Ramesh Ponnuru is quizzical, though perhaps not enough, about a defense of Newsweek from rightist New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks derides military writer Austin Bay's condemnation as "craziness."
Unfortunately, the weakest judgments of the "what" and "why" of Newsweek's infraction have come from otherwise intelligent political and media insiders who are inured or oblivious to leftist prejudice. It isn't so cynical to consider the personal and professional relationships pundits and journalists would damage by calling their colleagues and past or future employers intellectually unfair or dishonest, in spite of overwhelming evidence. Outsiders like Austin Bay have a completely different perspective and nothing to lose with stern condemnations. Yet Bay is no polemicist; the ugly travesty of May 17th's White House press briefing, where reporters demanded the Bush administration apologize for having dared ask a news magazine to deal in fact instead of innuendo, wasn't a parody skit. Brooks should take the opinion of men like Bay more seriously and stop pretending that mainstream newsrooms couldn't possibly be oppugnant to their American benefactors. They may not be "Noam Chomskys with laptops," but just how close have they come?
CANDID CALUMNY: Glenn Reynolds helpfully lists journalists, most of them at least nominally on the left, who can see or are willing to admit what Brooks and others can't.