolist thing. Perhaps he wanted to deny Allahpundit credit for his charitable refusal to smear. The projection may be seem so miss-aimed while being right on target.
More likely, he’s just lazy, didn’t really read what he was linking, and now he finds it uninteresting because that’s a lot easier than working out some kind of explanation for his screw up.
I guess he still has a career, so he must be pretty hopeful he’s bulletproof. I noticed his girlfriend was that extremely unhinged Palin basher who made a point that Miller losing, and losing worse because of Palin’s endorsement, proved her understanding of Alaskan politics and the Tea Party’s weakness.
It seems both of these people do not see journalism as a means to inform the masses, but as a way to pull little tricks, such as Weigel’s fake conservative motif, to tilt elections, smear commenters, etc. They have a point to make, dammit, and they aren’t going to let uninteresting things like the truth stand in the way.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 9/2/2010 @ 10:23 pm“Weigel has started a little ad hominem war against me on Twitter.”
He might as well, it’s not like anyone with a brain in their head is going to trust this guy as a dispassionate commentator, or as a journalist with respect for the facts and the truth.
All he’s got left is to be an attack dog for the lefty media.
Dave Surls (3f99da) — 9/2/2010 @ 10:45 pm“Look, Dave Weigel: you’re apparently so enamored of covering the fringe right that you’re unaware that there is a fringe left. And there is a not insignificant branch of that fringe left devoted to asserting that seemingly every violent act out there is the product of “right wing eliminationist rhetoric” or some such nonsense. See, for example, everything Dave Neiwert has ever written. It’s a cynical politicizing of the actions of criminals, and segments of the left engage in it routinely.”
Isn’t that giving Weigel too much credit? Odds are Weigel is completely simpatico with Neiwert because Weigel probably belongs to the leftist fringe too.
Brad (d272f3) — 9/2/2010 @ 11:49 pmI mean come on now, didn’t Weigel’s “ratfucker” rants on journolist make it obvious?
Brad (d272f3) — 9/2/2010 @ 11:55 pmNothing much to say about this, but that Allahpundit was clear and entirely reasonable. Weigel was clearly disingenuous in his criticism of Allahpundit because Allahpundit was so incredibly clear I can just not come to any other conclusion.
Not unless Weigel immediately says, “Oops, sorry, I misread that.”
Which he isn’t doing.
Christoph (8ec277) — 9/3/2010 @ 12:04 amWhy does anyone pay attention to Weigel anymore? He’s been outed, busted by his own words. He’s a partisan attack hack.
Forget the bum.
Adjoran (ec6a4b) — 9/3/2010 @ 12:32 am“…just because we are all more opinionated.”
How dare you Patterico! I may be conservative, and I may comment on political blogs, but in my opinion… oh, wait!
🙂
GM Roper (a0b04a) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:07 amPuerile? He’s got quite a way to go, Patterico, before he rise to the level of puerile.
The lack of character is pretty informative.
SPQR (26be8b) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:25 amWith all due respect, this situation is similar to the Friedman contretemps – no one ever heard of these poncey douchebags before, so ignoring them will eventually starve them out, for lack of attention. I once saw Ezra Klein on some news show, before all the Journolist stuff – he came off as girly and ridiculous, so I ignored him thereafter.
Dmac (d61c0d) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:45 amDmac – Bunch of Heathers.
daleyrocks (940075) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:48 amThe Journolist on a whole, is like the Seinfeld gang, without the intentional humor, a bunch of
ian cormac (6709ab) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:02 ambitter self absorbed neurotic people, you would never care to encounter in real life,
Why does anyone pay attention to Weigel anymore? He’s been outed, busted by his own words. He’s a partisan attack hack.
Because Weigel hopes people will forget his dishonest hackery as he advances his career. Like Gollum burrowed into the Misty Mountains, he’s burrowing into the Fourth Estate. We should expose his dishonesty as often as necessary so people don’t forget his slimy origins.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:09 amJeebus – Weigel has already written he mistook Patterico for a troll, and has apologized. You have to at least update here to reflect the true facts.
