I want a job at the New York Times.  It is clearly a place that pays people to be stupid.  David Brooks gives Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 a very nice review.  Coming Apart claims that there is a big divide between rich Americans and poor Americans.  I like Charles Murray, and think he is frequently brilliant, but the heads up for him here is that there are always divides.  They’ve been by class, geography, politics, culture, etc.  To look at income and NASCAR in 2012, is awfully limited.

But I was talking about Brooks.  Brooks is horrified by the divide and has a rousing, and “NYT stupid,” conclusion:

I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.

If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.

And there you have my post title.  In the years between WWI and WWII and Vietnam, the big mixer-upper was the draft.  No draft, no mixing up.  We don’t have a new cultural divide.  We have an old, 19th Century era cultural divide.

Some are thinking the draft might be a good thing, but I don’t think our military deserves to have foisted upon it a random sampling of the current younger generation.

By the way, if you’re thinking that this is an unusually sour and snarky post, even by my standards, you’re right.  Both Brooks’ column and Murray’s premise rubbed me the wrong way.

I never liked Jean-Luc Godard movies.  I go to movies to be entertained, not bored.  He failed my simple test.

Aside from being (in my mind) a boring film maker, it turns out that he is, as well, a deep, blatant, vicious antisemite.  Of course, if you’re a New York Times consumer, you’d never know that.  And what’s really bad is that the New York Times doesn’t avoid Godard’s antisemitism because the Times is itself ignorant of Godard’s ugly side.  Nope, the Times is well aware of it.  It’s approach, therefore, is to gloss over, explain away, and excuse his depravity.

I doubt anyone, with a straight face, can disagree with me when I say that the Times would have responded differently if evidence ever emerged that Godard had said “I dislike gays/blacks/Asians/Hispanics/Muslims/other victim group that suits the Times’ criteria.”

If you haven’t already, please read Steve Schippert’s guest post on this blog about the animating anti-American forces driving WikiLeaks.  If you don’t have time to click on over, here’s the money quote:

Wikileaks is a small cabal of people who, in their own site description, “Publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.”

In reality, what they are is a like-minded gathering of hardcore Leftists who see their greatest enemies and threats as the American military and intelligence coupled with free market capitalism.

Then get a load of the New York Times front page.   I’ve captured most of the slide show screen shots that automatically rotate across the page (click on thumbnails to see full size):

For more on WikiLeaks, Greyhawk has some posts here, here, here and here.

[Despite being about the pompous and boring Tom Friedman, this is not an appropriate post for the under-18 crowd.]

I don’t think that there’s any doubt BUT that Tom Friedman is an idiot.  His worship for Communist China — which in typical Friedman fashion routinely takes the form of acknowledging its failings, yet nevertheless lusting after the same power that creates those failings — is manifest evidence of his idiocy.  He’s coy, but he can’t disguise his unwholesome passion for totalitarianism.

It’s not just his totalitarian yearnings, though, that make Friedman stupid.  It’s also his blatant inability to align facts and conclusions.  Friedman made his reputation as a fact guy.  He’s written lots of ostensibly fact-based books.  Certainly, he impresses the self-styled intellectuals on the Left with his mastery of facts.  But the reality is that, in his columns, he frequently ignores painful facts, fakes real facts, and misuses actual facts, all of which adds up to stupid.  He is the living embodiment of 2+2=5 (except that he often functions in the realm of imaginary numbers).

If you’re wondering why I’m harshing on Friedman with such venom this morning, it’s because of a column he wrote yesterday about Israel and the Palestinians.  The whole column exists in a parallel reality universe.  Taking his usual irritating, condescending stance of wise father lecturing recalcitrant children, he essentially demands that Israel just get with the Obama program and make concessions that will inevitably lead to the lion and the lamb lying in peace together.  Evelyn Gordon neatly dissects the factual vacuum in which Friedman’s fatuous demand exists:

Thomas Friedman argues in today’s New York Times that Israel should extend its freeze on settlement construction because when a key ally like America “asks Israel to do something that in no way touches on its vital security … there is only one right answer: ‘Yes.’” Friedman is, of course, correct that countries should help allies anytime they can do so without great cost to themselves. Where he’s wrong is in saying that no vital Israeli security interest is at stake.

