Never Mind, Mordecai

July 8, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Andrew Sullivan notices Gov. Palin’s Esther quote from the Hebrew Testament, noted here Tuesday afternoon.

Andrew Sullivan Awaits Redemption

July 5, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Though he hides it behind a sneer, Andrew Sullivan can’t conceal his hope that Gov. Palin resigned because last fall’s fictionalized pass-the-baby story, the most effective libel of the ‘08 campaign, which he shamefully repeated and amplified before checking the facts and personally kept alive for all the months since, is really true. He writes:

Is Trig really Tina Fey’s child?

White House Burned By Hackosphere

April 30, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Hackosphere, History, News media | Leave a Comment 

It appears that someone at the White House gave President Obama Andrew Sullivan’s post saying that Winston Churchill’s government didn’t use torture during World War II. During his press conference last night, Obama offered it up as authoritative evidence in favor of his no-torture position.

As it turns out, the record isn’t so clear. Ben Smith has now unearthed evidence of British torture centers that was obviously beyond the reach of the resources of “The Daily Dish” and the Executive Office of the President, elusive evidence buried deep within the web site of the British Guardian, damning evidence available only to those who Google with exactly the right search words.

Sullivan now says that if it really happened and Churchill knew about it, then he’s a war criminal, too.

Interestingly, if you capture the link to Sullivan’s new entry, it says, “the-british-tortured,” perhaps the draft headline for the entry. Someone changed the final “Dish” headline to “Three Mansions In London,” which sounds like the title of a Moody Blues song. I thought that on this subject, we didn’t like weasel words.

“Two Years Ago You Were A Passionate Churchman”

January 21, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Hackosphere, Iraq War | 1 Comment 

Peter Wehner throws a little bit of Robert Bolt’s depiction of the honest and quotable Thomas More from Man For All Seasons at Andrew Sullivan who can’t seem to make up his mind on personal values and political causes. The Iraq War is no different.

A Blogging Fool’s Paradise

December 22, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media | Leave a Comment 

Earlier in the year, Matthew Yglesias left the Atlantic Monthly blogpen, settling under the wing of the progressive (I always want to write “self-styled” in front of that word; where does it leave the rest of us?) Center for American Progress Action Fund. If you click here, never again will you see such a group of highly qualified and earnest-looking young people.

At about 10:30 last night, a Fund official posted this on Yglesias’s blog:

This is Jennifer Palmieri, acting CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Most readers know that the views expressed on Matt’s blog are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s comments about Third Way. Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects – including a homeland security transition project – and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.

 That’s because on Dec. 19, Yglesias had written:

 [Third Way's] domestic policy agenda is hyper-timid incrementalist [BS].

 The brass at Third Way, another think tank, must’ve asked their friends at CAPAF why they were being trashed on a Center web site. After Palmieri’s post, over 500 comments on Yglesias’s site ensued, but none as ironic as when Sullivan, back at Yglesias’ old hang at the Atlantic, said today that Palmieri’s comment is: 

What happens when someone mistakes a journalist for a member of some dumb-ass Politburo.

 So now the blogger is a journalist again. When Sullivan was defending himself for having republished a lie about Gov. Palin, her minor daughter, and Trig on his own site, he took pains to make distinctions between the rules for journalists and bloggers. For instance, he didn’t have to check the Trig Palin story out first, he said. By republishing it before checking the facts and then keeping it alive for months, he was just asking questions (which jounalists do, of course, before they run their stories).

Defending Yglesias against his web site’s host’s inteference, Sullivan reverts to yet another pillar of the old journalistic paradigm whereby a newpaper publisher was expected to keep his or her hands off the newsroom.

So in Sullivan’s blogger’s paradise, writers have it both ways. They can publish whatever they want without abiding by old-school notions about accuracy and due diligence. If by their actions they expose their publishers to libel suits (as Sullivan may have by republishing the Trig story at the Atlantic Monthly Group) or interfere with a business or collegial relationship being enjoyed by those paying the bills (as Yglesias evidently did), too bad. We’ll have to see how long before paradise is lost in a courtroom.

