Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Only a few weeks after forcing him out, the Washington Post has rehired Dave Weigel to do the same job he did before -- only for Slate, the online magazine that they also own. Gee, you mean they could have saved all this nonsense over the last few weeks and just transferred him? Good thinking, guys.
And frankly, I don't know why he would go back to work for the same shortsighted company. I can't imagine he didn't have offers at least that good from people who didn't stab him in the back and show how ridiculous they are.
Politics
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My opinion on Mr. Weigel the WaPo fired him has gone down dramatically. I read his guest blogs on Andrew Sullivan a couple of weeks ago which I think revealed a bias that wasn't so much politically motivated, but instead one based on a form of arrogant laziness that comes from an inflated sense of oneself.
Exhibit A was his dishonest argument on why journalists, including those who publish opinion pieces, should avoid "birtherism" (Sarah Palin's contradictory claims regarding the birth of her youngest child). Weigel claims he was immersed in the facts prior to rejecting this storyline as non-worthy of following when in fact he had important facts wrong critical to buttressing his argument (this rebuttal to Weigel's facts contains a link to Weigel's blog post). Andrew Sullivan did an effective smack-down regarding how Weigel fails as a journalist on this matter, along with nearly all other journalists on the Palin beat.
I agree with Mr. Weigel that pushing the Palin birth story is not smart politics. It feeds into her tribe's persecution complex when there are many other aspects of Ms. Palin that are harder for her to defend. But Sullivan is correct in noting that Weigel is a journalist, not a politician, and from that perspective good journalism requires coverage given how Ms. Palin leverages these stories to promote herself as a political leader. It's attitudes and behavior like we see out of Weigel in this story that has me not writing off Journolist as lightly as the left would like, not as bad as Fox News getting their talking points from the Republican party but still on the negative side of the ledger.
Andrew Sullivan makes a great point about journalists in this blog post I repeat here:
Mr. Weigel's a young guy, perhaps the fact that fame arrived early in his life led to the type of sloppiness we see out of him on this story. Hopefully he has sufficient emotional wisdom to take Sullivan's criticisms to heart and start committing journalism even when it's not comfortable.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 31, 2010 11:11 AM
Re Michael Heath @ #1
I am afraid that I'm going to have to take strong exception to Mr. Michael Heaths' comment relative to the difference of opinion over the birth of Sarah Palins' alleged child between Mr. Weigel and Mr. Sullivan.
IMHO, Mr. Sullivan has been positively obsessive about who the mother of Trig Palin is. At one time, he claimed that Trig was really Bristol Palins' child and that the story of Ms. Palins' pregnancy was a cover up for her daughter. That theory appears to be rather remote for 2 reasons.
1. There is substantial evidence that there are, indeed two children. In addition to which, the out of wedlock pregnancy of Bristol is well known and acknowledged, so that such a cover up is unnecessary.
2. Trig is autistic. The likelihood of an autistic child being born to parents in their forties is much higher then such a child being born to parents in their teens. This is due to the fact that the quality of male sperm and female eggs deteriorates over time so that the chances of genetic abnormalities increases as the parents grow older.*
This does not mean that Ms. Palin is telling the whole truth about the circumstances of the birth of Trig. On the contrary, her claim that her water broke and that she subsequently boarded a plane from Texas to Alaska and then was driven to a hospital far from the Alaska airport is piffle. However, this seems to me to be rather less important then the other lies that Ms. Palin has been telling over the past year or two and does not appear to me to warrant Mr. Sullivans' obsession.
Mr. Sullivans' obsession with Trig Palin is on a par with his obsession with Israel. Day after day, week after week, Mr. Sullivan bashes the State of Israel, never pointing to the transgressions of its opponents.
For instance, there has been coverage in the Israeli press about gay pride marches in various Israeli cities. Mr. Sullivan, an out of the closet gay man who is HIV positive, never mentions this nor does he comment on the lack of such marches in Muslim countries. If Mr. Sullivan visited Israel, he would not be much bothered by the authorities there. If he attempted to visit any Muslim countries, including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, he would be arrested and jailed. In the Gaza Strip, he would be lucky to escape termination with extreme prejudice.
* As an aside, I got a big laugh several years ago when I read that 70 year old William Shockley had contributed sperm to a sperm bank in California as a part of a project to produce children from high IQ parents. No responsible IVF lab would even consider IVF using sperm from a 70 year old man.