It’s true that Israel has no real security interest in a few more houses here or there. But it does have a vital security interest in ultimately securing defensible borders, which can’t be done without retaining some territory on the other side of the Green Line under any deal. And continuing the settlement freeze would undermine Israel’s negotiating position on this issue.

Not only does Friedman deeply misunderstand the actual facts on the ground, he ignores the ones that conflict with his overriding need to support Obama in pushing a course of action that is antithetical to reality.  Per Rick Richman:

Friedman writes that he has “no idea whether the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has the will and the guts to make peace with Israel” but thinks Abbas should be tested with another moratorium. No idea?

He knows that Abbas’s term of office expired nearly two years ago and that Abbas is “President Abbas” only in the sense that George Mitchell is “Senator Mitchell.” He knows Abbas declined an offer of a state on 100 percent of the West Bank (after land swaps) with a shared Jerusalem. He knows Abbas has stated he will “never” recognize Israel as a Jewish state nor negotiate any land swap. He knows Abbas cannot make peace even with Hamas, which controls half the putative Palestinian state. He knows Abbas has repeatedly canceled elections and that the idea of the Palestinian Authority as a stable democratic entity is a joke. He knows Abbas has declared he will never waive the “right of return,” which makes a peace agreement impossible even if every other issue could be resolved. He knows Abbas has taken no steps to prepare his public for any of the compromises that would be necessary for a peace agreement. How many tests does Abbas have to fail before Thomas Friedman has an idea?

So I’ve now provided proof that Friedman is an idiot.  He doesn’t understand the facts he has, and ignores the facts he doesn’t like.  From that foundation, he makes grossly (and gross) ideological arguments, assuming the preening, snide posture of a seasoned sage, condemned to deal in perpetuity with ill-educated louts.  The question is why is Friedman like this?

Friedman wasn’t always such an idiot.  He was always a pedantic, formulaic writer, but twenty years ago he actually used to make facts and theory mesh well together.  The problem is the bubble.  Friedman is encased in an ideological bubble, with no countervailing forces, that renders him the functional equivalent of an unpruned hedge:  he’s wild and ugly now, instead of neat and compact.

The heart of the problem is Friedman’s gig at the New York Times.  Week after week, year after year, Friedman has to churn out articles that suit the Times’ mentality.  If he doesn’t do that, he loses his job.  This won’t affect him financially, of course, but it will humiliate him.  He likes being one of the Times’ most widely read columnists.  He likes the fawning and the adulation.  He wants to keep these emotional strokes going.  No surprise there.

The problem for Friedman is repetition.  There are only so many issues to be had, especially because, unlike a blogger, he’s subject to topical limitations.  Much as he might want to, he can’t break free and write about weddings or recipes.  (A blogger, by the way, can refresh him or herself with occasional forays into irregular topics.)

The only thing Friedman can do to stay fresh is to push the envelope.  Since he can’t keep repeating himself, he has to come up with ever new and exciting ways to keep his audience’s attention.  The result is that, while Times’ subscribers may think that they’re reading a staid, serious news organ, they’re actually getting the intellectual equivalent of a sleazy strip tease.

Think about it:  When the audience gets bored with the 37th iteration of the glove being pulled off finger by finger, the next thing to do is to tease the buttons on the bodice.  And when that gets tiring, bit by bit, item by item, the stripper finds herself inevitably pushed towards nudity.  Once she reaches nudity, there’s nothing left, especially if that nudity reveals, not that she looks like some airbrushed Hollywood star but, instead, that her bra was stuffed and that the cellulite is wearing heavy on her thighs.  At that point, all she can do is holler really loudly, in the hope that she deflects people’s attention from the fact that she’s not only stale and boring, but ugly too.

Friedman’s columns are exactly the same.  When pedantic reasoning got boring, he resorted, still pedantically, to opinion.  And when that got stale, he moved into the realms of fact free opinion.  After that got old, there was totalitarian fantasy disguised as pedantic fact-free opinion.  Column by column, Friedman is not only getting more extreme in his writing, he’s stripping himself bare intellectually, and revealing the padding and ugliness.