I have my own problems with Weigel from the left, but I think its largely because he is really of neither flavor. So he makes me think, even if I end up mostly not thinking any differently. You see this a lot of this on his appearances on Countdown, where it seems pretty obvious Olbermann is inviting him into a call-and-response exchange, and at least as often as not Weigel goes somewhere else. I dislike that call-and-response approach from Olbermann, and where I used to sit through all of his show before watching Maddow, who is way harder to type-cast yet also way more transparent, now I pick through what Olbermann offers and sometimes pick nothing at all (He is still very good on the free clinics and few other things, but Maddow is almost invariably better and more interesting on everything else.)
But Weigel is a real reporter in the sense of picking up on things others miss and making an effort to anticipate the opposing response. I think he fails at those efforts mostly because, again, he is neither fish nor fowl. Over time, I expect he will either learn to be more subtle in the way he reports this sort of thing, which will be too bad, or he will learn to cut back on the idea of trying it, which will show growth.
BTW I still think Patterico does not understand what ad hominem means.
shooter (32dc25) — 9/3/2010 @ 4:58 pmShooter, if Weigel didn’t know who Patterico was, why would he say Patterico’s claims were merely an attempt to get more webpage hits?
It seems like he knew exactly who Patterico was.
What do you think ad hominem means? It seems to me that when Weigel reacted to a valid argument with ‘you’re going to web hits’, etc, that was a classic example of an ad hom. It’s attacking the person making the argument in order to ignore the argument itself.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 9/3/2010 @ 5:01 pmSophists are generally tiresome. Especially verbose self-impressed ones like “shooter”.
JD (ffe6ea) — 9/3/2010 @ 5:29 pmshooter:
It’s a bit much to affect upset at my failure to update to reflect a post I haven’t seen because I was at work.
I’ll post on it tonight but I am making dinner right now. Just in case I’m not fast enough for you, I certainly want you to know why.
As I await your update of your comment, I will also observe that Dustin asked you a good question.
Patterico (599a77) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:26 pmThat was pretty aggressively mendoucheous, shooter, since Weigel waited until 4:43 on a Friday afternoon to post his mea culpa. This reminds me of when Balko’s folks started in on the “you have not responded in like one whole hour” BS.
I particularly like the you should have emailed me part, as opposed to criticizing him in public. And how he simply blows off critics. And how he simply dismissed Patterico as a troll that he was unfamiliar with, despite the fact that Dustin pointed out above, he clearly did know a shown by his references. All in all, prolly the best you could hope for from someone that would not know basic integrity if it left a mushroom bruise on his cheek.
JD (8ded14) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:33 pmBTW I still think Patterico does not understand what ad hominem means.
Ass, meet Hat. Hat, Ass.
Dmac (d61c0d) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:42 pmCamp Rock 2 is brutal.
JD (8ded14) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:44 pmOK, let’s give shooter a chance here.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:44 pmPatterico – Given his caricature of your place in the other thread, what leads you to think that there is an ounce of good faith behind shooter’s comments?
JD (8ded14) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:48 pmRE: Weigel/MSM metaphors
“Like Gollum burrowed into the Misty Mountains”
I think a maggot burrowing into a big festering pile of crap is a much better metaphor.
Dave Surls (387634) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:55 pmBecause I am making an effort to give people a chance. Often dissenters come ready to dismiss the blog because the blog dogpiles them. I am tired of watching that happen. I want to give him a chance.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/3/2010 @ 6:59 pm“But Weigel is a real reporter…”
No, he isn’t a real reporter.
“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
Real reporters don’t try to get their lowlife lefty friends to suppress news stories, nor do they try to damage the careers of other reporters, in order to engage in a personal vendetta they have against a rival newspaper.
Not ever.
Dave Surls (387634) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:02 pmAnd I understand that, and am often guilty of it. But what about his caricature of your blog in the other thread suggests that he even cares, desires honest discussion, or is acting in good faith. I will be charitable as humanly possible to those that extend the same courtesy to others, and will make every effort to do so going forward. I find it difficult to extend said charity to someone that cannot even lead with honesty, much less an accurate description.
JD (8ded14) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:11 pmJD,
I might have missed the portion of the caricature to which you object. It can’t be the part where he says lefties get dogpiled here, because you know that happens.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:13 pmI recall shooter having interesting things to say about the Prop. 8 legal case. He also suggested a lead on something that happened today that I want to follow up on.
