It’s like a doctor who smokes. You’d think the last person to be done in by his own words would be a journalist. Shouldn’t a purveyor of words know better?
Yet as today’s forced resignation by WaPo columnist David Weigel proves, “Physician, heal thyself” is one piece of advice that seems to be ignored by wordsmiths of just about all stripes these days. On the heels of Helen Thomas–or are they flats?–Weigel is just the latest to join the Oral Suicide Club.
What was Weigel’s offense? Unfortunately for him, the man hired by WaPo to write about the conservative movement couldn’t resist showing his true anti-conservative colors on what he thought was a “private” journalist email list called Journolist — which was disbanded today by its creator, Ezra Klein. In a June 24 Betsy Rothstein story on Fishbowl DC, Weigel in his own emailed words reveals what Weigel unplugged sounds like:
This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.
I’d politely encourage everyone to think twice about rewarding the Examiner with any traffic or links for a while. I know the temptation is high to follow up hot hot Byron York scoops, but please resist it.
Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller has unearthed other examples of Weigel’s bias, including a macabre death wish for Rush Limbaugh and other injudicious anti-conservative remarks.
Whatever the reality of whether Weigel’s privacy was violated, he now joins a host of other recent self-imploders from the verbal arena–Ms. Thomas, Van Jones, Michael Richards, et al. Although Van Jones, Obama’s “green” czar, blamed his September 2009 demise on a relentless Glenn Beck crusade–coincidentally, Weigel did too–Beck merely led the charge. Van Jones himself supplied the ammunition, calling Republicans “a**holes” during a public address in Berkeley in February 2009 and making other similar remarks befouling the dignity of the office (undeservedly) handed him. His 2004 signing of a 9-11 “truther” conspiracy document was just the icing on the green cake in Jones’ auto-ejection.
Coincidentally, Obama’s famous “cling to guns and religion” gaffe was also made in Berkeley, at what he thought was a “private” fundraiser. Then candidate Obama, however, in full swooned-over mode, was given a pass when his comment was surreptitiously recorded and then leaked. That has to rankle Weigel and Thomas. Sometimes life–even for liberals–just isn’t fair.
It’s true that Michael Richards was provoked by an obnoxious heckler but again, sadly, the hateful racist rant that erupted from his mouth at the Laugh Factory in L.A. that night was scripted by no one but him.
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It’s hard to say whether the real cardinal sin these people share is their failure to exercise proper caution or just too much amour propre. After all, it takes a lot of self-love to attack millions of people of another race, religion or party affiliation. And whatever your opinion of Matt Drudge, anybody creating a successful one-man-empire has to have both a pretty good business model and a keen sense of what the public wants.
Of course, the award for Pithiest Death by Oral Suicide has to go to Howard Dean, who self-immolated with only a scream. Dean is to be credited for giving new meaning to the phrase “shout out.” He gave a shout–and then was out.
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Usually these defining moments merely reinforce an already-known or latent flaw of the speaker and become merely the inciting incident for his or her departure when the offense becomes too great to justify retention. Richards may be the exception–his bigoted views were a completely out-of-the-blue shock to all who heard them and now (unfortunately for lovers of the series) cast a permanent cloud of taint over the Seinfeld episodes.
But no one was surprised by the others in this list. Long before his 2004 ghoulish Iowan gurgle, Dean was seen as unpredictable, a loose cannon ready to explode. Thomas’ anti-Israeli leanings were as familiar to us as the alphabet. And well before the Journolist remarks surfaced, Weigel too had been suspected of an anti-conservative bias after, along with other hints, a controversial tweet in which he disparaged opponents of gay marriage as bigots.
According to Politico, Weigel believed “he could be both a journalist and someone with an opinion.” He’s right, of course. He could have been. But even on a listserv he assumed was private, in today’s world a smart journalist would have kept his opinions to himself–or expressed them a little more judiciously.
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