Trig Wins

December 16, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Election 2008, Hackosphere, News media, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Andrew Sullivan’s modified limited hang-out on the Palin pass-the-baby story. Having let his adjutant rebut him last week on his own site, “The Daily Dish,” he has announced a suspension of the distasteful campaign he has been waging to get Gov. Palin to prove she is Trig’s mother.

It’s a relief he won’t be harrassing Trig anymore. It’s a shame he wasn’t accountable for having republished a lie on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site without checking the facts. No other “Atlantic” journalist would have, and he shouldn’t have, either. Ever since, Sullivan says he’s just been trying to get the truth.  It’s actually looked as though he’s been trying to get Palin or Sen. McCain to provide records or some other official response so that he would be able to say he had posed a legitimate question. In this effort, he has failed.

Whenever he insists, as he does yet again in his last (we hope) post, that by republishing a lie and then defending his behavior for months, he was just asking questions or expressing opinions, he underscores how desperately we need newspapers, or at least professionally-trained newspaper reporters. The Hackosphere — though not Sullivan; this was a bizarre aberration — is still too prone to sophomoric and poorly-formed content, and blatant lies carefully disguised as fact (what first fooled Sullivan). Bloggers also go to bed too early. Last week no “Atlantic” blogger had anything on the failure of the auto bailout until the next morning. 

The Trig story was the most effective libel of the ‘08 campaign, and Sullivan will always be complicit in it. He gets some credit for letting a contrarian colleague say his piece and using it as a means of making a passably graceful exit from a disgraceful episode in the history of the so-called new media.

Two Punk’d

December 13, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media, Nixon Center, Obama administration, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Our friend Steve Clemons gets punk’d by a gag about Rahm Emanuel by the same outfit that fooled Andrew Sullivan with its malicious pass-the-Palin-baby story. Big difference: Steve won’t claim the story’s true for three and a half months.

Covered “Dish”: Sullivan And Trig, Again

December 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

Last Friday, before taking a post-election break from his blog “The Daily Dish,” Andrew Sullivan unloaded with another ridiculous attack against Gov. Palin, keeping alive the lie that she and her minor daughter Bristol conspired in a massive coverup of her son Trig’s parentage. Today Patrick Appel, subbing for the boss, wrote at the “Dish”:

I strongly believe that there is nothing to this story….

The easiest way to disprove these conspiracy theories is to consider what would be required for them to be true. Palin’s doctor, along with a good number of Mat-Su Regional’s doctors, nurses, and administrators would need to be in on the cover-up. On multiple occasions Palin would have had to pad her belly to make herself look pregnant. She would have needed to get friends to lie about seeing her breast feed. She would have had to silence an entire community – including two 17-year-olds and their friends – while the national media and the National Enquirer snooped around. Implausible to say the least.

I don’t believe Sarah Palin is capable of pulling off such a cover-up. And, like Alex Massie and John Schwenkler, I don’t understand what is being accomplished by continued investigation.

Hallelujah and amen. Good for Sullivan for letting Appel rebut him on his own site. Better if he had just dropped it weeks ago. Best if we never hear about it again — but Andrew will be back by the weekend!

Call Andrew Sullivan: Obama Born In Kenya

November 20, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Hackosphere | 8 Comments 

There’s more controversy over a birth that became an issue in the recent Presidential campaign. Why won’t the candidate simply release better hospital records and put the nagging questions to bed?

Trig and Gov. Palin? The President-elect. A few are still pushing the discredited idea that he was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii. No mainstream journalists buy it. But that doesn’t keep a conservative web site from saying about Sen. Obama’s records precisely what Andrew Sullivan has been saying for weeks about Trig and Sarah — in his case, to justify his republishing a false account about Trig’s parentage, the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign:

The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists, simply hasn’t ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

Because a story like that in the hackosphere isn’t worth paying attention to, that’s why. Obama will diss its promoters by ignoring them, just as Palin and Matt Lauer have dissed Sullivan.