Posted by: SLC | July 31, 2010 12:33 PM
SLC - Trig Palin has Downs Syndrome, not autism
Posted by: CanadianChick | July 31, 2010 2:33 PM
Without getting into the factional stuff about which I know nothing, I noticed the other day that I hadn't seen much from David in a while, checked up and found that he had moved around a little since I last saw him, and also noticed that he had lost his last job. A few days later he showed up on MSNBC TV and now I see he has a gig at Salon. This sounds pretty good and I look forward to seeing more of him. My recollection of his reports in the Independent is that he does a decent job of getting close to the extreme right and producing very readable and thought provoking material.
I'm British and I live in London, and David is just one of the many media sources that I think are helpful to me.
Posted by: Tony Sidaway | July 31, 2010 2:56 PM
Re Canadian Chick
I stand corrected as to the condition of Trig and express my appreciation to Ms Canadian Chick for the correction. However, that doesn't change my argument as any genetic disorder is far more likely from 40+ year old parents then from teenage parents. AFAIK, Downs syndrome, like Autism, is a genetic disorder.
Posted by: SLC | July 31, 2010 3:05 PM
SLC,
Actually, Trig Palin has down's syndrome, not autism. (Though the link between maternal age and likelihood of the condition holds.)
In doing some reading and link hunting on the matter, here are two facts that Andrew Sullivan doesn't address in his response to Weigel:
This Factcheck.org article from Sept. 2008 has a picture of Sarah Palin, where she certainly looks pregnant to me, taken around a week before Trig's birth on April 18, 2008. The reporter in the picture with her confirmed its authenticity. Instead, Sullivan focuses on images and rumors from when she was supposed to be 7 months pregnant that he said "failed the sniff test."
Another fact is that Bristol's son Tripp was born on Dec. 27, 2008 at 7 lbs 7 oz., just slightly over 8 months after Trig. That reduces the plausibility of Trig being Bristol's right there.
So, whatever Weigel's success or failure at journalistic due diligence in considering the Palin 'birther' issue, Sullivan certainly doesn't appear to be a shining example of it himself.
Posted by: JasonTD | July 31, 2010 3:20 PM
Ed,
I was surprised that you never discussed Spencer Ackerman's brush with Journolist news, given how you had worked with him and praised him in the past.
Posted by: JasonTD | July 31, 2010 3:34 PM
Re JasonTD @ #6
Yes, as Ms. Canadian Chick pointed out @ #2 and I acknowledged @ #6.
However, one of the problems I'm having with Mr. Sullivans' posts on this subject is his demand that Ms. Palin produce Trigs' birth certificate. If Ms. Palin is only lying about her water breaking in Houston, then Trigs' birth certificate would not shed any light on that issue.
I think it is pretty clear that Mr.
Sullivan is out to lunch if he is still claiming that Trig isn't Ms. Palins, which is not clear from his posts on the subject.
What I suspect actually happened is that Ms. Palin leaked a small amount of fluid while in Texas and is exaggerating the event for reasons best known to herself. As I recall, Trig was somewhat premature so it may be that Ms. Palin didn't consider a small amount of leakage serious. Perhaps that had happened to her in previous pregnancies.
Posted by: SLC | July 31, 2010 4:51 PM
This is strange, nothing but political commentary and activism in a "science" blog format. This blog is not about science at all...As far as politics, "...pushing the Palin birth story is not smart politics." Palin is scary for liberals because she has a connection with the public, here she is center of the attention. Knit picking Palin is not going to help your cause or get votes for the people you want in there, what you should be worried about is the economy which is not doing that well despite expanding government jobs and health care costs like never before.
Obama promised change which is true to a certain degree. While he was against a surge in Iraq before he was elected that surge of course became successful but once elected, now he wants to increase the troops in Afghanistan and then fund private security forces once the troops are removed. If Bush had such a plan, you would be all over him on this, but this is not about principles, is it?
Posted by: Michael | July 31, 2010 5:18 PM
Er, Slate, not Salon. Silly mix-up.
Posted by: Tony Sidaway | July 31, 2010 5:48 PM
SLC @ 2:
Not true. He's been relentless on the fact her story about her trip to Texas doesn't square with the facts. He's also been relentless on the fact that Ms. Palin's public pronouncements on her pregnancy and the birth of her child are contradictory.
His central point is that Ms. Palin is promoting her pregnancy and the nature of this child where the press fails to confront the fact the story doesn't square. Your characterization of him is a strawman of his arguments, in fact he rarely argues she's not the mom and has noted numerous times she probably is - the falsity of her story and her using it win votes coupled to a lack of journalism being committed that has him bulldogging this story.
Given the facts that have been revealed I speculate I think the most parsimonious explanation is that Ms. Palin was pregnant with her Trig and was acting in an incredibly irresponsible manner in hopes of having a miscarriage. From starving herself to the point she didn't appear pregnant even on the trip home from Texas to acting incredibly recklessly by traveling to Texas and what she did there once her water supposedly broke.