What makes it even worse in the world of Tom Friedman is the high wall that the Times has built around him.  Because the Times decided to remove comments, Friedman doesn’t have the reality checks that, in the stripper world, tell that gal to go on a diet and keep her clothes on; and that in the political world, should tell Friedman that he’s got his facts wrong, that he’s missing facts, or that his conclusions don’t make sense.  To keep my sexual analogies going, Friedman is getting all the feedback of a good masturbater.  He knows how to make himself happy, something that does not require him to venture beyond the lining of his own brain, but woe betide anyone who has to share the experience with him.  He’s accustomed to an audience of one, and he will brook no criticism or changes.

And that’s why Friedman is an idiot.  And selfish.  And mentally ugly too.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

Over at Michelle Malkin’s site, Doug Powers reports that the New York Times is trying to dig up dirt on Boehner — specifically, sexual dirt.  In a post entitled “Had An Affair With John Boehner? Please Call 1-866-NYT-DEMS,” Powers links to a New York Post story that has the Times desperately hunting for sex related dirt:  “‘Catching Boehner with a mistress is the only way to destroy him politically before the election,’ a source said.”

I don’t think sleazy adequately covers this.  It is pure Progressive.  Because issues are impossible, attack the person.  Alinsky in action, right?

But there is such a thing as too much information.  I therefore think it behooves all of us conservatives, male, female and “other” (should you fall into that obscure category) to contact the NY Times boasting about an affair with Boehner.  Have lots of facts.  Talk about the sweet nothings he whispered in your ear to seduce you (“Lower taxes, baby.”  “Your fiscal responsibility sends shivers down my leg.”  ‘I want to be your national security blanket.”)

If you need inspiration for this tactic, I offer you “I am Spartacus“:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Joseph Stack, the man who flew a plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, left a long, a very long, pre-suicide/pre-murder screed identifying those issues that drove him to commit his act.  The most obvious thing about the screed is that it is the work of someone with cognitive dysfunction, most likely some form of paranoid schizophrenia.  There were no logical thought processes at work here.  The other thing obvious about his polemic was that it borrowed anger from every political movement.  Here are some highlights, showing that this was a man who could hold a grudge against Mother Theresa, the Good Humor Man, George Washington, Stalin, and Walt Disney simultaneously, along with all his other grudges against one political movement or another:

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.  [There's no ideology here, just anger against taxes, something common to all people in varying degrees depending on the amount of money taken from them or the use to which the government puts the money.]

[snip]

I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.  [Stack is alienated from all politicians, regardless of political stripe.]

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?  [Stack hates both corporatism and the stimulus, showing his equal opportunity outlook.]

Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.  [Stack hates the status quo regarding American medicine, which would put him squarely on the Democratic side of the political system.]

[snip]

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.  [Stack hates our legal system, an ideology that is not associated with either the left or the right.]

[snip]

In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. [Stack hates the church, which seems to be a left thing, not a right thing, although he sounds more like a 16th Century theologian than a modern secular American leftist.]

[snip]

However, this is where I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.  [Stack believes in class warfare, a notion emanating from the political left.]

[snip]

The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.  [Stack believes both management and unions are corrupt, making him, again, an equal opportunity hater.]

And on and on it goes, with Stack railing endlessly about government and the lack of government, about religion, about class warfare, about socialism and capitalism.  Indeed, as to the last two, Stack wrapped up his missive with knocks at both economic institutions:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

In simple terms, the guy was a loony-tunes, who was unfettered by any specific political ideology.  He was paranoid to the point of murderous and suicidal insanity.  There was nothing else there:  no strong political ideology or affiliation, no overriding belief system, just garden-variety paranoia.

If you believe my analysis, you will also believe that Robert Wright, of the New York Times, is a bona fide idiot.    Wright has looked at the same manifesto and concluded that Stack was a Tea Party terrorist.  With hundreds of wordy-words, and turgid explanations, Wright explains his reasoning.  After you read Wright’s little anti-conservative polemic, I’ll conclude with my simplified analysis of Wright’s thinking, and you’ll see where the idiot label I apply comes from.  First, Wright:

Stack, in contrast, saw himself as part of a cause, as one in a long line of fighters against tyranny. The manifesto he left behind reads, “I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. … I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be whitewashed and ignored” — at which point, God willing, “the American zombies wake up and revolt.” This man was, by prevailing semantic conventions, a terrorist.

Was he a Tea Partier — or at least a Tea Party sympathizer? Conservatives who say no point to leftish themes in his manifesto. And it’s true that — in a line much-quoted by these conservatives — he seems to wish that the government would do something about health care. Then again, who doesn’t?