Incidentally, while Sullivan’s Wikipedia page describes his republishing the lie, it doesn’t reveal that he’s still keeping it alive.

The New Media Are Growing Old Already

November 18, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media | Leave a Comment 

Fascinating New York Times article about a new model of scrappy, non-profit news gathering outfits busy in San Diego, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. More proof that that the news business and democracy won’t be saved by the Starbucks-based hackosphere but by diligent, old-fashioned journalists who are paid to generate quality content. Says one San Diego pioneer:

Information is now a public service as much as it’s a commodity. It should be thought of the same way as education, health care. It’s one of the things you need to operate a civil society, and the market isn’t doing it very well.

Non-profit news can work, as NPR and public television show. But the same as education? News in the hands of government agencies like the BBC and Xinhua News Agency? Let’s not go too far.

I Want To See Andrew Sullivan’s Journalism License

November 17, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media, Sarah Palin | 3 Comments 

Every decent, rational person, I suppose, has one thing that sends him around the bend. The Trig Palin story is Andrew Sullivan’s. Alone among legitimate journalists, he and his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site are keeping alive the false story that Gov. Palin faked her fifth pregnancy — the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign. In this bizarre post, in which he links to a CNN panel discussion about Palin and the media, he writes:

[T]he assumption here is that the Trig maternity story was obviously untrue.

A correct assumption. It is obviously untrue. As everyone knows, a left-wing blog made it up to try to destroy her. He erred in republishing the story before checking the facts and has wasted 100,000 calories of his valuable energy since Labor Day weekend just to avoid saying he screwed up.

Don’t listen to me. Listen to his colleagues. None of the CNN panelists is especially fond of Palin. And yet none invests the pass-the-baby story with even a hint of credibility. One, Julie Mason, even says this about the Trig lie:

Who reported that? Nobody reported that!

She’s saying that Palin is overreaching by claiming that legitimate journalists ran the story. Since the highly influential Sullivan — of the “Atlantic Monthly” and the former editor of “The New Republic” — did run the story, she’s casting him into journalistic outer darkness, at least on this issue. What she means is that nobody worth paying any attention to published it.

Matt Lauer also dissed Sullivan last week when he didn’t demand proof that Palin had given birth to her beloved child. Why would he have done so? Here’s where Sullivan’s tortured logic leads. A number of lying bloggers wrote that Barack Obama was a Muslim. If Lauer were interviewing the President-elect, should he ask to see proof of his Christian baptism? One cringes at the thought. And yet for being exactly that discerning in his questioning of Palin, Matt Lauer, Sullivan says, is “an embarrassment to [his] profession.” On the contrary.

Andrew Sullivan: Matt Lauer Is “Pathetic”

November 11, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Another false statement from Andrew Sullivan, who refuses to admit he erred by republishing a blatant lie about Trig Palin’s parentage before checking the facts:

There was no actual refutation of the rumor from the McCain-Palin campaign until the same Michael Goldfarb told Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post the following on September 25, weeks, not days, after the questions first came up…

Completely, flatly, absurdly untrue. New York Post, Sept. 1:

McCain campaign officials said Bristol’s pregnancy was made public in order to counter what one aide called “mudslinging” that has circulated on blogs like Daily Kos.

According to postings on Daily Kos, Sarah Palin allegedly faked a pregnancy and pretended to give birth in April to Trig, who has Down syndrome.

The McCain campaign said Bristol Palin is five months pregnant and that Trig was born on April 18, making the rumor’s timing impossible.

End of story. All that needed to be said to a reasonable person. Only Sullivan needs more, to absolve himself for keeping the lie alive all these weeks. But he’ll never get it. There will never be any excuse for what he did.

