« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Why Is Anyone Surprised by This Dave Weigel Business?

You can read Ben Smith’s post here at the Politico on Dave Weigel.

A few points from me:

1. It is no surprise to me that Ben Smith is on Journolist too. I wonder if the push back by lefty oriented journalists over Sarah Palin complaining about that stalker moving in next door was coordinated on Journolist. Probably.

2. The most shocking story is a Journolist member leaking Dave Weigel’s emails. Talk about stabbing a comrade in the back — particularly one who successfully infiltrated the right posing as a quasi-right of center journalist. I’m guessing someone got jealous.

3. I don’t think Dave Weigel had any expectation of privacy on Journolist because there have been leaks before to Mickey Kaus.

4. Why is anyone shocked by Dave’s emails? They were emails written to pseudo-friends expressing what anyone who knows anything about Dave’s mission at the Post would not be surprised by. They story here is not that Dave is a liberal, I already told you that. The story is that some people — including people at the Washington Post — are shocked and appalled to find it out now. Good grief people. Have you not paid attention? Read Dan Riehl.

5. The Washington Post relying on Ezra Klein’s recommendation for someone to cover the right from the right is like the estate of a dead man shocked that the doctor Jack Kevorkian recommended to them killed their father. Suckers.

6. Ezra Klein has disbanded the Journolist, which is code for changing its name and re-inviting a more select group, probably not including Ben Smith.

7. Don’t cry too much for Dave who, again, is a very nice guy. I’m sure the Huffington Post is preparing its press release right now that they’ve hired him to keep doing what he’s been doing.

8. Ben Smith writes, “The Post appears to have hired Weigel, a liberal blogger, under the false impression that he’s a conservative.” Actually, I’ve had people from inside the Washington Post describe Weigel’s job as “to report on groups and people on the right who should be viewed as fringe.”

9. I feel a little sorry for Dave going through this. He got a cool gig others probably covet (maybe someone enough to leak his emails). I really think this is much ado about nothing if only because everyone should have known it was all a shtick. The only issue for me is the dishonesty involved by the Washington Post in positioning Dave as covering the conservative movement from inside the conservative movement. And I don’t blame Dave for that. Say what you will, but the Washington Post is not run by dumb people. They knew what they were doing.

10. Awesome work by the Daily Caller. Awesome work.

Get Alerts

COMMENTS

  • http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/ reaganiterepublicanresistance

    Doesn’tt WaPo present Chris Cilliza of “The Fix” as supposedly right-leaning too?

    He’s posted some dubious things to say the least, like when two weeks after Obama was elected he rushed out “10 Republicans to Watch for 2012″- while leaving off Sarah Palin completely! No agenda there, lol

  • JadedByPolitics

    were his UNDOING! I said it over at Riehl that just like the liberal Rabbi the lefty Dave had REALITY smack him in the face because the left is NOT going to let you say something nice about a Republican NOR are they going to let you take a lefty down!

    OBTW the media is CORRUPT!

  • aesthete

    It’s really a wonder that Reason Magazine hired him to begin with; he was always on witch-hunts against the Tea Party and “fringe” movements. I don’t know if he’s a nice guy or not (I’ll take your word for it), but he always seemed a bit emotional and thin-skinned. I’m not sorry to see him go, and as you said, it’s not really surprising that he was on Ezra’s Journolist.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    This ain’t nothing but good. Big black eye for JournoList, for WaPo, and for Leftist Journalism in general.

    For the record, I never liked him, and I don’t care if he IS a nice guy. Nice guy or not, he is on the side of statism. F-him in his ear, with a wooden stiffing spoon.

    And Journo, thanks for the idea. We take what we want.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    This ain’t nothing but good. Big black eye for JournoList, for WaPo, and for Leftist Journalism in general.

    For the record, I never liked him, and I don’t care if he IS a nice guy. Nice guy or not, he is on the side of statism. F-him in his ear, with a wooden stiffing spoon.

    And Journo, thanks for the idea. We take what we want.

  • Doc Holliday

    warning, this is a link to a Post columnist saying and thinking sadistic, inhuman things.

    http://wonkette.com/414041/ezra-klein-finds-success-despite-one-dirty-tweet-two-years-ago

  • jaykali

    I mean what’s more private and intimate than a listserv?

  • smagar

    Namely, snotty and insulting things.

    Weigel will fit right in at HuffPo

  • trutexan

    I wake up to RS at 0430, watch Fox News at 5AM, I ride to work with Mike Church, and I go to lunch with Rush Limbaugh every working day. I come home to Glenn Beck, Hannity, and/or Pags and I subscribe to American Spectator and Heritage.org. I’m a fan of Sarah Palin on Facebook. I consider myself VERY in-tune with politics in America. I don’t need to listen to or watch the Clinton News Network or MSNBC because I rely on my hosts to play sound-bites for the important parts and pretty much ignor the rest. I buy books from Levin, Palin & Coulter. So….

    Exactly who is Dave Weigel? Never heard of him. He is not a blip in my radar. And if he’s not a blip in mine…

    Then he’s much less important than everyone thinks he is and he’s certainly no where near the radar of middle America.