SLC:
This is convincing evidence you have no idea what Mr. Sullivan is arguing for here. This shallow observation is obvious and known by even the casually informed. I suggest taking on Mr. Sullivan's arguments in blockquote form given your summarized versions are a gross misrepresentations of his actual position and can easily overcome your point here.
SLC @ 2:
I would argue this is your motivation for looking to discredit Mr. Sullivan, his "bashing" of Israel. In addition, Mr. Sullivan "bashes" Israel the same way he "bashes" the U.S. or his home country, the U.K. or how Ed does. When a country fails to live up to his prescribed standards he "bashes" them. The criticism that Mr. Sullivan is unfairly biased against Israel relative to that country's enemies has been repeatedly asserted by strident Zionists, I find Mr. Sullivan's rebuttals to those criticisms convincing that they are without merit if one cares more about principles that tribalism and nationalism.
SLC @ 2:
Mr. Sullivan continuously points out the lack of civil rights in Muslim states. In fact no one covered the Iranian people's uprising more relentlessly last year than Mr. Sullivan and his assistants. He was consistently beating even CNN in getting video distributed from that country.
SLC, I greatly value your contributions in this forum, but when it comes to Israel, your critical thinking sometimes goes right out the window. I do greatly respect one of your points on Israel and that is that people not criticize Israel in a vacuum but instead within the dangerous environment within which they exist. But appreciating their challenges is not a complete reason to ignore Israel not living up to the highest standards of humanism and certainly isn't reason to misrepresent a person's views on another matter like we encounter you doing with Mr. Sullivan.
The very link I provided @ 1 clearly reveals Mr. Sullivan's primary motivation. That journalism has an obligation to cover the Palin story given the fact she put it in play, her story doesn't add up but instead argues she's a serial liar whose possibly completely lacking in character, and she still generates a lot of political capital from this story. I suggest blockquoting his points here and criticizing them; currently it appears you're merely trying to discredit a public voice on a peripheral matter since you don't like his reporting on Israel's flaws.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 31, 2010 6:36 PM
JasonTD @ 6,
Andrew Sullivan publishes everything about the Sarah Palin pregnancy/birth story, including criticisms of his own points and the full plethora of speculation. He's not hiding anything and he's constantly covered the points you bring up here which you claim he avoids merely because they're not in one blog post that focused more on journalism's role in this story and Weigel's false assertions than it did on building a case for what he thinks happened.
I don't believe Sullivan has argued that he believes Ms. Palin didn't have Trig. Even though I read him every day I'm not sure I remember him ever putting forth a theory of his own, only putting out there what's been reported which has led to me to my own conclusion (see above comment).
I have seen Mr. Sullivan report that the most parsimonious story is that Ms. Palin was in fact Trig's biological mother and was lying about her water breaking in Texas given the absurdity of her actions if that had actually occurred (though going on the trip is an absurd act on its own merits). That possible happening (her lying about her water breaking), doesn't falsify my speculation that she was acting irresponsibly in hopes of miscarrying.
Let me just finish by noting that Mr. Sullivan's blog goes well beyond the shallow conclusions of his coverage presented in this blog thread, well beyond.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 31, 2010 6:47 PM
SLC @ 8:
Again this is wrong. Mr. Sullivan's most strident point in this realm is that Ms. Palin was the only candidate to not release her medical records. Here's a link to one of many of Sullivan's blog post on this matter which features the very picture JasonTD claims that Sullivan avoids: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/palins-medica-2.html
Reading this post among many more argues that Ms. Palin was pregnant with Trig but given the fact she didn't balloon up like she did previously and so few knew she was pregnant coupled to her boondoggle in Texas where she repeatedly risked the life of Trig argues she was hoping for a miscarriage. This again is mere speculation on my part given the fact that Ms. Palin has created multiple apocryphal stories about her motherhood experiences that contradict each other while simultaneously and successfully warding off all scrutiny so we can understand when she was lying and when she was telling the truth.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 31, 2010 6:59 PM
Michael @ 9:
Not even close. She scares liberals, moderates, independents, and even many conservatives because she: knows nothing, has demonstrated she's totally incompetent, she's divisive, her personal ambition overwhelms all sense of duty to country, she's a serial liar and lacks integrity and character, she believes in making decisions based on being intellectually lazy and ignorant and depending upon divine revelation, and she appears to have Armageddon fantasies that involves the U.S. getting in war to defend Israel where she possibly plays a role. It's these attributes coupled to her appeal that has us concerned, avoiding these facts causes me to wonder where your sentiments lie, country or something else, devotion to political or religious ideology perhaps - or a combination of both.