As for those who refuse to join his one-man crusade, such as Matt Lauer in this morning’s NBC interview, they get insults and taunts:

When the reporters ask her questions in Florida, will any of them have the balls to ask her for [hospital] records? Or are they going to be as pathetic as Lauer?

Hey, Andrew: Ridicule Her Now

November 11, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Hackosphere, News media, Sarah Palin | 5 Comments 

Gov. Palin, questioned by NBC’s Matt Lauer:

What was the biggest misconception that you would’ve loved to have corrected at the time?

It started off with the rumors, the speculation – even in mainstream media – that Trig wasn’t actually my child, that Trig was somebody else’s child and I faked the pregnancy. That was absolutely ridiculous, and it took days for that false allegation to ever be corrected…Things like that that could so easily have been corrected if reporters would’ve done their job.

“It started off” with the Trig lie, she says. Indeed it did. It was the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign.

“Even in the mainstream media” — Andrew Sullivan was key to that, since he republished and mainlined the lie on his widely respected and read Atlantic Monthly Group-owned web site before checking the facts.

The lie was “absolutely ridiculous,” as everyone knows, which is why neither Palin not the McCain campaign gave Sullivan the fig leaf of medical proof, since that would’ve enabled him to claim he had acted properly.

“If reporters would’ve done their job” — Palin knows more about journalistic ethics than Sullivan, who continues to proclaim that publishing a lie before checking it out is the same as “asking questions.”

The ultimate rebuke of Sullivan: Lauer didn’t ask Palin to prove she was the mother of her beloved child. Why? Because he chose to act decently.

Leave Sarah And Trig Alone

November 10, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

I admire Andrew Sullivan as much as anyone in the media. He’ll be a dedicated watchdog in the event of any Obama Administration excesses. His insights will be equally vital as conservatives and Republicans rethink and rebuild.

But his harrassment of Gov. Palin — by repeatedly demanding, or goading others to demand, that she prove that Trig is her son — is sickening.

Just this afternoon, while again calling her a liar, he wrote:

All I did was ask questions…

That is a lie. He republished an obviously falsified story about Trig’s birth before checking the facts. Asking a question is calling or writing and asking someone first; it’s not republishing the lie first.

Please, Andrew, just let this one go.

Please Let It Go, Andrew

November 10, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Election 2008, Hackosphere, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

Andrew Sullivan notes that Gov. Palin has exasperatedly proclaimed herself the true mother of her beloved child. He played a role in keeping alive the malicious lie that she was not. For goodness’ sake, let it go!

Keeping The Lies Alive

November 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Election 2008, Hackosphere, Political Philosophy, Sarah Palin | 3 Comments 

Andrew Sullivan continues to associate himself and his Atlantic Monthly Group-owned web site with the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign: That Sarah Palin is not the mother of her son Trig:

And there will surely be, over time, substantiation of all these charges – “silk boxer shorts”! “I’m pregnant!” – or not.

It was an inexcusable and fateful lapse of ethics, so Sullivan has a personal reason for doing whatever he can to bury Palin. It’s always interesting to plumb how people use both facts and lies for purposes that have nothing to do with truth — for instance, those around McCain who’ve leaked prejudicial details about her performance.

Since no one can persuasively blame McCain’s six-point loss on his VP choice, Palin’s critics must have another motive for scapegoating her. As with all liars and leakers, you can’t know the motives until you’ve seen the faces. Call it the Deep Throat rule. Now that we know it was Mark Felt, we know that the man who helped bring down President Nixon wasn’t a person of conscience but an FBI official who’d been spurned for promotion and whose own penchant for illegality doomed the prosecution of William Ayers. As a result, Watergate looks a lot different.

So too with the anti-Palin leakers. We don’t know who they are, but we can make a good guess about their motives. Presumably many if not most of those around Sen. McCain were not the fall’s culture warriors but the winter and spring’s moderates and mavericks. When it came to the choice of Palin, these advisers would either have opposed it or held their noses.