I think Leviticus was abrasive when he first got here, but I was patient, and I am glad I was.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:15 pmMaybe I am trying to fill the spot left by DRJ. I could never match her class and patience, but there is no harm in trying.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:17 pmI acknowledge that, readily. How about this
That contains more flawed assumptions, I did not call him dishonest 😉 than one could count, and could not be an accident.
Even giving this the most charitable of readings, it is a bigger distortion of your stated goals and hopes for this place than what Weigel did to Allah.
Shooter posted that little nugget almost exactly 3 hours after Weigel posted his. “True facts”? Dustin pointed out how clearly that could be questioned.
This is eerily similar to Russell’s quote in the other thread about how the Dems are not leftists, but are to the right of him. The idea that Weigel is not a leftist is laughable, on its face.
As others have pointed out, a real reporter does not attempt to subvert the truth, and drive traffic away from other media outlets because they do not like someone that works there like he did with York and the Examiner. A real reporter does not try to shape a narrative to help their ideological allies.
I really don’t think shooter cares, he wants to call names and proclaim his superiority, like he has in his prior visits.
JD (8ded14) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:25 pmOh, and aphrael much more clearly, and correctly described the lead that shooter brought up, where he bungled the basic facts.
JD (8ded14) — 9/3/2010 @ 7:28 pmOkay, to Dustin.
No doubt that shows Weigel was aware of Patterico being a blogger — which is not the same thing as being aware of what SORT of blogger.
We humans have big problems keeping in perspective how frickin many of us there are, even just those with blogs. I have something like 250 websites bookmarked, as a means of reminding myself that they often have interesting stuff and I should go check once in a while. I expect this number is actually way less than many who comment here, and certainly way, way less than a professional reporter in the national capital. But what I have bookmarked is idiosyncratic to me; the odds against anyone else here having the exact same list are astronomical. And there are not hundreds of blog websites, there are not even thousands or tens of thousands, but a lot more. And many of them are run by folks with next to no following and purely in some weird expectation of untold riches in Google bucks.
Okay, this is about as far to the edge of the cliff I am comfortable going on the subject of Weigel, because in my view there is no doubt he was wrong on the Hot Air post, and what we are down to here is whether he was JUST AS wrong in the appearance of dismissiveness to the twitter challenge by Patterico. I see a little bit of similarity but a lot more big differences between the two wrongs. The way I see it, the first goes to the issue of drawing an equivalency to the McConnell statement on birtherism, which has needless dangers all over the place. The second goes more to the issue of how Weigel treats (as the chairman of BP put it) the small people, which hold some (quite a bit) lesser danger.
shooter (32dc25) — 9/4/2010 @ 1:43 amIt was not a mere Twitter challenge, but a post, linked in a Twitter message. By someone he was familiar with. And there was far more than the appearance of dismissiveness. He engaged in an ad hominem attack (look it up, friend) and dismissed my complaint, which you have admitted was valid, with a personal attack on me.
You can justify that behavior if you like. But you’re all alone there. Not even Weigel is joining you on that lonely and pointless crusade.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/4/2010 @ 1:50 amI think I will dismiss shooter’s last message as posted in bad faith because it was posted late at night.
/Weigel
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/4/2010 @ 1:51 amIt seems to me that Weigel should have either ignored Patterico and not responded to him if he really believed he was a minor unimportant gadfly or, if he was to turn around and criticize Patterico and cleave to his original position, then Weigel ought to have first considered what Patterico was saying, including in that link.
The fact that Weigel apparently did not just magnified his own embarrassment, something he probably realizes now.
Christoph (8ec277) — 9/4/2010 @ 1:53 amFunny.
Christoph (8ec277) — 9/4/2010 @ 1:55 amWeigel:
That’s a dismissal of my point by attacking me personally as an allegedly desperate traffic grubber.
Ad hominem.
I don’t think shooter knows what the term means.
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/4/2010 @ 1:57 amI prefer the shooter who makes interesting comments about Prop. 8 to the one in this thread, who repeatedly misstates basic facts.
Can we get that first guy back? Or at least improve on this one?
Patterico (c218bd) — 9/4/2010 @ 2:00 amNotice how shooter, and Weigel, and crissyhooten simply disappear when they get called out on their mendoucheity?
JD (8ded14) — 9/5/2010 @ 10:29 pm