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Newsweek Addendum

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Iocaste makes a good point about the nature of the error that produced the Newsweek scandal. The wingnutosphere is taking a page out of the playbook that was used by opponents of the Civil Rights movement. The seminal libel case New York Times v. Sullivan came about because an NAACP ad in the Times made some factual errors (such as the song being sung by students as a protest in Montgomery) that were irrelevant to the overall point of the ad.

Of course, Atrios is right that Spikey is a hack, and his reporting in this case was typically sloppy. But we shouldn’t confuse a recanting source with the assumption that the underlying conclusion of the story is false. And more importantly, we must remember that the First Amendment also protects hacks. The intimidation being used by Reynolds and their ilk is not about any one reporter, but about preventing the media from critical reporting about American foreign policy in general.

UPDATE: Edroso notes that Prof. InstaHack is deploying some good old-fashioned gay-baiting as well:

The Ole Perfesser calls Andrew Sullivan an “excitable” “emoter-in-chief” who should write “a bit less about gay marriage.” To his credit, the Perfesser did not just up and call him a faggot, but when you have such command of schoolyard code, you don’t have to get crude.

But, then, Reynolds thinks that noting that a publically open gay woman is gay is “dissing” her, so this is nothing new…

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