Oh, Dear: Ezra Klein Now Shutting Down JournoList

It's like the end of Excalibur when the Viking funeral barge sails off to Avalon.

Journolist is done now. I'll delete the group soon after this post goes live. That's not because Journolist was a bad idea, or anyone on it did anything wrong. It was a wonderful, chaotic, educational discussion. I'm proud of having started it, grateful to have participated in it, and I have no doubt that someone else will reform it, with many of the same members, and keep it going. Hopefully, it will lose some of its mystique in the process, and be understood more for what it is: One of many e-mail lists where people talk about things they're interested in. But insofar as the current version of Journolist has seen its archives become a weapon, and insofar as people's careers are now at stake, it has to die.

I couldn't read the rest. It was whiny.

He's a sneaky little shit, just like Niedermeyer.

The sad thing about this is: Now that JournoList is gone, how will Washington-based liberal yuppie reporters possibly find each other to have discussions and talk shit about Republicans?

How?!!?

Ouch: A Reason reader named "esoteric" lights into Weigel:

Dave -

Do you really want to know what the problem is? On an elemental level, we're reacting to? Because if I tell you, you have to promise to actually response in good faith. Incidentally, this is a critique that comes not only from me, but from some of your friends and acquaintances throughout your life, who I happen to know.

The problem is that your instinctive first hot-off-the-pixels response was NOT to act as someone who really cares even a whit about "liberty" -- which is something we would have expected from a man who self-identifies as libertarian and once worked for Reason. Your locution was almost painstakingly chosen, rather, to MINIMIZE the ridiculous thuggery Etheridge displayed here. You called it a "hug." You reduced it to "people behaving strangely."

And you INSTANTLY diverted the question away from "WTF is this scumbag Congressman doing?" to the question of 'who hired these guys and what conservative conspiracy are they a part of?' Which, just coincidentally I'm sure, was the lead thrust of the Democratic Party talking points memo on the Etheridge affair (as posted by Ben Smith of POLITICO) being forwarded around to bloggers like yourself today. You, quite literally, seem to have "gotten the memo" on how to spin this into "those Nixonian conservative dirty tricksters!" rather than "Holy shit, now Congressmen are attacking random strangers rather than answer for their votes!" That would have been a lot more appropriate; as you may have noticed, pretty much everyone EVEN ON DAILY KOS reacted that way. Which is why POLITICO singled you out as an "Etheridge defender." (So don't be disingenuous. I know you too well to think you're that stupid.)

And that reveals so much about who you are, whether you realize it or not. For god's sake Dave, even ANN ALTHOUSE got this right. It's stunning that you didn't. And it is going to be very hard for you to live down your first response to this incident in the future. Because a first response is always the most revealing thing about a person's true character.

See, that was it for me. You can't be that much of a frigging Democratic Kneepadder and write a column called "inside the conservative movement."

No, you just can't.

You also can't call yourself a "libertarian" when you immediately jump to assert the ruling class' right of primae nocte over citizens' wrists and necks.

You're a hard-left liberal, period. Own it. Be proud, be safe...

This was, as esoteric says, the DNC's fax-blast spin of the day, a spin so egregious that few could manage to keep their gag reflex in check to push it out to the public.

But Weigel did.

He's entitled to his... nuanced version of "libertarianism." But he really cannot be writing a column that purports to be written "inside the conservative movement."

We already have two other WaPo bloggers dutifully retransmitting the DNC/DU line. It is gilding the lily to add a third.

Have We Learned Nothing From Sam I Am?

Never go full retard, Dave. Never.

posted by Ace at 03:47 PM

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