Michael @ 9:
You are making a political argument whereas we're discussing Weigel's journalistic chops. In fact this is related to Weigel's argument.
I certainly think Democrats and Republicans opposed to Palin are wise to focus on arguing what our best functional experts prescribe to promote economic growth and demand Palin reconcile her falsified and shallow talking points to reality (she constantly argues for more tax cuts where she either dishonestly or ignorantly infers this will reduce the national debt). However journalists do not have a mission to promote political parties' platforms and planks. Instead their job is to report the news with a healthy dose of skepticism. That is what I postulated Weigel failed to do using Sullivan's argument as the standard upon which Weigel fails. Palin is merely the example.
In addition it's possible for bloggers and commenters to do both, advocate for their own positions and candidates while criticizing Palin - these are not mutually exclusive activities.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 31, 2010 7:14 PM
Re Michael Heath
1. I am afraid that Mr. Heath and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on the subject of Israel, hopefully not disagreeably. Like Prof. Jason Rosenhouse, I am a liberal Democrat, except for the question of Israel where he and I part company with all too many of our fellow liberal Democrats. As I have stated on this blog and others, IMHO, the Government of Israel has been far too soft on the Palestinians. It would have been justified long ago to apply Hama Rules to the Gaza Strip in response to the terrorist activities emanating from that area. If that makes me a neo-fascist, so be it. There's only one language that the terrorists understand and that's the mailed fist. As former Secretary of State George Schultz once said, they're not even people.
2. I don't see where I differ much from Mr. Heath and Mr. Sullivan on the subject of Sarah Palin. We all agree that she's a liar, a moron, and a demagogue. It would appear that I differ with Mr. Heath only about what I consider to be Mr. Sullivans' obsession with the birth of Trig. I don't think he helps the cause by continually harping on this subject when there are many more important issues to club her with. IMHO, he's beating a dead horse and inviting comparisons with the birthers (Prof. David Heddle anyone).
3. Apparently, Mr. Heath agrees with me that Ms. Palin is, in all probability, greatly exaggerating the story of her water breaking while in Texas. Compared to all her other lies and distortions, that's pretty small beer IMHO.
Posted by: SLC | July 31, 2010 8:15 PM
I also read Andrew Sullivan's blog almost every day, because he discusses and links to a huge number of news items. I don't agree with all of his opinions and have written him numerous dissenting emails. However, on the matter of Palin my take is the same as Michael Heath's - for what that's worth. I.e., his complaint is as much with the state of journalism as it is with Palin on this issue.
Coincidentally, I also thought the guest-bloggers Frum and Weigel were the least interesting guest-bloggers he has had over the past half-dozen years since I have been reading him. (The best was Hilzoy.)
Posted by: JimV | July 31, 2010 8:25 PM
So, SLC, you support killing a population that is to a high degree younger than 20. Neo-fascist seems too nice to me.
Posted by: Chris From Europe | July 31, 2010 8:52 PM
SLC @ 15:
I'm assuming you didn't read the second link @ 1 that I cited that was written by Andrew Sullivan. If you had you'd find Andrew Sullivan absolutely agrees with you on this point. His argument throughout this affair is that as a journalist it's not his job, or Weigel's, to "help the cause". That those arguments miss the essential point that he has no obligation to judiciously promote a partisan political agenda; instead he argues Weigel and his obligation as journalists is to instead commit journalism where it's Ms. Palin's actions which has this made this story worth covering.
SLC @ 3:
I think it's somewhat irrelevant whether her water broke in Texas or not and I certainly don't know one way or the other. In either case we have Ms. Palin purposefully putting the life of her unborn child at stake merely by taking the trip and exponentially so by going home if it did break rather than proceeding to the nearest hospital capable of delivering special needs babies. That's the real story here, that Ms. Palin's own petty selfishness, displayed not just in this story but in many observed events, overwhelms far greater duties to others. And that is the central point of Mr. Sullivan's reportage on this story, not whether she's the mother of Trig or not. The second point of his reportage is a less compelling argument - that the media has failed by not covering this story. I agree with him on this point though I concede his point is merely arguable and not convincing. It is interesting though that his detractors repeatedly misrepresent the facts they use to argue he's wrong as we encounter from Mr. Weigel.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 31, 2010 10:21 PM
JimV @ 20:
I agree. I was disappointed to find Weigel has some growing up to do where I found his ego surpasses his current capabilities and leads to some sloppy thinking. I skim the Frum Forum weekly to read his blog posts so I wasn't surprised regarding Frum. His commenters are also mostly all morons, one of the smarter ones occasionally comments in this forum and is ignored or shot-down (I haven't responded to him). However Frum did make a couple of good arguments that week, here's the money quote from this blog post as it was published three years ago in the NY Times:
The young man I'm most impressed right now getting increased exposure is the The Nation's editor Chris Hayes filling in for Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC TV show. He's making consistently powerful arguments, far better than the ones he makes as a guest.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 31, 2010 10:34 PM
SLC,
"Palestinians aren't even people."
