Before we begin, let us pause for a moment to thank our Almighty for the small pleasures of life, such as almost a full week passing without having to suffer through yet another high cry and desperate whine from JournoList founder and Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, as he dishonestly complains about his online cabal of left-wing “journalists” being taken out of context by the Daily Caller’s damning and ongoing drip-drip-drip of an expose’.
JournoList founder Ezra Klein
Yes, thank you Ezra, for finally realizing that you were embarrassing yourself with these complaints as those of us watching this story wondered why you didn’t just go ahead and prove the Daily Caller a liar with a fully contextual response of your own, using that unique WaPo perch combined with the magic of the Internet and your very own personal copy of the full JournoList archives.
While I never took seriously my challenge to Mr. Klein to go right on ahead and clear up all his contextual concerns, he might want to consider doing so now. On June 29th, weeks before the Daily Caller announced the glorious fact that they were in possession of all or part of the JournoList archives, Klein wrote the following:
What if I told you I ran a secret e-mail list that connected progressive writers with staffers for Democratic politicians so that those staffers could tell the progressives what, exactly, their bosses wanted them writing about that day?
Sadly, I don’t run such a list.
You have to love that last sentence. The use of the word “sadly” is soooo sly. Especially when it appears, that at times, that’s exactly the type of list Klein was running.
The context of his June 29th article is that after Klein’s WaPo colleague Dave Weigel was, uhm, resigned, from the Post after the Daily Caller and some other sites released transcripts of Weigel’s shockingly un-conservative JournoList emails, Klein was desperate to take the spotlight off his own personal online monster and so he played a game of LookOverHere! with a private RNC Listserv … as though he were blessed with the magic powers necessary to turn that orange into his rotten apple.
The context I’m most interested in, however, and the context his employers at the Washington Post should be most interested in, is Klein’s June 29th assertion that:
The rule for Journolist was that no one who worked for the government in any capacity could join or, if they took a job with the government, remain.
According to today’s Daily Caller article titled, “Political operatives on Journolist worked to shape news coverage,” that doesn’t appear to be completely true:
Despite its name, membership in the liberal online community Journolist wasn’t limited to journalists. Present among the bloggers, reporters and editors were a number of professional political operatives, including top White House economic advisors, key Obama political appointees, and Democratic campaign veterans. Some left to join Journolist. Others took the opposite route. A few contributed to Journolist from their perches in politics. At times, it became difficult to tell who was supposed to be covering policy and who was trying to make it.
Jason Furman, JournoList member
Two of the administration’s chief economic advisors, Jared Bernstein, the vice president’s top economist, and Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, were members of Journolist until they began working officially for Obama.
If Klein ever plans to lay out that contextual case he was so eager to play the victim over, what I see as an obvious contradiction between what he published June 29th on the Washington Post website and what Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller has reported, appears to be the perfect opportunity.
And if Klein won’t do so of his own volition, his employers at the Washington Post might want to ask him to. Or is Klein’s explanation to the Daily Caller that, “It’s possible I missed someone,” good enough when one of their own uses their website to declare something that doesn’t appear to be true?