Glenn Greenwald Is Keen To Undermine Republicans By Pointing Out Their Sexual Hypocrisies, But When It Comes to Terrorists, He's Strangely Offended By the Idea That the NSA Would Reveal That Pious Islamists Are Into Porn

Great and deadly point, by Stewart Baker at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Greenwald's latest bombshell is that American Intelligence considered revealing jihadists' sexual and financial hypocrisies in order to undermine their moral authority. The author of the piece at Volokh, Stuart Baker, gave a comment to Greenwald's co-writer, asking, rhetorically, “Why wouldn’t we consider doing to Islamic extremists what Glenn Greenwald does routinely to Republicans?”

Greenwald's piece quotes almost everything else Stewart Baker said to the co-writer-- but not that part. Why? For the obvious reason:

It turns out that Glenn Greenwald has written an entire book devoted to exposing the contradiction between Republicans’ ideology and their private lives. In Greenwald’s words, “While the right wing endlessly exploits claims of moral superiority … virtually its entire top leadership have lives characterized by the most decadent, hedonistic, and morally unrestrained behavior imaginable …[including] a string of shattered marriages, active out-of-wedlock sex lives, and highly ‘untraditional’ and ‘un-Christian’ personal lives [endless detail omitted].” His book certainly makes the NSA memo sound restrained and cautious, but both are motivated by the same idea.

Grim and Greenwald very likely cut the quote because it would have undermined the narrative of the piece, which combines solicitude for the poor Islamists whose sexual and financial hypocrisy might be exposed with outrage at the NSA for even considering such a tactic. The quote would have made them look like, well, hypocrites.

posted by Ace at 03:01 PM

| Access Comments