That's pretty much indistinguishable from "Jews are subhuman," and "Negroes are just animals."
I guess the appropriate solution is to just exterminate them, eh?
Posted by: James Hanley | July 31, 2010 11:12 PM
In a self-referential statement, i'd like to comment that the correct phrase is "nit-picking." ;o)
Posted by: Bob Carroll | July 31, 2010 11:23 PM
Re James Hanley @ #20
Apparently, I didn't make former Secretary of State Schultzs' comment clear. So just to make it perfectly clear so that there will be no misunderstanding, the Secretary was referring specifically to terrorists, not all Palestinians or all Arabs for that matter.
Re Chris from Europe
Hama Rules worked for Hafaz Assad. The terrorists in the City of Hama who were setting off bombs all over Syria in the early 1980s have been very quiet since then. If one wants to make an omelet, one must break some egg shells.
Posted by: SLC | August 1, 2010 9:23 AM
Michael Heath @12:
I don't read Andrew Sullivan's blog, and I only pointed to this one article because you linked to it. Even if I take it as given for the moment that his main point was a larger 'journalism's role' issue, he spends a lot of the article discussing the case regarding her pregnancy and/or linking to other discussions about it. So, he either should have included everything relevant to the question of whether Trig was hers or at least linked to previous discussions where he goes into more detail. It is not my fault that he failed to do so, nor is it my responsibility to now go search through his archives looking for those discussions. You wrote,
Right in the beginning of the article, he quotes Weigel, who said,
If he didn't have any reason to believe that Trig wasn't Sarah's, why would that statement stick in his craw the way it did? After next quoting from the original NY Times article discussing her announcement, he said [Emphasis in original]:
That sounds like doubt to me. One single piece of evidence that would disprove the only plausible theory for why she would fake a pregnancy should be enough to quash that doubt. If she faked it to cover up a pregnancy by Bristol, then the timing just simply doesn't work as I said. Some quick searches to the question of how soon after giving birth could a woman become pregnant again suggest 2-3 weeks as a minimum, even if the woman wanted to have sex that soon after giving birth. If Sullivan ever discussed that fact in the past, it would be strange for him (or litbrit, who both you and he linked to) to not mention that now.
The idea that his article here was just about journalist responsibility and not about his apparent doubts about the truth of Sarah being Trig's mother just don't hold up. For it to even be worth investigating further requires more than looking at some photos and deciding that she doesn't look 'pregnant enough' in them, or the story of her leaking fluid and flight back to Alaska. That story, at worst, makes her look irresponsible. It doesn't provide any evidence that she was faking a pregnancy. So, the whole "Trig was Bristol's" theory looks just as implausible as Obama birtherism to me, and nothing Sullivan or anyone else in the link chain has said makes it seem otherwise.
Posted by: JasonTD | August 1, 2010 4:11 PM
It was also interesting to me to see him say this in his article:
In the link I provided at #7, Spencer Ackerman is quoted as follows:
I wonder what Andrew Sullivan would say to that? Just out of curiosity, and despite what I said earlier about it not being my job to search through Sullivan's archives, I went ahead and searched 'andrew sullivan journolist' at the Atlantic site. Here was one of his articles that ties together both issues, dated July 26. While he still expresses his doubt about her pregnancy (he refers to Trig as her 'alleged' 5th child), he takes the Journolist members to task for their reasoning for not pursuing the story. This paragraph follows an excerpt of an email by Ezra Klein, who suggested leaving the issue alone because it might backfire and end up helping Palin:
So, not having read Andrew Sullivan in the past (or at least not remembering having done so), I at least have to give him props for saying things straight in this case, even if I still think he's out to lunch on the Trig issue.
Posted by: JasonTD | August 1, 2010 4:34 PM
Re JasonTD @ #23 & @24
Actually, I find Mr. Sullivans' blog to be well worth reading, despite my strong disagreement with him about his views on Israel and his obsession with Sarah Palin. I think he has been front and center with his dissection of her lies, distortions, and general stupidity and his criticisms of the MSM for not blowing the whistle on her are well taken.
However, IMHO, he weakens his case be harping on Trig. He leaves himself open to the criticisms of people like Prof. Heddle who compare him with the birthers. It is not necessary to make a powerful case that Ms. Palin is totally unfit to occupy any office above the level of dog catcher by incessantly demanding that the Palins produce Trigs' birth certificate.