  • Joe_Schmo

    If you get nailed with the double post gremlin. For awhile there, I figured it was a retarded ghost in my system…

  • aesthete

    that’s attributed to outside reporting on the Tea Parties that makes you go “wha…”, it’s probably Weigel. If you hear something that makes you want to throw things at your TV screen, it’s definitely Weigel :)

  • timnewport

    Who the hell cares about this guy? Oh my God, some undercover lefty blogger got stabbed in the back by some other lefties… I feel SO BAD! Now why anyone on the right would care is beyond me…oh, I see…everybody’s in the blogger click and if you get to know him, he’s really a NICE GUY…I almost tossed my cookies reading this tripe over at Hot Air…and now here…Lindsey Grahm and Arlen Specter would be so proud of you guys…I HOPE HE GOES BROKE! I HOPE THEY FORECLOSE ON HIS HOUSE! Notice how many comments you have on this topic? Not too damn many, because none of your readers give a flying frig about this jerk. “Oh, but he’s really a friendly guy…” WHO THE HELL CARES? These people are doing everything in their power to wreck the damn country and just because you’re all in the same business and this jerk, what, does he ask how your wife is doing or does he remember your kids’ names? Who GIVES A SHIRT! When was the last time some lefty refrained from doing all the damage they could to someone on the right because they think he’s “really a nice guy”

    Our people never learn. Any leftist scratches your little puppy belly and you piss all over yourself . You should run for a Senate seat.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Comments are not correlated with traffic for RS front page stories.

    Not even close.

  • Adjoran

    He is shutting it down, but said in doing so he expects someone else to pick it back up under a new name (like ACORN!) and manage it better.

    TRANSLATION: We’ve obviously let it grow to include too many people, and our attempt at behind-the-scenes manipulation of the coverage of news is too important to permit leaks, so let’s start anew with a better screening process.

  • Adjoran

    NOBODY in the news biz hires a writer without reading him first. They knew darned well who he was and where he was coming from, and they chose to have him represent himself as something other than he was because they advertised him as such (with or without his knowledge? I don’t know, but in either case, he went along).

    The Drudge death wish was no one-off remark. Weigel was positively giddy sounding when the news broke that Limbaugh had been rushed to the hospital with chest pains. Nice guy.

    That’s just the beginning of the Daily Caller report: http://tinyurl.com/2evlzrr

  • icesweeper

    I’m sorry, but nice guys don’t wish they would set themselves on fire (Drudge), or be happy when they have chest pains (Rush).

    Nice guys, regardless of thier political leanings, just don’t think like that.

  • smagar

    the Washington Post is not run by dumb people. They knew what they were doing.

    Exactly. Now, the WaPo ombundsman worries openly that the Post has lost “standing among conservatives.”

    That horse has been gone so long, it’s forgotten where the barn was.

    Perhaps there are some on the Post staff who are taking a longer look at their lengthy track record of treating conservatives scornfully.

    - It was the Post that made “macaca” a permanent part of America’s political vocabulary.
    - It was the Post that paid Kathleen Parker handsomely. She (and the rest of T. Coddington Van Voorhees’ crew ) made it chic to bash Sarah Palin in specific and Republicans in general; the Post rewarded her with a full-time writing gig and a path to a Pulitzer. Parker apparently knew what kinds of commentary the Post wanted to buy, and she provided it. Kathleen Parker is no dummy. She was a backbencher conservative writer before Sarah Palin came along; look where she is now.
    - It was Steve Pearlstein, a Post reporter, who asked President Obama the Washington Post’s question at the one press conference the White House held before Porkulus passed. Remember that time? Porkulus was in jeopardy. I’ll bet the White House was hoping that the MSM wouldn’t put it on the spot with tough questions. Pearlstein obliged. He asked about—Alex Rodriguez and steroids in baseball. Well well well—what a pleasant coinky-dink for the Obama White House! Has the WaPo switched reporting beats with ESPN? Is Sporting News the new national publication that focuses on national politics?
    - Remember Doug Feith’s book, War and Decision? A lot of us were looking forward to the discussions that would follow the MSM’s thorough, fair and thoughtful review of that book. Isn’t that the way you make your case in politics these days? You write a book, and then you respond fully and fairly to the many questions that arise from the assertions you make in the book. Unfortunately, that plan doesn’t work if—the MSM collectively decides to ignore the book. (I wonder if Journolist put out the word to pretend that Feith’s book didn’t exist). To its discredit, the WaPo participated in—and thus enabled—that shunning of Feith’s book.

    Um, Washington Post, you were saying something about your paper’s standing among conservatives?

    Pull up the covers and snuggle down in the bed you made for yourselves.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    About half of my posts do that. I hate it. The workplace environment is tightly controlled by the Network Nazis, and I am pretty sure the double-posting is a byproduct of one of their many security measures.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    He’s just performing in the role he was hired for at WaPo.

  • Joe_Schmo

    But I don’t have a problem blaming the network nazi’s either.

    I think it might be an old version of IE for me.