Since Nov. 4, the GOP has been without a leader. Neither McCain nor any of those whom he defeated automatically qualifies. The leading candidate is Palin — the new Reagan, some say, a social issues conservative, anti-elitist, attractive, young.

Imagine how appalled moderate McCainites would be at the idea that their own campaign had produced this monster of politics. And so they’re doing what they can to tear her down. But what if they’re telling the truth about her? Not possible. The relevant truth is not in what she did; it’s in what they’re doing. Know only the lie or leak, then be fooled. Know the liar, then know the motive, and begin to know the truth.

Andrew Sullivan’s Malignity In Victory

November 6, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media, Political Philosophy, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | 7 Comments 

Andrew Sullivan continues to savage Sarah Palin. He erred in republishing the transparent lie that she wasn’t Trig’s mother, which proved to be the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign. As recently as election day, he was keeping the lie alive. So he is fully vested in her political demise.

The GOP must nonetheless ask itself if Palin, as we know her today, is its phoenix. Sullivan and other proponents of classical conservatism are right that Republicans must use their wilderness time to decide what they believe, what makes them indispensable, and how they’ll win. Angry and sure of themselves today, they need to find their way to curiosity and even self-criticism. One of the study questions is whether their rootedness in social issues is a help or hindrance.

So if Palin and her advisers really envision her as the new Reagan, I’m not so sure. But the new Nixon…?

Sullivan: From The Mountaintop To The Gutter

November 4, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Hackosphere, News media, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

As the AP reports, the doctor of the vigorously healthy young GOP VP nominee has written precisely the kind of letter about her health that the doctor of the healthy young Democratic Presidential nominee wrote about his. In response, Andrew Sullivan closed out months of political coverage by writing:

We need documentation to verify [Palin's] last pregnancy…

Not true; not true at all. We need nothing of the sort. Only Sullivan needs it, to justify his republishing the malicious and transparent lie that then 16-year-old Bristol was actually Trig’s mother and that she and her family engaged in a massive effort to cover it up. Among legitimate journalists, only Sullivan is keeping the lie alive. If the McCain campaign had released proof of Trig’s parentage, Sullivan would’ve said that it had replied to his legitimate questions. Now, he doesn’t even have that fig leaf. Good for Sen. McCain.

Sullivan and his Atlantic Monthly Group-owned web site will forever be associated with the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign. Earlier Monday, he posted a magisterial endorsement of Sen. Obama, bracing and uplifting. From the mountaintop to the gutter on the same day.

Hackosphere: Piper Palin Joins The Coverup

November 1, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Hackosphere, News media, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Charming interview with the Palin family on Fox News last night. There sat the governor and Todd, Bristol with Trig on her lap, and six-year-old Piper, taking questions from Greta Van Susteren. It reminded me of the nice story Tina Fey told Conan last week about the family’s visit to SNL:

Gov. Palin was like, “Oh, did Alice go home? Oh, ’cause Bristol woulda babysat.” She offered Bristol Palin to babysit Alice… And it was Bristol’s birthday, too. I was like yeah, that’s exactly what 17-year-old Bristol Palin wants to do at SNL is babysit the toddler of the lady that goofs on her mom… but they’re a nice family.

Don’t say that to Andrew Sullivan. They’re a family under sinister mind control or strict discipline. Either that, or Sullivan has yet to atone for the worst ethical lapse of the year by a legitimate journalist.

Over Labor Day weekend, without waiting to check the facts, he republished on his Atlantic Monthly Group-owned web site the obvious lie that the governor and her pregnant minor daughter had engaged in a massive conspiracy to trick the world into thinking Trig was actually born to Sarah. Even now, he keeps the lie alive by putting “pregnancy” in quotes when referring Sarah and Trig. Thanks in large part to Sullivan and the boost it got from his influential web site “The Daily Dish,” the pass-the-baby story was the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign.

