Kos: "Vindicated" Over "Screw 'em" Comment

Charming:

In June 2003, after television cameras caught a cheering, thousand-strong mob in Fallujah dragging the charred, dismembered bodies of American contractors through the streets, Moulitsas linked to the reports and said of the contractors: “I feel nothing… Screw them.� The declaration, gleefully seized on by right-wing bloggers, provoked weeks of controversy. Democratic candidates came under pressure to pull their advertisements from the site, and even Moulitsas’s traditional allies in the liberal blogosphere—including The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum—criticized him. (When I asked Moulitsas recently how he felt about the episode, his mouth stretched into a smile: “Vindicated,� he said.

How does anything that happened, or could happen, "vindicate" his "I feel nothing... screw 'em" statement? That's not saying "Iraq is unwinnable," a statement which could be vindicated by the right facts.

It's just a statement of pure uncaring maliciousness.

But don't question his patriotism.

He also talks about his pride in being a total asshole.

Remember, this guy is a blogger. Not even so much a blogger as the host of a large chat-forum. Yes, he's got traffic. But still, in the end, a blogger.

I still think blogging is pretty embarassing. This guy thinks it makes him cool enough to get away with being a dickhead.

Ah, well. Maybe three million hits a day does that to you.

Related: The Politics of Personal Vindication, about people rooting for American tragedy just so they can tell their friends they were right in a political argument.

Chris Matthews expressed his own preference for personal vindication over American triumph in talking with Thomas Friedman:

Well, let me talk to you about, as a person who spends every night here arguing about it one way or the other, trying to understand it one way or the other.

If we do succeed in reconstructing Iraq along the lines of a moderate democracy, then the people who supported the intervention, the preemptive act, the preventive attack on that country, will say we were right. That‘s the problem.

That's the problem-- an American victory would force Chris Matthews to say "I was wrong." And he just can't have that.

posted by Ace at 09:25 PM

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