Online Integrity
I’d have to say that Krugman puts it perfectly:
It seems that some years ago Malaysia’s ruling party took a good look at leading pundits and policy intellectuals in the conservative movement, reached a judgment about their personal and intellectual integrity or lack thereof, and acted in accordance with that judgment.
Funny how Malaysia gets who these people are and what motivates them — while our own press corps doesn’t.
Which isn’t to say that the Malaysian government was being entirely rational; as Ailes says, “Given that nobody takes Trevino seriously, it seems the Malaysian government overpaid by roughly $389,724.40.”
Why do you libruls always attack free market capitalism. This is a perfect case of the invisible hand putting its thumb on the scales of truth.
I think that the invisible hand stuck that thumb somewhere else, a bit more personal.
Next post up.
In government budget terms, this is really just pocket change so no big loss for Malaysia. Its exactly like its a third-world country.
I mean, its not exactly like its a third-world country.
Fragment from Trevino’s personal log entry:
“Dear Mom,
A funny thing happened on my way to promoting truth, democracy and free markets…”
This is a guy who tired to make his internet persona was the “reasonable” rightwinger, a crusader for civility and ethical online behavior.
On the interent, they say, no one knows you’re really a dog.
I think you meant “tried” rather than “tired”, but that works, too…
But, SRSLY, Josh Treviño, as the “‘reasonable’ rightwinger”? The same Treviño who’s spent years on- and offline pillorying anyone even remotely leftish as virtually indistinguishable from Satan?
His crusade for online civility consisted, AFAICR, of insisting that any of his blogs discouraged cursewords and personal insults. Ideological crackpottery for the most part, but at least ot was polite.
He was also fond of outing pseudonymous bloggers, if they happened to be mean to him. While supposedly pledging to never do so (hence the “Online Integrity” that Scott alludes to).
An overview, for people who missed in the fun the first time around.
This was another classic thread; Trevino’s comments are classics of his oeuvre. He ‘apologises’ to a commenter whose name and occupation he published on his own blog, by
(1) blaming the commenter for leaving identifying information just lying around where anyone could find it by searching the blog’s registration archives, and
(2) switching to the passive voice as soon as it became a question of personal responsibility: “you were done an injustice”.
Ah them were the days. Thousand-comment-threads about slapping people with dicks, and nowadays, all we have are right-wing assholes writing anti-democracy propaganda for cash money from Mooslem regimes. The internet’s just not what it used ta be, I tells ya.
I think Suetonious would have been more apt than Tacitus.
From what I understand from the story, all this only came out because Trevino decided to make a belated disclosure. It makes me wonder if he had any motivation for putting this in the open, besides just trying to get himself on the right side of the law.
To clarify, he belatedly made the disclosure he had been required to make by federal law – he wasn’t just “making a belated disclosure”
Yes, that’s what I meant to imply.
But it seems to me that if the arrangement had been disclosed in the first place, the whole propaganda campaign would have been almost worthless. So whoever was paying Trevino must have been unaware of the requirement for disclosure, or else they fully expected Trevino to ignore it. I’m guessing the latter.
possibly because someone found out, and, had he not made said belated, required disclosure, he faced potential legal unpleasantness? i’m guessing his attorney strongly encouraged his filing.
“To clarify, he belatedly made the disclosure he had been required to make by federal law – he wasn’t just “making a belated disclosure”
This is dead wrong:
“’Given that nobody takes Trevino seriously…’”
No, in fact, someone takes Trevino VERY seriously: Trevino.
More’s the pity. If he had a sense of humor about himself…
…he wouldn’t be half as funny.
If I recall the Online Integrity scam correctly, the sequence of events was something like this:
1. It is brought to Trevino’s attention that his online behaviour is sufficiently opprobrious as to reflect badly on the causes he is currently paid to believe in.
2. Trevino resolves to change.
3. Trevino sets up OI to promote the idea that everyone else is just as bad and demands that everyone else amend their behaviour as well, because both sides were doing it
—————————-
Several years down the track, it all looks kind of paradigmatic — now that Trevino is explaining that everyone else also accepts money from dictatorships to smear democracy advocates; that everyone else flatly lies in response to a direct question (while complaining that anyone should question his integrity); and how was he supposed to know that as a paid political operative for a foreign power, he might come under the laws that govern paid political operatives of foreign powers?
But at least he did pay a lawyer to give him a legal opinion that he was not required to register as a foreign agent. He learned that much from the Bush administration.
4. Trevino keeps being a douchebag using the OI scam as cover.
5. Profit
I have to disagree with the Good Doctor. I think our press corps gets it perfectly. Their reaction is “Shh! You’ll ruin it for everyone else!”
Trevino forgot to scrub this Facebook account! Get it while it’s crap.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Malaysia-Watcher/126969320685740
My how the wanky have fallen. Next step for Trevino is to get arrested for fighting with a hooker in Houston.
That would actually raise his profile. Trevino/Gingrich 2016!
A lot of people take Trevino seriously. Dan Drezner Andrew Exum and the crowd they run with take him seriously. Let’s not paint him a marginal fugure. He’s enconsed comfortably in the FP esteblishment
Looks like a veritable Groupon offer of dollars for integrity.
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