There are clearer left-wing strands in Stack’s writing — he identified with blacks and the downtrodden, he said the rich oppress the poor — but I’m not sure how relevant that is, because I’m not sure how purely conservative the Tea Party movement is anyway.

Yes, it mobilized against a liberal health care bill and the stimulus package, but it also opposes corporate bailouts. Sure, Tea Partiers hate taxes, but that alone doesn’t distinguish them from many Americans. On social issues the Tea Partiers include some libertarians along with a larger number of family-values conservatives.

And when you move to foreign policy, things don’t get more coherent. Though some Tea Partiers are hawks, many follow Ron Paul’s lead, combining a left-wing critique of military engagement with a right-wing aversion to the United Nations and other multilateral entanglements.

In the end, the core unifying theme of the Tea Partiers is populist rage, and this is the core theme in Stack’s ramblings, whether the rage is directed at corporate titans (“plunderers”), the government (“totalitarian”) or individual politicians (“liars”).

I don’t doubt that Tea Partiers are on balance on the right, and if their movement ever crystallizes into a political party that will be its location. But until the requisite winnowing happens, a person with Stack’s fuzzy ideology wouldn’t feel terribly alone at a big Tea Party.

I emphasize that I’m talking about his ideology, not his penchant for flying planes into buildings. Still, some of the ingredients of that penchant — a conspiratorial bent, a deep and personal sense of oppression, an attendant resentful rage — can be found in the movement, if mainly on its fringes. There are some excitable Tea Partiers out there.

You could, on the one hand, follow this logic to the conclusion that Joseph Stack was the first Tea Party terrorist.

Stack tries to pull back from his biased conclusion by saying, “Hey, let’s avoid the word terrorist altogether (since, unspoken, we at the New York Times already do that when it comes to Muslim killers who come pre-equipped with a neatly packaged anti-American ideology),” but that doesn’t undo his conclusion.  Instead, it’s just a silly verbal game aimed at disavowing his clearly stated conclusion.

And now, after all of Wright’s verbal dancing and prancing, let me present my simple distillation of Wright’s endless verbiage:

Tea Partiers are angry.

Stack was angry.

Therefore Stack was a Tea Partier.

In other words, Wright engaged in a classic false syllogism:

People often make mistakes when reasoning syllogistically.

For instance, from the premises some A are B, some B are C, people tend to come to a definitive conclusion that therefore some A are C.  However, this does not follow according to the rules of classical logic. For instance, while some cats (A) are black (B), and some black things (B) are televisions (C), it does not follow from the parameters that some cats (A) are televisions (C). This is because first, the mood of the syllogism invoked is illicit (III), and second, the supposition of the middle term is variable between that of the middle term in the major premise, and that of the middle term in the minor premise (not all “some” cats are by necessity of logic the same “some black things”).

Determining the validity of a syllogism involves determining the distribution of each term in each statement, meaning whether all members of that term are accounted for.

In simple syllogistic patterns, the fallacies of invalid patterns are:

Undistributed middle – Neither of the premises accounts for all members of the middle term, which consequently fails to link the major and minor term.

Illicit treatment of the major term – The conclusion implicates all members of the major term (P — meaning the proposition is negative); however, the major premise does not account for them all (i e P is either an affirmative predicate or a particular subject there).

Illicit treatment of the minor term – Same as above, but for the minor term (S — meaning the proposition is universal) and minor premise (where S is either a particular subject or an affirmative predicate).

Exclusive premises – Both premises are negative, meaning no link is established between the major and minor terms.

Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise – If either premise is negative, the conclusion must also be.

Existential fallacy – This is a more controversial one. If both premises are universal, i.e. “All” or “No” statements, one school of thought says they do not imply the existence of any members of the terms. In this case, the conclusion cannot be existential; i.e. beginning with “Some”. Another school of thought says that affirmative statements (universal or particular) do imply the subject’s existence, but negatives do not. A third school of thought says that the any type of proposition may or may not involve the subject’s existence, and although this may condition the conclusion it does not affect the form of the syllogism.