Posted by: SLC | August 1, 2010 6:14 PM
Jason TD asks:
Because Weigel is clearly avoiding the evidence that Trig is not her baby or that Ms. Palin risked Trig's life while pregnant with him. Again, Sullivan presents all the evidence for and against as a reporter should; Weigel avoids the evidence against and actually presents false evidence that Trig is Palin's baby. Sullivan has a craw in his throat because of Weigel's demonstrated failure as a journalist.
JasonTD quotes Sullivan:
and then JasonTD states:
To your first point of course there is doubt, anyone whose informed on this subject as Sullivan is must have doubt. Such skepticism doesn't result in only one possible conclusion which is that Palin isn't Trig's mom, only that Palin acted very strangely during this pregnancy - in a manner very differently than she had in the past, contra to doctor's advice, and in a manner that threatened the life of her unborn child. Again, it's my speculation she was hoping she'd miscarry where she was avoiding dealing with the fact she was pregnant - the evidence is overwhelmingly in support of such speculation but not convincing.
JasonTD states:
This line of thought reminds me very much of how creationists and AGW who are uninformed on a subject assume the experts aren't smart enough to use common sense. Your speculation here is in no way representative of anything Sullivan has argued which instead has been argued from the realm of reasonableness.
JasonTD:
Which is a gross misrepresentation of Sullivan's arguments and conclusions. Nice strawman. If you want to actually understand his arguments, which resolve mostly around what we know Ms. Palin has done and said and the refusal of journalists to actually investigate this story, I'd suggest actually following his blog. You'd learn that Sullivan does not frame this story's central premise as a question of whether Palin is Trig's mom, but instead what is the truth and why is the press not covering it given the fact that what Ms. Palin has revealed is contradictory and currently points to woman so ambitious she purposefully risked the life of her unborn child while leveraging her pregnancy story to market her political brand. The fact is that Mr. Sullivan has spent far time covering the Texas trip, Palin's contradictory stories, the press's refusal to cover this story, and Palin's success marketing this story to improve her brand. He's spent little time on the question questioning who is Trig's mother.
Posted by: Michael Heath | August 1, 2010 7:11 PM
JasonTD quotes Spencer Ackerman on the Jourolist meme:
And then JasonTD asks:
Sullivan's criticism of Ezra Klein's journolist forum goes well beyond the justifiable criticism he extends to this group's refusal to adequately investigate and report on Palin's last pregnancy controversy. He's harshly criticized the purpose and content of the forum and even pointed out where Ezra Klein lied when attempting to justify the forum. Sullivan's argument against journolist is very consistent with the non-conservative media's criticism of Fox News' partisanship and that journalists filter their stories through their own bias for parties, movements, or issues.
I think Mr. Sullivan is wrong on journolist, that's it's a more benign activity than his representation of it though there was certainly some reprehensible behavior revealed on it. It will be interesting to see how a virtual water cooler for journalists develops, this one was obviously a failure given that Mr. Klein shut it down while many conservatives one some political points, e.g., Sarah Palin and Fox News.
Posted by: Michael Heath | August 1, 2010 7:20 PM
SLC @ 25:
And again, Andrew Sullivan would agree with you on this point. However I'm troubled by your repeating this point SLC. I think your point is unfairly framed since it continually avoids addressing Mr. Sullivan's compelling, I think convincing argument which he frequently uses on why he keeps bull-dogging this story: Mr. Sullivan is not a political partisan looking to report stories in a manner kind to his causes but is instead a journalist. As a journalist he frequently has a duty to follow stories that might actually help politicians he finds repugnant, such as Sarah Palin. However as a journalist his job is to report and analyze, not strategize on how to best move a political party or favored candidate forward.
From this perspective your criticism would be fair if Mr. Sullivan was Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, but I think it's unfair given he's instead a journalist who both blogs and writes opinion columns for newspapers. Judging Mr. Sullivan within a framework different than is responsibilities as you repeatedly do in this blog thread is not fair. I instead suggest you frame your criticism within the framework of responding to his published arguments on why he and other journalists have a duty to report on this story. I've already supplied once such Sullivan blog post in my first comment post in this thread.
Posted by: Michael Heath | August 1, 2010 7:32 PM
Re Michael Heath @ #28
Judging Mr. Sullivan within a framework different than is responsibilities as you repeatedly do in this blog thread is not fair. I instead suggest you frame your criticism within the framework of responding to his published arguments on why he and other journalists have a duty to report on this story.
Other journalists are not reporting on this story because there is no story, other then Ms. Palin is, in all probability, exaggerating what happened in Texas. She's a liar. What else is new?