If Sullivan were right, little Piper, of course, would know the truth — that mommy didn’t really have Trig and that she lied and told everybody she had. Even Bristol, linchpin of the conspiracy but nonetheless a teenager, is probably not unfailingly dependable when it comes to keeping big secrets. So why did the plots’ evil architects, Sarah and Todd, risk bringing their family into the enemy camp at 30 Rockefeller Center? Even among friends such as Van Susteren and Fox, the kids might have blurted something out. Those awful Palins must have scared their children into thinking they’ll be severely punished if they reveal the truth. Maybe Todd was hiding a taser under his shirt.

Sound ridiculous? That depends entirely on you. There’s probably a web site that explains to the credulous how and why a governor and her staff, security apparatus, and family have managed their successful coverup of a teenager’s pregnancy. The testimony of top obstetric authorities is brought to bear. Photographic evidence is carefully analyzed. Think Dealey Plaza and the puff of smoke on the grassy knoll.

Add it up, and all it proves is that Andrew Sullivan amplified a lie that hurt innocent people, and that the self-congratulating, Starbucks-is-my-newsroom, long-on-opinion, short-on-facts “new media” aren’t ready for prime time. If there’s one thing scarier than the wrong candidate being elected this year, it’s the newspaper industry continuing to deteriorate financially, leaving the job of informing the electorate in the hands of the Hackosphere.

Barack Obama Was Born On Jupiter

October 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Election 2008, Hackosphere, News media, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

More bluster from Andrew Sullivan as he continues to seek expiation for republishing lies about Gov. Palin and her minor daughter Bristol on his Atlantic Monthly Group-owned web site before he checked the facts.

As Sullivan perpetuates the fiction that Trig Palin was not born to Todd and Sarah, here’s what his argument is like.

I (actually, no way; “I” as someone with influence comparable to the globally-read Sullivan) republish a story from a fringe web site saying that Sen. Obama was born on Jupiter. His campaign says it’s ridiculous and unworthy of further comment. Virtually every journalist in the country agrees and moves on. But I demand access to the Obama family’s travel records and receipts. Only when they’re released, I insist, can we definitively put to bed the idea that Obama was born on Jupiter.

All I’m doing is asking questions. Isn’t that my job? If I repeat this often enough, the absence of the records, and not my republishing a bizarre lie, becomes the issue.

I also cobble together a complicated narrative (written with the teeth-clenched prose of Kennedy assassination conspiracy hounds) raising other questions about what the Obama family may have been up to around the time I had alleged they were hiding out on Jupiter awaiting the babe’s birth. I hope that other journalists will join me demanding records. If I’m lucky, an anchorperson may actually ask Obama for them on camera.

As for me, I remain completely focused on my own ethics problem. By now I’ve figured out that Obama was born on the planet earth, but I’m out on a limb on the Jupiter story because, try as I did (I even took a two-day break from work), I just couldn’t let go once I’d run it.

If Obama’s travel records are ever released for any reason, I’ll announce that my actions were justified, since Obama has finally provided the definitive documentation I’ve been asking for. I’ll happily proclaim the subject closed.

It won’t work. Sullivan will always be the Atlantic Monthly journalist who helped mainline the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign. There will never be an excuse for what he did.

Sullivan’s fixation on Sarah and Bristol may have distorted his journalistic barometer in other ways as well. He once would’ve given all four major ticket candidates roughly equal skeptical attention, no matter what his preferences. Now, amid his innumerable Palin posts, his cavalcade of alleged lies designed in part to distract attention from his complicity in the biggest lie of the campaign, he’s run virtually nothing about Sen. Biden’s role in the brewing credit card meltdown. They call him the senator from Mastercard because of his umbilical ties to the consumer credit giants. If the VP matters this year, it’s not because of Palin’s gifts or failings. It’s because the Presidential candidate promising to clean things up may be moving into the White House with Pig Pen.

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