Apparently the eight years of shrieking Bush Derangement Syndrome that preceded the Tea Party movement did nothing to create an “angry movement” in America.  In Wright’s imaginary land, Stack’s travails, which Stack himself saw as stretching back decades, were unaffected by any anger other than the righteous (and non-violent) indignation of the tea partiers.  I also don’t see any record of Wright opining about the Left wing rage that motivated Amy Bishop, a fanatic Obama follower (left wing) who, angered that she was denied her rightful tenure (a very Left wing notion), went postal and killed three black colleagues.  Apparently she was merely crazy, and not the logical result of of eight years of violently hostile Bush Derangement Syndrome.

I am reminded again why, even though I, as an informed person, should know what the other side is saying, I avoid the New York Times.  Being constantly confronted with stupidity just raises my blood pressure.  My husband keeps urging me to listen to NPR’s Fresh Air, in which Terry Gross has a good laugh with David Weigel about CPAC and how stupid conservatives are.  (They don’t respect saintly Woodrow Wilson!  How ignorant can they be?)  I just don’t have the stomach to listen to ignorance, nor the time to write the inevitable long post explaining just what a dreadful, totalitarian-leaning president Wilson was, nor to point out that, as always, NPR focuses on the fringe and not the center when it reports on the right.  Somehow NPR never gets around to reporting on its own fringe (Maxine Waters, anybody?), but that omission leaves both NPR and its listeners unperturbed.

Feh!

From The Weekly Standard:

With the release of hundreds of emails by scientists advocates of global warming showing obvious and entirely inappropriate collusion by the authors — including attempts to suppress dissent, to punish journals that publish peer-reviewed studies casting doubt on global warming, and to manipulate data to bolster their own arguments — even the New York Times is forced to concede that “the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.” But apparently the paper’s environmental blog, Dot Earth, is taking a pass on publishing any of the documents and emails that are now circulating. Andrew Revkin, the author of that blog, writes,

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

This is the position of the New York Times when given the chance to publish sensitive information that might hinder the liberal agenda. Of course, when the choice is between publishing classified information that might endanger the lives of U.S. troops in the field or intelligence programs vital to national security, that information is published without hesitation by the nation’s paper of record. But in this case — the documents were “never intended for the public eye,” so the New York Times will take a pass. I guess that policy wasn’t in place when Neil Sheehan was working at the paper.

(Read the rest here.)

My thoughts exactly.

Liberals assured us back in 2008 that, after the horrible Cowboy Bush years, we needed someone charming to bring rogue governments back into the American fold.  So far, these same rogue governments have been resistant to Obama’s charm, whether in Russia or the Palestinian territories* or Iran, just to to name a few instances of rebuffs.  Chavez has been doing hugs and kisses, but he hasn’t changed his policy, so I’d say he too is playing the boy.

Now, China joins the line-up of potentially threatening (to America) regimes that are willing to be polite (Oba-mao), but don’t have the faintest desire to make concessions to one who is so manifestly weak and hostile to his own national interest.  After all, if Obama doesn’t care for America, why should they?  Instead, with a machiavellian stealth that is to be much admired, China used the groveling Obama for their benefit, while squishing him politely under their Communist heels:

President Obama made a big effort Tuesday at presenting his first visit to China as a step forward in America’s evolving relationship with its fastest rising competitor. But what emerged after six hours of meetings, two dinners, and a stilted 30-minute presentation to the press in which Chinese President Hu Jintao would not allow questions, was a picture of a China more willing to say no to the United States.

On everything from Iran, where Mr. Hu did not publicly discuss the possibility of sanctions, to currency, where he made no nod toward changing the value of the renminbi, to human rights, where a joint statement bluntly acknowledged that the two countries “have differences,” China held firm against most American demands. Combined with China’s micro-management of Mr. Obama’s appearances inside the country, the trip showcased China’s ability to push back against American pressure, analysts said.

“China effectively stage-managed President Obama’s public appearances, got him to make statements endorsing Chinese positions of political importance to them, and effectively squelched discussions of contentious issues such as human rights and China’s currency policy,” said Eswar Prasad, a China specialist at Cornell University. “In a master-stroke, they shifted the public discussion from the global risks posed by Chinese currency policy to the dangers of loose monetary policy and protectionist tendencies in the U.S.”

Read the rest here.