However, if Mr. Sullivan is now convinced that Trig is Ms. Palins' baby, why does he continually demand that Palin produce his birth certificate? This sounds like the birthers demanding that President Obama produce his "long form" birth certificate to prove that he was born in Hawaii.
By the way, it has occurred to me that one reason why Mr. Weigel finds Mr. Sullivan to be obsessive on this issue is due to his extensive reporting on the birther issue over the last year and a half. If one looks at his writings on this subject before he joined the Post, mostly in the Washington Independent, it will be seen that he was front and center in refuting their claims and perhaps finds Mr. Sullivans' demands that the Palins produce Trigs birth certificate eerily similar to the birthers' demands that President Obama produce his "long form" certificate.
Posted by: SLC | August 1, 2010 8:07 PM
SLC states:
That's arguable. I find Mr. Sullivan's argument they should be covering it convincing, especially since Ms. Palin was the only Presidential or VP candidate to not release her medical records and where demonstrably lied about that fact as well (she claimed she did and even listed what she provided when in fact she did not do, including the items she listed).
It's my opinion that the real story (the most parsimonious one given the evidence to date) if revealed would provide compelling evidence even to social conservatives that this woman purposefully and recklessly endangered the life of her unborn child in hopes, where the only possible explanation on her motivation was achieving a miscarriage. This point is newsworthy given the fact that Ms. Palin is the very person who put her pregnancy in play in the '08 campaign (her Texas trip story was the first of several) and now uses Trig as a prop in public appearances to promote the idea she's a hero willing to make tough decisions to defend even unpopular people.
You also avoid the point that we now have empirical evidence that some in the mainstream media did not cover the Palin pregnancy story for fear it would provide Ms. Palin with political capital given the journolist revelations - where you and I both agree with their arguments if they were partisans. It would immensely help Palin politically if nothing was found beyond what we know now. This is a central point in Mr. Sullivan's argument on why journalists have utterly failed to do their job on a matter that was a key campaign marketing ploy and a continued one during her book tour and public speaking engagements.
Posted by: Michael Heath | August 1, 2010 8:23 PM
Mr. Sullivans' obsession with Trig Palin is on a par with his obsession with Israel. Day after day, week after week, Mr. Sullivan bashes the State of Israel, never pointing to the transgressions of its opponents.
In addition to being utter bullshit, this sudden change of subject (in addition to the inexplicable mistake of saying Trig has autism and not Down's syndrome) puts a major dent in SLC's credibility.
The atrocities of Israel's enemies may not be Sullivan's #1 priority as a journo-blogger, but he has never been silent about them. I don't follow Sullivan that closely these days, but what I've seen is criticism of Israel's loony right from someone who wants Israel to have peace, security and competent government.
Posted by: Raging Bee | August 2, 2010 9:43 AM
Michael,
I think I know what you were trying to get at with the creationist and global warming denier reference, but it doesn't apply here. Those types often pull out some seemingly common sense argument as a 'gotcha' moment, when it doesn't really refute anything. One of my favorite denier memes along those lines is the CO2 lag in the ice core records. "Aha! CO2 goes up AFTER temperatures do, the ice cores PROVE it! Neener, neener!" And of course, CO2 was acting as a feedback to other forcings in those cases, which makes it a completely different situation than what we have now.
The timing issue isn't like that, though. First, putting Sullivan in the position of the 'expert' and me as the 'uninformed' is inappropriate at best, insulting at worst. He has certainly researched the issue considerably more than I have, but that still doesn't compare to someone who makes a career out of a scientific field vs. some amateur that doesn't even have a science degree (in the AGW case).
Second, climate scientists have actually explained things like that CO2 lag in a way that should be satisfying. That some continue to harp on it is why we call them 'deniers' rather than 'skeptics'. If this timing thing is something on par with the CO2 lag, then it should be easy to debunk it. The bottom line is that if Sullivan is advancing the hypothesis that Trig is Bristol's child instead of Sarah's, then he needs to consider anything that would disprove it. (To be fair, I haven't seen Sullivan make that specific claim, exactly. But in the hours of searching and reading since this came up, I've never seen anything else offered as a motive for Sarah faking the pregnancy.)
To get into the timing thing in more detail, let's do the math more precisely. Trig was born on April 18, 2008, and Tripp was born on Dec. 27, 2008. That is 36 weeks and 1 day difference. I couldn't find much clearly written by experts, but what I was able to find suggested that the first ovulation after giving birth is usually at least several weeks later, sometimes as much as a year later. So, while it is technically possible to conceive soon after giving birth (especially if not breast feeding, which seems to turn on hormones that suppress ovulation), ovulation within 2-3 weeks would be very unusual, from what I've read. And that is what would have needed to happen for both Trig and Tripp to be Bristol's. Tripp was born at 7 lbs. 7 oz. As seen by the chart on this page, Tripp would have been around the 90th percentile in weight at birth given a bare minimum scenario of Bristol ovulating at about 2 weeks after giving birth to Trig.
