Advice That Should Have Been Taken
Ever heard the phrase “get over yourself.” I don’t use it often but: Get over yourself.
I would be curious to see what was said about me then. Was there jubilation that this video clip could be used to attack me? A plan to pick a spin and stick to it? An agreement to deprive me of links forever and ever? I’d like to know. I mean, I can imagine it on my own, but it would be fascinating to have the transcript.
Why, I would be surprised if JournoList ever discussed any topic but Ann Althouse! Anyway, I think we have evidence for Adam’s point:
I’m not even really certain that Breitbart really believes there’s some sort of liberal conspiracy here. Rather, this seems to be motivated by the same thing that made the leaks from “journolist” a scandal in the first place — there are a certain number of high-profile conservatives who are almost pathologically thin-skinned, and the thought that someone, somewhere might be saying something mean about them is absolutely infuriating. I’m betting it’s still dominating the conversation on some of their off-the-record e-mail lists.
For bonus comedy gold, let’s watch as Althouse comes up with an argument for being the kind of scumbag who publicizes private emails she considers devastating:
Let’s test Cole and the other performers of outrage about how they feel about illustrious leakers of the past. Deep Throat. Daniel Ellsberg. Please do your “honor”/”privacy” routine in that context.
Yes, the fact that Ellsberg was probably justified in leaking documents proving that powerful public officials repeatedly lied about a war that resulted in millions of deaths means that privacy and commitments to confidentiality should never be given any weight at all, no matter how trivial the subject. This is very convincing. Why, if you were to leak the contents of Ann Althouse’s inbox, you’d be a hero! After all, she might have said something mean about someone, and information wants to be freeeeeeee!
To follow up on dsquared’s comment, it also seems worth remembering that Ellsberg was prosecuted and probably would have been convicted were it not for the Nixon Administration’s Althousian conception of privacy and ethics. (From the standpoint of MLK’s conception of civil disobidence, of course, this doesn’t mean what Ellsberg did wasn’t justified.) When you combine this with the fact that anyone who would trust Breitbart to preserve their anonymity would lend their house keys, vacation schedule, and safe combination to someone they just met at a halfway house, this is why it’s extremely unlikely that a substantial portion of the archive will be leaked. Anyone cynical enough to do this would also know that the more people who are involved the more unlikely it is that their anonymity would be preserved, and especially once any EU residents were involved your reward and lots more would swallowed up by legal fees and possibly legal judgments. You may get one or two more targeted leaks intending to harm more specific individuals, but that’s about it.
UPDATE: via Dave in comments, see also. Although you have to admit that the alleged JournoList conspiracy to get Eric Alterman, Jon Chait, and David Dayen to act in ideological and partisan lockstep certainly was a roaring success. I demand answers!
The best part of all this is that Althouse clearly has no idea what Journolist was….
To be fair, I can’t remember a time when the Lesser Perfesser had any idea about anything she blogged about.
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Ellsberg was absolutely ready to go in the can, at that time.
What wonderful cases came out of that: Nixon’s plumbers, just merrily breaking into Elssberg’s psychiatrist’s office; and the supremes voting 9-0 – 9-0!!! – against prior restraint.
Ellsberg was absolutely ready to go in the can, at that time.
Yep, exactly.
one thing i ask myself: is there something about the internet that makes the dumb even dumber?
that is: there’s no doubt that ann althouse is not a very intelligent person, but does the constant effort to attract attention through blogging make her dumber or merely express her dumbness more vividly for all to see?
If anyone is considering doing business with Breitbart, I strongly suggest getting the money first. Otherwise, when he fails to find any smoking guns he’ll claim the archive was “scrubbed” and refuse to pay.
Hell, he is never going to pay under any circumstances.
Let’s say the worst scenario was the case…an adminstration was paying JList members to propagandize…whoops, that’s the last administration…that the list was used to coordinate stories.
So what?
Suppose it was used to coordinate blogwars with the express intent of spiking traffic? Again, so what? It might be a tad annoying to people who cared about the blogwars, but shouldn’t they get a grip? And wrestling is faked!!!!
There’s not been any, not to mention any credible, claim that illicit money changed hands. Or, really, anything. 400 people on a mailing list. That’s private. Writing about stuff. In email.
Did these people publicly assert or privately pledge that they would never exchange email with the other 399 on a private list? Does their reputation critically depend on it? Can anyone give a prima facie intelligible explanation on what the problem is? I mean, even in the “worst case” scenario where people used it to collaborate?
I’m very confused.
I’ve frequently heard Malthouse is some sort of teacher. That’s a joke, right?
Not to her poor students.
Oh wait! I get it!
It’s a liberal list. Liberals like govt. Thus, liberals are the govt. These are media liberals in a liberal media. So the govt. is the media which are liberals. Thus, whistleblowing. Because!
Or something.
What I love about the analogy is that it has that absurdity that (bad) comparisons to the Nazi’s do or how science kooks all think they are Galileo. Outing would be a far more defensible analogy, but it wouldn’t be a slam dunk win. (Defending outing is a bit tricky in the best cases, and the analogy would be, of course, still rather thin in this case. But at least it’d be intelligible.)
Althouse never ceases to amaze me. How does someone so transparently stupid become a law professor?