My husband assured my son this morning that Obama is doing a great job as president, and castigated me soundly for filling my son’s head with negative remarks about our president.  I refrained from pointing out that, while I give my children hard facts, and let them draw their conclusions, my husband has only airy-fairy conclusions, unconnected to any facts.  Some days, it looks as if even the New York Times is being forced to move beyond those rose-colored glasses.

_________________________

*The first time around, in a beautiful Freudian moment, I wrote that as “Palestinian terrortories.”

Omri Ceren, who blogs at Mere Rhetoric, is a member of the Watcher of Weasels Council.  He is as good a blogger as one can get, and someone with a real gift for ferreting out the truth behind the story.  So it was no surprise that Omri, using what he describes as simple due diligence, discovered that yet another high level member of Human Rights Watch, an ostensibly objective organization that is in fact fiercely hostile to Israel, has a distinctly unsavory past, and one with strong ties to antisemitism.  Omri’s discovery concerned Marc Garlasco, who happens to have an obsessive interesting in Nazi uniforms.  Garlasco’s interest transcends mere hobbyism.  As Omri details, Garlasco exhibits what veers into a libidinous excitement about Nazi uniforms, something that makes an ugly package when combined with his slobbering servility to Palestinians, his hostility to Israel, and his regular lies about the Jewish state.

The problem with Garlasco, as I indicated in the first paragraph, is that he’s not alone on HRW.  Instead, he’s part of a troika.  It turns out that all those humanistic, altruistic Israel Watcher’s at HRW have a history that shows bias towards Israel, whether that’s praising the Munich massacre, bemoaning Israel’s existence, or glorifying those who sought the Jews’ total destruction.  And once you’ve got a troika, you’ve got a news story even the MSM can no longer ignore.

Which gets me to the New York Times, which does a very, very careful job about reporting the Garlasco story.  So careful, in fact, that it entirely ignores that Garlasco is one of three antisemitic stooges at HRW, making it appear that he is simply one beleaguered collector, assaulted by various Jewish extremist bloggers.  Moreover, in inimitable NYT‘s fashion, the story manages to smear Omri — or, at least, to smear him as far as the Times‘ readers are concerned:

His hobby, inspired he said by a German grandfather conscripted into Hitler’s army, was revealed on a pro-Israel blog, Mere Rhetoric Mere Rhetoric [sic],which quoted his enthusiastic postings on collector sites under the pseudonym “Flak88” — including, “That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!”

It was a Rorschach moment in the conflict between Israel and its critics. The revelations were, depending on who is talking, either incontrovertible proof of bias or an irrelevant smear.

The Mere Rhetoric posting said Mr. Garlasco’s interests explained “anti-Israel biases.”

Did you catch that description about Mere Rhetoric as a “pro-Israel blog”?  I happen to think there’s nothing wrong with being a pro-Israel blog.  Indeed,  I think it’s a good thing to be a pro-Israel blog.  But I happen to know that the New York Times does not think being pro-Israel is ever good.  Indeed, just yesterday, the Times had a long and nasty and biased report about Israeli settlers, making them look like greedy vultures, all the while forgetting to report the terrorism inflicted against them and their holy places.  (You can find the link if you want; I won’t bother.)

All of this means that, when the Times describes Mere Rhetoric as “pro-Israel,” it’s telling it’s readers that Omri’s blog is biased and unreliable.  It hopes that, despite the evidence all over the blogsophere about Garlasco’s Nazi obsession, those who read the Times article will discount it, because he’s a victim of a smear campaign by those nasty pro-Israel bloggers.

The old media is beginning to have a huge problem trying to get people to discount actual facts simply because the MSM doesn’t like the messenger.  In the old days, a smear was a lie.  In the new days, a smear is the truth coming from new media sources hostile to Democratic interests.  Van Jones was “smeared” when bloggers revealed his Communist past, his crude insults about Republicans, his anti-Israel band, etc.  All actual, veriable, video-taped facts, of course, but still smears because they came out of the wrong mouths.  The Rev. Wright was smeared when videos surfaced of him insulting America and Americans.  True, yes; but a smear nevertheless because the people inserting these facts into the public dialogue had the wrong, conservative motives.

And so it goes — and then the old media wonders why it’s readership declines.

Things have changed little since Mark Twain:  “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

The Times is trumpeting a poll showing a huge number of Americans support Obama’s health care plan.  As Bruce Kesler explains, though, the devil is in the details, and quite the little devil it is.