This puts the Trig is Bristol's hypothesis right on the bare edge of plausibility. Instead of just dismissing what I'm saying by comparing me to creationists and global warming deniers, you and Sullivan should actually deal with it. Sullivan can call back those ob/gyn's he talked to before and ask them what they think about it.
Remember, he referred to Trig as Sarah Palin's "alleged" fifth child. And the question of whether Sarah is Trig's mother runs through that whole article about Weigel. Sure, I can concede that he might have done so mainly to challenge Weigel and the rest of the media to be more diligent on the issue. But someone would still look like a kook for criticizing someone for not being good enough in refuting "Moon landings were faked!" arguments while wearing a tin foil hat of his own. For Sullivan to really pull off being a superior journalist to Weigel, he has to actually make better use of the evidence. He does in some cases (like his analysis and research about the flight from Texas), but it is still a pretty big leap to go from that plus some photos that don't show 'enough' of a baby bump to 'the pregnancy was faked', especially in light of the timing issues for the only plausible motive for faking the pregnancy.
Posted by: JasonTD | August 3, 2010 2:22 PM
(To be fair, I haven't seen Sullivan make that specific claim, exactly. But in the hours of searching and reading since this came up, I've never seen anything else offered as a motive for Sarah faking the pregnancy.)
To be fair, Sullivan isn't concerned with what's really going on in the Palin family. His main concern, repeatedly emphasized in posts about other subjects, is Palin's pattern of pathological dishonesty and what it means for American politics.
Posted by: Raging Bee | August 3, 2010 2:43 PM
Sullivan did clarify a little with another post.
So, he took back some of the 'hyperbole', as he put it, about the list as a whole, even though he stands by the criticism of specific emails. Mainly, the issue is one of attitude. When journalists work from their point of view, rather than as just straight news reporting (which is itself still subject to bias), they can easily not realize when they cross a line.
That line is the one that separates journalists from political activists. Even when commenting on the news or offering opinions, the primary duty of a journalist is still to inform the public of things they should know. For a political activist, the primary goal is to advance an agenda, even if that means trying to suppress or distract from information harmful to that agenda. That's what happened with those emails on the list that deserve strong criticism. They were talking about how certain stories were playing in the news and how that would affect the campaign and how to shape the stories in the way they wanted. It is not the role of a journalist to think about whether a story will help or hurt a candidate. Actually, I take that back. If a journalist thinks that a story might help or hurt a candidate, it is his or her duty to pursue that story vigorously and accurately. (On that, I agree with Sullivan on the Trig issue, if it wasn't clear in my other replies. Pursuing the story is good, but it still looks to me like he's not looking at things evenly.) If the journalist is a commentator, they are certainly free to offer their own perspective on the story, but to try and shift the news away from that story to help a candidate turns them into an activist.
I think that's the take away message from the whole Journolist thing. Whatever bias has come ever more blatantly to the forefront of various 'news' organizations, it goes even beyond bias to explicitly try and help candidates in the manner of some of those emails. I would actually be surprised if similar emails didn't exist somewhere among conservative commentators or in Fox News' private servers, of course, but that doesn't in any way excuse those on Journolist from their indiscretions.
Posted by: JasonTD | August 3, 2010 2:48 PM
SLC, you keep including a big if. Sullivan is not claimign the Trig is Brostol's kid. He raised this theory before, but was convinced that she is most likely Sarah's after a coupel months of that as peopel pointed out problems with the story. She clearly did make up a bunch of stuff surrounding the birth, though. This is part of her pattern of lying and self-aggrandizing, which is why he stayed on the issue.
Posted by: Ace of Sevens | August 3, 2010 4:40 PM
Re Ace of Sevens @ #35
I repeat myself but if Mr. Sullivan is now convinced that Trig is Ms. Palens' child, why does he keep asking for her to release Trigs' birth certificate? Trigs' birth certificate has fuck all to do with the issue of what went down in Texas or Ms. Palens' apparent lies on the subject.
I am absolutely convinced that Mr. Weigels' issue with Mr. Sullivan is due to his hypersensitivity on the subject because of his extensive coverage of the birthers. I am convinced that he equates Mr. Sullivans' demand that the Palens release Trigs' birth certificate with the birthers' demand that President Obama release his "long form" birth certificate.
Posted by: SLC | August 3, 2010 5:46 PM