Milbank v. Weigel
Like Matt, I think that Carr has the Post dead to rights on its double standards. A couple additional points:
- The analogy is pretty direct. If I understand, the justification for firing Weigel was that you couldn’t expect Weigel to cover Matt Drudge if he wrote mean emails about him. Milbank’s beat involves covering the White House, so it would seem that the same logic would apply in his case.
- It should also be re-emphasized, as Carr says, that “none of the Post leadership suggested his actual work was anything less than rigorous or fair.” Whereas one can actually find examples of Milbank’s sexist attitudes about Clinton affecting his actual work for the Post. But, then, Milbank himself believes that media antipathy toward Clinton can simply for taken for granted. It’s not like picking on poor defenseless Matt Drudge!
- A central issue would indeed seem to be that Weigel just isn’t part of Beltway media culture, and I’m guessing that one of the biggest crimes that one can commit among the kind of people who send anonymous emails to Jeffrey Goldberg is to actually take politics seriously. One can’t imagine Weigel acting like Milbank and asking politicans multiple questions about how they look in a swimsuit; in the culture of the Post, this is apparently a major negative.
Greg Sargeant says he opposed letting him go but wrote a somewhat lame piece at Plum Line saying of course I saw no evidence of pressure on the part of the WP and if he gave his resignation because of his own personal beliefs, well, his decision should be respected.
oh GS also noted how “dumb” W. was without discussing either the context or the off the record (and allegedly private) nature of said comments. I should add that maybe he did at some future time, but not in the comments he wrote after the “resignation.”
This, again, is from a “supporter.”
Yeap, this is just as bad for the Post as it seemed it might be the moment that Weigel’s departure became known.
I have one question — Weigel himself has taken the line that he screwed up and that the Post was right to fire him. Admirable though that may be, shouldn’t he … stop doing that? It’s unfortunate that the person most affected by this is taking the line that the Post hasn’t done anything wrong, it makes it difficult to sort through the various issues involved.
Bottom line: The hiring of Weigel was the only noteworthy thing the Post has done in years (well Ezra too) …. I can remember when they hired him, I almost did a double-take — “That’s so smart,” I thought. “Get the guy who knows the Tea Party better than any reporter, wow, smart.” Well, it turns out there’s a chance they meant to hire a different Dave Weigel, who used to be the bullpen catcher for the Minnesota Twins in the 70s. Total. Fail.
The Carr piece quotes Weigel as saying “The institution is far more important than any individual.”
Actually, there are few institutions about which this is true. And it’s been years if not decades since the Washington Post was one of them.
Also: hiring Dan Froomkin was another fine decision by the WaPo. For all it’s obvious problems, the paper deserves to be congrat…d’oh!
Incredible as it seems, that idiotic video was part of Milbank’s actual work for the Post, no?